4K Monitor and XFCE -- need a Backport? [Solved]

[larry77]

Dear All,
I run debian stable on my box.
I have recently got a 4k monitor and I am trying to twist the XFCE settings to make the most out of it.
I found this online resource

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI#Xfce

and it did improve my desktop experience, but I discovered that on the XFCE shipped with Debian stable I do not have the window scaling (and I presume it is what I would need to that e.g. emacs does not look shrink too much with an 80 character width).
Is there any way to add this functionality to XFCE 4.12?
I did not see any backported version of and I am a bit unsure about how to proceed.
Any suggestion is welcome!

[CwF]

Try tweaking Appearance> Fonts> custom DPI to >192

[sunrat]

I don't use Xfce although I used it recently in MX Linux. IIRC fractional scaling was introduced in v4.14. For my 43" 4K monitor I just set fonts to 160 and used the Default-xhdpi theme; for a small (<27") 4K screen that may not be sufficient though. It is possible to use xrandr to set fractional scaling.
I now use KDE Plasma 5 which has good fractional scaling built in.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

The GNOME desktop in buster offers integer scaling and bullseye now has fractional scaling for that desktop as an experimental feature. The ArchWiki page to which you have linked offers several other techniques for adapting desktops to a HiDPI display, some of which can be applied to Xfce.

[CwF]

Bullseye's XFCE 4.16 is working well for me. It has a scaling setting in Appearance>Settings of 1x or 2x. Personally, 1X with the custom dpi works. Also there is scaler in Display settings, 1x 1.5,2.0 and custom. I assume this may allow per display fractional scaling I haven't tried yet.

[larry77]

Bullseye's XFCE 4.16 is working well for me. It has a scaling setting in Appearance>Settings of 1x or 2x. Personally, 1X with the custom dpi works. Also there is scaler in Display settings, 1x 1.5,2.0 and custom. I assume this may allow per display fractional scaling I haven't tried yet.

Hi,
Unfortunately I am still on XFCE 4.12. Does the window scaler do what it say i.e. it just magnifies every application?
I also get reasonable results with 160 dpi, but I wonder if I could do better. Well, worse comes to worse the new release is at most a few months away.

[CwF]

it just magnifies every application?

Yes, seems unnecessary. DPI seems a simple adjustment. I suppose when we mix multiple monitors with very different resolutions but similar size, this might help. I guess at 2X one could leave everything default with a standard theme.

[larry77]

Thanks for all the info!
In the end of the day, I went back to my old LXDE.
Creating an .Xresources files with only one line

Code: Select all

Xft.dpi: 160


was everything I needed.
BTW, The 4K is amazing and I do feel the difference even when just writing code.