[Saline9515]

Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot of blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave differently).

Let's not even talk about the case when you have monitors that have different DPI, something that is handled seamlessly by MacOS, unlike Linux where it feels like a d20 roll depending on your distro.

I expect most desktop MacOS users to have a HiDPI screen in 2026 (it's just...better), so going to Linux may feel like a serious downgrade, or at least a waste of time if you want to get every config "right". I wish it was differently, honestly - the rest of the OS is great, and the diversity between distros is refreshing.

[drnick1]

> Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot of blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave differently).

I have been using a 4K display for years on Linux without issues. The scaling issue with non-native apps is a problem that Windows also struggles with btw.

[thrdbndndn]

Windows struggles even with native apps, as soon as you have monitors using different scaling settings.

I'm currently using a laptop (1920x1200, 125%) + external monitor (1920x1080, 100%) at work. The task manager has blurry text when putting in the external monitor. It is so bad.

[Gracana]

Yep, I've been running a Windows laptop plugged into a pair of monitors for the past ten years at work, and across multiple laptops and from Windows 10 to 11, this has always been a problem. If I undock to do some work elsewhere and come back, I either have to live with a bunch of stuff now being blurry, or I need to re-launch all the affected programs.

I also have programs that bleed from one monitor onto another when maximized. AutoCAD is one offender that reliably does this -- if it's maximized, several pixels of its window will overlap the edge of the window on the adjacent screen. The bar I set for windows is pretty low, so I'm generally accepting of the jank I encounter in it vs Linux where I know any problem is likely something I can fix. Still, that one feels especially egregious.

[dahauns]

The new Windows 11 22H2 task manager?

Works just fine here (1920x1200 125%, 4K 150%, 1080p 100%).

[pjmlp]

Usually that is a monitor driver issue.

[thrdbndndn]

It's not, here is a good article about it: https://gist.github.com/valinet/d66733e5f1398856bb21bda466a2...

(And a workaround).

Unfortunately I cannot modify registry at work so I have to live with it.

[GreenWatermelon]

When I still used windows (until windows 10) I always had to download some DPI fixer program to fix blurriness in many native windows programs.

Text rendering × DPI seems to be one of those difficult problems.

[necovek]

Since MacOS removed subpixel rendering a few years ago, regular resolution displays have terrible looking text in comparison to Windows or Linux.

Gnome in Linux works great for a decade+ with a single high resolution screen, but there are certainly apps that render too small (Steam was one of the problems).

Different scaling factors on several monitors are not perfect though, but I generally dislike how Mac handles that too as I mostly use big screen when docked (32"-43"-55"), or laptop screen when not, and it rearranges my windows with every switch.

[ewoodrich]

I recently mentioned in another comment that Fedora 43 on my Ideapad is the first “just works” experience I’ve had with my multi monitor setup(s) on anything other than Windows 11 (including MacOS where I needed to pay for Better Display to reach the bar of “tolerable”).

Zero fiddling necessary other than picking my ideal scaling percentage on each display for perfect, crisp text with everything sanely sized across all my monitors/TVs.

I gave up on Linux Mint for that exact reason. I wasted so much time trying to fine tune fonts and stuff to emulate real fractional scaling. Whenever I thought I finally found a usable compromise some random app would look terrible on one of the monitors and I’d be back at square one.

Experimental Wayland on Linux Mint just wasn’t usable unfortunately and tbh wasn’t a big fan of Cinnamon in general (I just really hated dealing with snaps on Ubuntu). I did tweak Gnome to add minimize buttons/bottom dock again and with that it’s probably my favorite desktop across any version of Linux/MacOS/Windows I’ve ever used!

I kept reading endorsements of Fedora's level of polish/stability on HN but was kinda nervous having used Debian distros my entire life and I’m really happy I finally took the plunge. Wish I tried it years ago!

[jijijijij]

> I kept reading endorsements of Fedora's level of polish/stability on HN but was kinda nervous having used Debian distros my entire life and I’m really happy I finally took the plunge. Wish I tried it years ago!

This. I don't know why, but people forget about Fedora when considering distros. They rather fight Arch than try Fedora. So, did I. Maybe its Redhat. Wish I switched earlier, too. (Although I heard this level of polish wasn't always the case.)

I love Fedora so much. Everything just works, but that's not that special compared to Ubuntu. What is special is the fucking sanity throughout the whole system. Debian based distros always have some legacy shit going on. No bloat, no snap, nothing breaking convention and their upgrade model sits in the sweet spot between Ubuntu's 4 year LTS cycle and Arch's rolling release. Pacman can rot in hell, apt is okay, but oh boy, do I love dnf.

Tho, Fedora has some minor quirks, which still make it hard to recommend for total beginners without personal instructions/guidance IMO. Like the need for RPMFusion repos and the bad handling/documentation of that. Not a problem if you know at all what a package manager, PKI and terminal is, but too much otherwise.

[alimbada]

I dual booted Fedora back when it was still called Fedora Core from version 6 until 11-ish. I had it installed on a laptop and had a lot of driver issues with it and eventually didn't bother with dual booting when I moved to a new laptop.

I'm now looking to get off Windows permanently before security updates stop for Win 10 as I have no intention of upgrading to Win 11 since Linux gaming is now a lot more viable and was the only remaining thing holding me back from switching earlier. I've been considering either Bazzite (a Fedora derivative with a focus on gaming) or Mint but after reading your comment I may give vanilla Fedora a try too.

So far I've tried out the Bazzite Live ISO but it wouldn't detect my wireless Xbox controller though that may be a quirk of the Live ISO. I'm going to try a full install on a flash drive next and see if that fixes things.

[jijijijij]

Give it a try! Although, I do all my gaming on a Playstation. In Fedora, the Steam and NVIDIA Fusion repos come preinstalled and can be enabled during installation or in Gnome's 'Software' or the package manager later, but I can't speak to that. The opensource AMD drivers are in the main repo no action needed. ROCm too, but that can be messy and is work-in-progress on AMD's side. Can't vouch for the controller, but people claim they work. Guess, that's the live image. I heard, games with anti-cheat engines in the kernel categorically don't work with Linux, but this may change at some point. In that case, or if you want "console mode", a specific gaming distro may be worth considering, otherwise I would stick to vanilla. Good luck! Hope I didn't promise too much ;)

[alimbada]

So I cleared out one of my SSDs and installed Fedora yesterday.

I still had the issue of no gamepad detection. I had to install xone which took some trial and error. Firstly, I didn't have dkms installed and secondly, soon after installing Fedora the kernel was updated in the background and on reboot my display resolution was fixed to 1024x768 or something for some reason (that's gonna be another issue I'll have to look into). I rebooted and went back to the previous version and then dkms complained the kernel-headers were missing. However, the kernel-headers were installed for the latest kernel but not the older version I had rebooted to. I'm not used to Fedora or dnf (I run Proxmox+Debian in my homelab) so after a quick search to figure out how to install a specific version of a package (it's not as simple as <package>@<version> but rather <package>-<version>.fc$FEDORA_VERSION.$ARCHITECTURE) I got kernel-devel installed and was able to finally run the xone install script successfully and have my gamepad detected.

The most frustrating thing is that the xone install script doesn't fail despite errors from dkms so after the first install (where I almost gave up because I thought something was wrong with my setup) I had to run the uninstall script each time there was a problem and then run it again. The xone docs also mention running a secondary script which doesn't actually exist until the first script runs successfully so that added a lot of confusion.

[necovek]

Canonical releases an Ubuntu LTS release every two years: active is 24.04, next is coming in a few months as 26.04.

LTS support runs for 5 years (there is extended support for 10 years available), so you can skip an LTS if you don't need the latest base software.

[jijijijij]

You are right, I got that mixed up. To be fair, I somehow also thought of yearly releases for Fedora, which isn't the case. It's every six months, so the relation remains identical, just off by a factor of 2 :D

[baxuz]

Steam has DPI scaling issues on Windows as well, especially on multimonitor setups.

[starkparker]

Every 4K external display I've connected to every M1- and M2-series Mac running macOS has a known flickering issue with Display Stream Compression that Apple knows about and has been unable or unwilling to fix.

The only reliable fixes are to either disable that DisplayPort feature if your monitor supports it, or to disable GPU Dithering using a paid third-party tool (BetterDisplay). Either that or switch to Asahi, which doesn't have that issue.

The issue is common enough that BENQ has a FAQ page about it, which includes steps like "disable dark mode" and "wait for 2 hours": https://www.benq.com/en-us/knowledge-center/knowledge/how-to...

[Wilder7977]

I have been experiencing this on my 2k monitors as well (Also BENQ). I tried every "fix" under the sun, eventually it stops after enough voodoo (reboots, unplugs) and cursing.

One of the many random issues on the OS with the best UX in the world (lol). Like music sometimes stopping and sometimes switching to speakers when turning off Bluetooth headphones, mouse speed going bananas randomly requiring mouse off and on, terminal app (iterm2) reliably crashing when I dare to change any keybinding, and many other things that never happened in years of working on Linux.

[Terretta]

If you're looking for high quality text at 4K, your options are more limited than if you're looking for gaming. This is a good roundup, and the leading Dell is superb:

https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/best/by-usage/busines...

And as noted here on HN a couple days ago, avoid OLED. Coincidentally, the top office monitor per rtings is what that post compared OLED to:

https://nuxx.net/blog/2026/01/09/oled-not-for-me/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46562583

We use pairs of these Dells per MacBook at our offices and provide them for WR as well. There've been no issues on this Dell or prior models on M1 through M4 (M5 iPad is fine too).

As for DSC, that's been a complaint for a minute… Example HN reader theory on DSC, from Aug 2023:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37025568

[ricardobeat]

The best option was the LG UltraFine 24” 4K, which sadly was discontinued years ago.

In my opinion a QHD 23.8” panel is the next best option for developers (any M-series chip handles scaling without issues); I find the common 27” and 32” at 4K a weird spot - slightly too large, slightly too low resolution – and 5k+ options are still rare.

[Terretta]

COMPLETELY agree. I still own and use those LGs.

[RHSeeger]

One of my external screens is 4k and I haven't noticed any flickering. It's an Apple monitor though, so maybe that's the difference.

[pier25]

I've used ASUS 4K monitors on M2 and M4 machines without issues.

[bzzzt]

My Dell Ultrasharp 4K also doesn't flicker and has DSC enabled according to the on screen menu. At work there are a few old Iiyama 4K screens that flicker though, but I don't know if they even understand DSC.

[mcv]

I've got a 4K Samsung Odyssey that I have come to hate because of it's extreme slowness and weird behaviour (I do not recommend this line), but I haven't had any problems with flickering with either M1s or M3s.

[cestith]

I use two 4k displays with an M1 Pro MBP. They work without any flickering. They’re using HDMI rather than DisplayPort.

I’m also, to get the two external displays without them being mirrored, using a docking station and a display driver from Silicon Motion called macOS InstantView.

This is of course not ideal if you need DP and DSC.

[pbasista]

> or switch to Asahi

I would like to point out that, from my experience on M1, external displays do not work at all over DisplayPort on Asahi Linux at the moment.

[starkparker]

It works over the HDMI ports on Minis and some Pros, and this monitor is connected to the Mac via HDMI. Source: Me, my M1 Mac mini, and my Samsung Neo G8

[storus]

I recently bought a MacStudio with 512GB of RAM and connected it to a LG 5k2k monitor. For some reason there was no way to change the font size (they removed the text size "Larger Text ... More Space" continuum from the Display section of settings) so I ended up with either super small or super large fonts without anything in-between. In the end I had to install some 3rd party software and mix my own scaled resolution with acceptable font size. This has never been a problem on Linux in the past 10 years, all I needed to do at worst when it wasn't done out of the box was to set scale somewhere and that was it.

[QuercusMax]

BetterDisplay has solved a ton of problems like this for me; when MacOS gets confused about non apple monitors, BetterDisplay knows how to fix things.

[Saline9515]

I bought a MacStudio 2 months ago, on Sequoia you go to "display" and should see the various resolutions. If not, "advanced">"show resolutions as a list">"show all resolutions".

[storus]

Unfortunately, resolutions offered were weird. Native is 5120x2160 but that wasn't offered and scaled resolutions were weird. I guess macOS didn't read monitor's information properly or something. I wasted a few hours frantically trying to figure out how to connect a $12k computer to a 4-year old monitor which should have been a breeze but for some reason wasn't. The same monitor worked fine on Linux or Windows.

[FireBeyond]

I feel like this has something to do with Apple fucking with DP 1.4 for the ProDisplay XDR.

My 2019 Mac Pro with Catalina could happily drive 2 4K monitors in HDR @ 144 Hz.

People wondered how Apple got the math to work to drive the ProDisplay.

Big Sur? Not any more. 95Hz for 4K SDR, 60Hz for 4K HDR. Not the cables, not the monitors. Indeed, "downgrading" the monitors advertised support to DP 1.2 gave better options, 120Hz SDR, 75Hz HDR.

And it was never fixed, not in Big Sur, Monterey or Ventura, when I had switched monitors.

Hundreds of reports, hundreds of video/monitor combinations.

