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0 pointsEnPissant1mo ago0 comments

I was a Mate user for ages. It's great. Unfortunately, the lack of development is starting to show. For example, no fractional scaling for 4k monitors.

I've configured KDE Plasma to look almost identical to Mate (the defaults are similar to Windows, nice, but I prefer the Mate layout):

- top panel / bottom panel

- desktop switcher bottom right

- task bar on bottom

- desktop button bottom left

- clock top right

- app indicators top right

- app icon launchers on top bar

- app menu top left

It's not just layout, either. Gnome can be configured to do much of this, but it just feels terrible. Task bars can't be dragged to re-order. Desktop switchers just have numbers instead of contents. Animations are slow and annoying. Etc. Etc.

0 comments

17186274401mo ago

> For example, no fractional scaling for 4k monitors.

I don't have a 4K monitor, but what does `xrandr --output HDMI1 --scale 0.8x0.8` do? I have a 1024x768 monitor and do to all the useless whitespace in modern programs, I scale into the opposite direction.

But I agree Gnome lost the plot completely, and sadly Gtk too. Which is a pity, because I prefer GTK+ to Qt, but they deprecated so much useful Widgets and the alternative given is 'just don't do that'.

EnPissantOP1mo ago

You can use xrandr to scale the desktop, but it's not the same thing.

You can render at 2x in Mate, and then scale it down slightly (ie 1.25x1.25) with xrandr, but taking a large image and scaling it down using a cubic filter won't look as sharp as real fractional scaling.

The command you gave is upscaling, which will be worse than 2x + downscaling.

Real fractional scaling scales the sizes of elements before rendering. This results in the sharpest image and there is no resizing/filtering in the loop.

17186274401mo ago

Then I don't understand how this actually works. Doesn't this require support by the underlying UI kit? Because after the UI kit, there will already be pixels and scaling that will always be blury.

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0 pointsEnPissant1mo ago0 comments

I was a Mate user for ages. It's great. Unfortunately, the lack of development is starting to show. For example, no fractional scaling for 4k monitors.

I've configured KDE Plasma to look almost identical to Mate (the defaults are similar to Windows, nice, but I prefer the Mate layout):

- top panel / bottom panel

- desktop switcher bottom right

- task bar on bottom

- desktop button bottom left

- clock top right

- app indicators top right

- app icon launchers on top bar

- app menu top left

0 comments

17186274401mo ago

> For example, no fractional scaling for 4k monitors.

EnPissantOP1mo ago

You can use xrandr to scale the desktop, but it's not the same thing.

The command you gave is upscaling, which will be worse than 2x + downscaling.

Real fractional scaling scales the sizes of elements before rendering. This results in the sharpest image and there is no resizing/filtering in the loop.

17186274401mo ago

Then I don't understand how this actually works. Doesn't this require support by the underlying UI kit? Because after the UI kit, there will already be pixels and scaling that will always be blury.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse