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onlyfrUstr4t3d

Member

Registered: 2025-11-15

Posts: 6

The location of the scaling setting is terrible and unintuitive

I recently purchased (second-hand) a 4K 32" monitor (I might be replacing it for a 4K 27" one, but that's a different story).

Obviously, at 4K native resolution (1x scaling) everything is too small. So I wanted to set everything to 200% (I want to avoid fractional scaling). First I did the obvious thing and changed the 'Scale' setting in the Display settings window that popped up (upon connecting the monitor) to 2x. No, that made everything smaller. And blurry. So I tried changing it to 'Custom' and 0.5x and that made everything bigger (and looking it up confirmed that this is the way it's supposed to work), but blurry. Well, that didn't work (I didn't want it to be blurry).

So I've been struggling along till today with everything being small (fortunately it hasn't been long) and I decided to have a look in Appearance settings again (during my prior online searching, I came across someone somewhere saying something about the DPI setting in the Fonts section under Appearance, a setting I didn't want to touch because my issue isn't specifically about font scaling but user interface scaling in general).

Well, this time I decided to look in the 'Settings' tab of Appearance. Lo and behold, there's an option called Window Scaling (with a drop-down for 1x and 2x). How crazy! Changing this did exactly what I wanted, it made everything bigger without blurriness, and the direction of the numbers worked exactly as expected (i.e. 2x made everything bigger, not smaller). Why is this hidden away here? Why is it not what the 'Scale' setting in the Display window does? Why would anyone want scaling with blurriness?

This is the final nail in the coffin for xubuntu for me and has fully confirmed my planned switchover to mainstream Ubuntu.

Last edited by onlyfrUstr4t3d (2025-11-15 12:06:21)

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 12,421

Re: The location of the scaling setting is terrible and unintuitive

The inconsistency has been fixed. See: https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-sett … equests/74. What version of Xfce are you running?

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onlyfrUstr4t3d

Member

Registered: 2025-11-15

Posts: 6

Re: The location of the scaling setting is terrible and unintuitive

What version of Xfce are you running?

Whatever Xfce version is on the current LTS version of Xubuntu... As I understand it, this is Xfce 4.18.

The inconsistency has been fixed. See: https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-sett … equests/74.

But has the blurriness been fixed?

And, secondly, why is there a second option called Window Scaling?

I don't know why it's even called Window Scaling, since it's to scale the whole user interface, not just the windows, nor why there's two separate settings for this kind of scaling. As stated, one would have thought that the 'Scale' setting under Display would have scaled without blurriness, and that would have been the be-all and end-all.

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 12,421

Re: The location of the scaling setting is terrible and unintuitive

The inconsistency has been fixed. See: https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-sett … equests/74.

But has the blurriness been fixed?

Yes, in 4.20 (see: https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-sett … issues/400).

And, secondly, why is there a second option called Window Scaling?

In the Appearance dialog, the scaling applies to GTK3 widgets and fonts. In the display settings, the scaling is xrandr/wayland based (depending on compositor) for full display scaling.

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onlyfrUstr4t3d

Member

Registered: 2025-11-15

Posts: 6

Re: The location of the scaling setting is terrible and unintuitive

Yes, in 4.20 (see: https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-sett … issues/400).

Thanks. But it wasn't just blurry icons, it was blurry everything. And it was blurry at <1 too...

In the Appearance dialog, the scaling applies to GTK3 widgets and fonts. In the display settings, the scaling is xrandr/wayland based (depending on compositor) for full display scaling.

But Window Scaling (under Appearance) scaled everything...

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 12,421

Re: The location of the scaling setting is terrible and unintuitive

For GTK apps, the effect is the same. But for non-GTK apps, you will notice that the Display scale scales everything, whereas the Appearance Window scale only scales GTK elements.

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onlyfrUstr4t3d

Member

Registered: 2025-11-15

Posts: 6

Re: The location of the scaling setting is terrible and unintuitive

Ah, I guess that's why KeePassXC isn't scaled. Still, better than nothing, and better than things being blurry.