[mrkstu]

Pick up a copy of BetterDisplay. Absolutely useful for monitors with non-standard resolutions.

[bpye]

macOS is the only operating system where you need to use third party software to make this work.

[ArmadilloGang]

Truth. Third party software for trackpad. Third party software for mouse. Third party software for window management. Third party software for Spotlight replacement. Third party software to support a second external display.

The third party software is really good, but come on, Apple, take a hint.

[pests]

Frantically? For hours? If that is what you meant, did you try stepping back for a few minutes, and coming up with a plan / doing research?

[wtetzner]

Why should someone need to set aside time to do research and come up with a plan to make a brand new (very expensive) computer do what it should do out of the box? Isn't Apple's big selling point that it "just works"?

[pests]

I agree, but frantically?

"a hurried, wild, or desperate manner, often due to extreme worry, fear, excitement, or panic"

At some point this frantic nature of trying to do something will cause more issues all by itself.

Instead of spending hours in desperation, I was only suggesting taking a step back and maybe when not in a frantic state, it would be easier to move forward.

[chrisweekly]

Curious what software; I've used "SwitchResX" in the past and it met all my needs...

[storus]

It was BetterDisplay. Thanks for the hint, will take a look at SwitchResX as well. BetterDisplay looks too complicated for what I need it to do (just switch the screen to 2560x1080 scaled).

[stephenr]

AFAIK the smallest 5K2K is 34", with a PPI of 163. I don't believe that is treated as "HiDPI" by macOS, is it?

[storus]

It should be, its size is somewhat similar to a 31" 4k I have next to it just the ultra-wide adds those extra inches.

[jjtheblunt]

it's not removed : you have to hold Option when choosing resolutions, and the panel changes to show myriad options.

i think that's what you're describing, anyway.

[storus]

I tried Option of course, that dumped tons of options at me but none of them were about font scaling.

[jjtheblunt]

i think (no proof, just experimenting on my 5k2k LG) that the various resolutions imply differing scalings. my eyes are really fortunately good so i just run at 5k2k and it's sharp (because i use larger fonts, app by app, so somewhat manually set scalings).

[blinkingled]

I am a full time KDE/Arch user and since Plasma 6 haven't had any HiDPI issues including monitors with different DPI or X11 apps - of which there are very few nowadays.

[noisy_boy]

Fedora 43 with KDE - have been using 140% scaling with my Dell Ultrasharp 32" 4k monitor - no issues whatsoever. I've noticed that the Dells do a pretty good job with Linux - I have used monitors of various sizes ranging from 27" to 43" and never had any issues on Linux.

[wolvoleo]

I run plasma 6 on X11 and it also functions amazingly well on 200% scaling.

[lovasoa]

I use linux at home (with a HiDPI screen) and MacOS for work. The screen works well with both computers. I mostly just use a text editor, a browser, and a terminal though.

Linux has bugs, bug MacOS does too. I feel like for a dev like me, the linux setup is more comfortable.

[mcny]

Same here. I stick to 100% scaling and side step the whole hi dpi issue. I even have a single USB type c cable that connects my laptop to the laptop stand and that laptop stand is what connects to the monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

I know people will say meh but coming from the world of hurt with drivers and windows based soft modems — I was on dial up even as late as 2005! — I think the idea that everything works plug and play is amazing.

Compare with my experience on Windows — maybe I did something wrong, I don't know but the external monitor didn't work over HDMI when I installed windows without s network connection and maybe it was a coincidence but it didn't work until I connected to the Internet.

[Macha]

> Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot of blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave differently).

Meanwhile on MacOS my displays may work. Or they might not work. Or they might work but randomly locked to 30hz. It depends on what order they wake up in or get plugged in.

I suspect the root of the problem is one of them is a very high refresh rate monitor (1440p360hz) and probably related to the display bandwidth limitations that provide a relatively low monitor limit for such a high cost machine.

[deaux]

I have similar issues without the high refresh rate. It's a MacOS bug related to sleep/wake corrupting internal display settings.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255860955?sortBy=upvote...

After 344 "me too"s and 180+ replies they silently locked the thread to save themselves from more embarassment.

[QuercusMax]

I finally got fed up with my two external monitors (one of which I rotate to portrait) getting mixed up by MacOS every time my MacBook would go to sleep or I unplugged it, so I bought a thunderbolt docking station which has basically solved all my issues. Worth every penny to be able to swap my personal laptop and work laptop with a single cable.

Macs don't support the USBC / displayport daisy chaining support that my monitors should be able to handle. Very frustrating that this stuff is still so nonstandard. If you have all Apple it all works perfectly, of course.

[Macha]

But don’t forget to order the “right” (i.e. caldigit) dock. My dell dock is even more of a mess on the Mac than plugging the monitors in directly. Works great with a Dell (obviously) and framework laptop running Win10 and Linux respectively though

[QuercusMax]

I've got a Dell dock that worked OK after I borrowed a windows laptop to update the firmware; but it only works with my M3 and M4 macbooks, but not my M2 Mac Mini.

[nicman23]

hello fellow AW2725DF enjoyer

[Atlas26]

> Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI.

I’m glad everyone is dogpiling on this statement cause man people seriously have to stop parroting this years out of date claim at this point. Any big well supported distro using Wayland should be fine, at the very least KDE and GNOME are guaranteed work perfectly with HiDPI.

Daily Fedora KDE user here on 4K HiDPI monitor plus another of a different lower resolution, flawless experience using both together in a setup. Fractional scaling also there working perfectly as well and you choose how you want KDE to scale the apps if you want (forcefully or let the app decide).

[port11]

Funny you mention Fedora, since the installer itself is unusable in my 4K display, defaulting to the 4K resolution instead of a 2x. I never managed to install Fedora using the GUI.

[Atlas26]

Gotta be something hardware specific to you like the other guy said cause I literally just did a fresh fedora install on a 4K display a few months ago with zero issues, and majority of people I know also use 4K displays for their Fedora workstations, and that has never once been brought up as an issue. Maybe search around for whatever hardware you’re running, otherwise I really have no idea what would cause that.

[port11]

It’s a fairly large display, it could be that it doesn’t advertise itself as high-DPI? But KDE had no issues with it, we could install Ubuntu easily.

[prmoustache]

Why don't you just set the resolution manually temporarily for the installer to say 1920x1080 at boot time?

[port11]

“Why don’t you just” is precisely the Linux thing that irks me the most.

Why don’t they just make it obvious? Why doesn’t the installer just figure it out or ask me when it launches?

I agree that that would help, but it was easier to just install another distro.

[prmoustache]

I mean it is probably a bug that may have been limited to your specific combination of hardware for all I know, not like they make sure it cannot work.

[deaux]

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255860955?sortBy=upvote...

MacOS isn't in any kind of position regarding displays. 180+ replies and 300+ upvotes by the 0.1% of sufferers who bother to find these threads, log in, and comment of them. Exteemely widespread, going on for years, thread silently locked.

[seba_dos1]

Sure, you can find some obscure DEs that don't handle that well yet. Or you could just use Plasma and have it all work just fine, like it did for many years now.

[pkulak]

Wait, has MacOS finally figured out fractional scaling? Last I looked, Linux actually had better support. And now Linux support is pretty good. It’s really only older apps that don’t work.

[throw383734q]

No, it has not. Scaling is better on Linux and Windows.

[bpye]

I'm not going to claim that every compositor/WM handles high DPI well on Linux, however both KDE and Gnome on Wayland are fine in my experience. I actually find that KDE on Wayland handles mixed DPI better than Windows, macOS doesn't really give you enough control to try.

[cosmic_cheese]

It also doesn't offer a Mac-style desktop environment, which is one of the things keeping me away. KDE/Cinnamon/XFCE lean more Windows-style, GNOME/Pantheon (Elementary) is more like iPadOS/Android in desktop mode. My productivity takes a big hit in Windows-style environments and I just don't enjoy using them.

I hope to put my money where my mouth is and contribute to one of the tiny handful of nascent Mac-like environment projects out there once some spare time opens up, but until then…

[bsimpson]

So apparently when Canonical was the gorilla in desktop Linux, they had a push to have apps make their menus accessible via API. KDE supports that protocol. There are KDE widgets that will draw a Mac-style menu bar from it.

That means you can take the standard KDE "panel" and split it in two halves: a dock for the bottom edge, and a menus/wifi settings/clock bar for the top edge.

There are some things I don't know how to work around - like Chrome defaulting to Windows-style close buttons and keybindings, but if the Start menu copy is the thing keeping you off Linux, you can mod it more than you think you can.

[necovek]

I believe menus were available "via API" since an a11y push in GNOME before 2.0 release (atk library and friends).

What was impossible was to stop apps from showing the usual menu bar inside the window.

Obviously, with something so core to the system, plenty of devils in the details.

[cosmic_cheese]

Yep, I've played with it. Things might've changed but I couldn't get KDE's global menubar to work at all under Wayland, and under X11 a lot of apps don't populate it.

[upboundspiral]

I have the widget for global menu right now in KDE Wayland. Its supported by all QT apps, and there's a wayland protocol pull request for it (unfortunaly stalled, as is tradition). Overall I like it a lot - enough of the apps I use support it (if you're a GTK fan then tough luck).

merge request: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/m...

[cosmic_cheese]

Thanks for sharing. Would you happen to know if Electron apps might surface the same menus they do under macOS via this protocol? Between Qt and Electron a lot of stuff would be covered.

[pseudalopex]

You would have to use xwayland I think.[1]

[1] https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/34335

[freedomben]

Gnome with a persistent app drawer is relatively Mac-like. With a couple settings tweaks and possibly extensions, it can get pretty close. Even out of the box it feels a lot more mac-like than windows-like to me, but of course everybody is a bit different.

[cosmic_cheese]

Some of the broad strokes are there, but the details are what matters. Gnome extensions also come with the problem of breaking every other update which quickly becomes irritating.

[freedomben]

Yeah quite fair, and also gnome extensions breaking every other update does indeed quickly become irritating. It's hard to believe it's now 2026 and that is still an issue

[NamlchakKhandro]

what does this even mean?

[cosmic_cheese]

There are major differences in the design between Windows and Mac desktops, and generally speaking, Linux desktop environments function more like Windows than they do macOS.

The biggest difference is probably that under Windows-style environments, applications/processes and windows are mostly synonymous — each window represents an independent process in the task manager. In a Mac-style environment, applications can host multiple windows each, so for example even if you've got 7 Firefox windows open, there's only one host Firefox process. This is reflected in the UI, with macOS grouping windows by application in several difference places (as opposed to Windows, where that only happens in the taskbar if the user has it enabled).

"Windows style" also comes a number of other patterns, such as a taskbar instead and menubars attached to windows (as opposed to a dock and a single global, system-owned menubar under macOS).

"Mac style" comes with several subtleties that separate it from e.g. GNOME. Progressive disclosure is a big one. Where macOS will keep power user features slightly off to the side where they're accessible but unlikely to confuse non-technical users, GNOME just omits the functionality altogether. It also generally implies a greater level of system-level integration and cross-functionality from apps (including third party), lending to a more cohesive feel.

[pseudalopex]

Windows is more window centered. And macOS is more application centered. But many Windows and Linux applications use 1 process or 1 host process for all windows. This includes Firefox.

[jhasse]

GNOME still has some problems with fractional scaling, but KDE works perfectly. I'm using two displays, one with 150% and one with 100%. No blurry apps and absolutely no issues. Have you tried it recently?

[sbrother]

Can you independently set desktop wallpapers on the two screens? I know this seems nitpicky but it's literally impossible with Ubuntu/Gnome as far as I know; I have one vertical and one horizontal and have to just go with a solid color background to make that work.

[Macha]

Yes. It was actually more tedious to do the inverse when I wanted three screens to do a rotating wallpapers from the same set of folders as I had to set the list of folders three times

[cosmic_cheese]

KDE is in better shape than GNOME, but there are still some nits. Nearly all the available third party themes for example are blurry or otherwise render incorrectly with fractional scaling on.

[jhasse]

Still better than macOS and Windows where third-party theming is basically non-existant.

And we were talking about why Linux wasn't an alternative to macOS, weren't we?

[cwillu]

So don't use a third party theme.

[cosmic_cheese]

Problem is, the stock themes aren't to my taste at all.

[nish__]

Why not send a pull request to one of your theme maintainers?

[cosmic_cheese]

To my understanding, doing that wouldn't be helpful due to hard technical limits that can't be reconciled. Most window chrome themes are Aurora themes, which don't play nice with HiDPI, and to change that they'd need to be rewritten as C++ themes (like the default Breeze theme is), which is beyond the capabilities of most people publishing themes.

[Atlas26]

That’s not a KDE issue though, blame the themes

[freedomben]

I've been using fractional scaling on Gnome for years (including on the laptop I'm typing this on) and haven't had any issues. I haven't tried it with two displays that are set differently though. Is that a common thing?

[jhasse]

Open an X11 app and it will be blurry.

Also fractional scaling is not supported out-of-the-box in GNOME, you have to set a config value to use it IIRC.

[truncate]

I've not had any issues with 4k display. Mac does handle monitors with different DPIs well, but not really a issue for me. Most hardware I use also just works great. Gaming is great now as well.

The only reason I can't completely switch to Linux is because there are no great options for anything non-programming related stuff I love to do ... such as photography, music (guitar amplifier sims).

[eek2121]

My dude, It's been more than capable for years. I have an ultrawide OLED monitor (3440x1440@165hz) paired with a 4K@144hz monitor. Both HDR, different capabilities. Both have different DPIs set, 125% for one, 200% for the other. My setup required less configuration than Windows does. Right click -> Display Configuration -> Set Alignment (monitor position) -> Set refresh rate -> Set HDR -> Set DPI -> Apply. Done.

Don't knock it unless you've tried it.

This was CachyOS btw. Windows actually required MORE work because I had to install drivers, connect to the internet during setup, get nagged about using a Microsoft account, etc.

CachyOS was basically boot -> verify partitions are correct -> decide on defaults -> create account/password -> wait for files to copy -> done. Drivers, including the latest NVIDIA drivers, auto installed/working.

[Saline9515]

Tried 3 months ago with Gnome (PopOS) and a 4k screen at 125% scaling, apps were blurry, especially Brave, which was a big disappointment.

I give Linux a try each time I need to set up a new computer, and each time run into new issues. Last time (2 years ago) the hdmi connection with the screen would drop randomly twice a day. Same for the keyboard, and the wifi card didn't have drivers available. It became quite annoying, reducing my productivity as I had to reboot and pray. I then installed Windows, which solved all of the issues (unfortunately?)

Maybe I'm just unlucky.

[amlib]

PopOS was very behind other distros in adopting new versions of software until recently due to their epic diversion of building a brand new DE, letting the then existing release bitrot. This created all sorts of issues and incompatibilities that had already been solved for one or even two years in other distros.

Things are changing and improving VERY fast in linux land lately, so being behind by that much is gonna pretty much set you up for disappointment, along all the usual reasons why you ideally want to be on the just dull enough part of the bleeding edge for linux desktop, where you are only getting a few small shallow cuts and hopefully no deep cuts...

Anyway, popular acclaim for popos reached it's peak just when those problems started to show up. It used to be better in years prior, but the reputation tends to lag the actual reality, so sentiment at that point was to recommend it even though it wasn't actually a good choice.

Honestly, give Linux another try four or so months from now. You will get to start fresh on a brand new Ubuntu LTS or the usual new Fedora release. Try Gnome or KDE, see which ones sticks the best with you. Just don't try anything else if you want maximum features, commodity and stability.

Yes, you were unlucky :(

[Saline9515]

Thanks for the heads up! I'll try Ubunutu with KDE then :-)

[GreenWatermelon]

That would be Kubuntu then.

[talentedcoin]

If you’re unlucky in the same way I was, it could actually be a GNOME/GTK issue. Some questionable (?) font rendering decisions were made that for me caused all text in GNOME to be blurry. I hated it so much I switched to KDE but soon realized GTK apps had the same issue.

Eventually I found a fix that worked and now I’m happy. So, next time you can try this. In the file:

~/.config/gtk-4.0/settings.ini

You can add:

[Settings]

gtk-hint-font-metrics=1

Here’s the Arch wiki page that explains it:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GTK#Text_in_GTK_4_applicati...

If your settings.ini is in a different spot see:

https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/class.Settings.html

[Saline9515]

Thanks a lot, I'll try.

[kombine]

You can already try Fedora 43 KDE Plasma. 125% scaling works like a charm. Or as others say wait until Kubuntu 26.04 LTS.

[larrik]

I went from Linux (10 years) to Mac (4 years) to Windows (8 months) to back to Mac. (I have not upgraded to Tahoe, and didn't even realize it was so different until recently)

IMO, there's basically no problem Linux has that isn't worse in Windows (at the OS level). Especially once you get into laptops.

My final conclusion was that I hate computers.

[spockz]

I recently installed CachyOS and the text was crisp and accurate out of the box on my hidpi screen. So whatever settings and software combinations are required, cachyos got it right, with KDE and wayland at least. All apps I use have been rendered perfectly clear.

[shuntress]

Inconsequential minutiae concerning display resolution is absolutely NOT the thing keeping people away from Linux.

Its the "getting every config" right thing that is the problem.

[cherryteastain]

Not a problem on my Fedora Silverblue 43 machine with dual 4K 27" screens at 125% scaling. Zero blurry apps, including XWayland ones.

[piskov]

Boy, does that fractional scaling should look like shit on any vector graphics.

That’s why Apple used 4k on 22”, 5k on 27 and 6k on 32 to make it crispy always on 200%

[greenavocado]

You're supposed to use KDE with Xorg if you want things to just work. KDE with Wayland if you're adventurous.

Therefore newcomers should use Kubuntu or the likes of it

[6SixTy]

KWin/Xorg AFAIK has been on maintanence duty (i.e. fixes mostly come from XWayland) for >5 years now. KDE has expulsed the Xorg codebase of KWin into a seperate repo in preparation of a Wayland only future.

Even if KDE/Xorg is a stable experience is true now, it will not be true in the medium to short term. And a distro like Kubuntu might be 2 years out from merging a "perfect" KDE Plasma experience if it arrived right now.

[chocochunks]

MacOS doesn't handle HiDPI screens that well either. The most common and affordable high res monitors are 27" 4K monitors and those don't mesh well with the way macOS does HiDPI. You either have a perfect 2x but giant 1080p like display or a blurryish non-integer scale that's more usable.

And god forbid you still have low DPI monitor still!

[bsimpson]

Blows my minded that a 4k 27" monitor that was $500 a dozen years ago is still near top tier now.

5k has been surprisingly stagnant.

[shantara]

There were several promising 5K 27” MiniLED displays announced at CES a few days ago. People speculate that LG has produced the panel for the upcoming Apple Display refresh, but is also making it available for the other display manufacturers.

[SoftTalker]

At some point additional resolution is a dimishing return. The human eye has limits.

[robotresearcher]

5K 27” looks usefully better than 4K 27” to my middle aged eyes.

I’d prefer that to not be so, because 5K panels are so much more expensive. But in a side by side comparison it’s very obvious.

But the market has spoken: a quality 4K display is very good, certainly good enough, and the value for money is great.

I’m ok with spending more on a better display that I spend so much time with. The cost per use-hour is still very, very low.

[necovek]

Agreed. I tried 24k 4k screen as soon as they came out (required two DP cables to run at 60Hz at the time), and turning subpixel rendering off, I could see jagged edges on fonts from normal sitting position (I am shortsighted, but at -3.25 I always need correction anyway, which brings my eyesight to better than 20/20). At 27" or 32", DPI is even worse.

And MacOS has removed support for subpixel rendering because "retina", though I only use it when forced (work).

[necovek]

It's not just that: bandwidth needed to drive things above 4k or 5k is already over the limits of HDMI 2.0 (and 2.1 without all the extensions). DisplayPort is a bit better with 1.4 already having enough bandwidth for 8k30Hz or 4k at 120Hz or 8k60Hz with DSC.

When considering a single-cable solution like Thunderbolt or USB-C with DP altmode, if you are not going with TB5, you will either use all bandwidth for video with only USB2.0 HID interfaces, or halve the video bandwidth to keep 2 signal lanes for USB 3.x.

(I am currently trying to figure out how can I run my X1 Carbon gen 13 with my 8k TV from Linux without an eGPU, so deep in the trenches of color spaces, EDID tables and such as I only got it to put out 6k to the TV :/)

[intrasight]

We're approaching that point but are not there yet

[Saline9515]

You can adjust this in settings.

[chocochunks]

Adjust it to what? Making a 4K monitor look like 1440p (or a non-1080p or 4K desktop) ends up with a non-integer scale on macOS AFAIK. They also completely tore out subpixel font rendering for low DPI displays.

[Saline9515]

I use a 4k/27" display and it's crisp as it gets at 125%.

[necovek]

Perhaps try a 5k/27" at 150%, or look for visual acuity correction :)

FWIW, I could see jagged edges on 4k at 24" without subpixel rendering, 27" is worse. Yes, even 4k at 32" is passable with MacOS, but Linux looks better (to the point that 4k at 43" has comparable or slightly better text quality to 4k at 32" for a Mac).

I am trying to get a 55" 8k TV to work well with my setup, which might be a bit too big (but same width as the newly announced 6k 52" monitor by Dell), but it's the first next option after prohibitively expensive 32" options.

[mrweasel]

In my experience it's a little hit and miss with macOS. You need a monitor that is specifically listed as being supported by macOS. If not you get rather strange results. I had a Dell monitor that, under macOS only, would sometimes freak out and flicker if you had to many electron apps open.

In some sense it's reasonable that you need a supported monitor, it's just strange that Linux can support all these monitors, but macOS can't?

[NamlchakKhandro]

lmao not even osx handles this problem properly...

lmfao