4K and Default Scaling Options

AmsterDan

Been using Solus Budgie for about a year now and I'm really enjoying it. If there's one point I have for feedback however, it is regarding 4K monitors and the default scaling options in Solus Budgie; currenlty being 100%, 200%, 300% and 400%. It is my personal observation (which is completely different from one user to another but probably resonates with many) that the display resolution set to 4K (3840 x 2160) gives me everything my 4K monitor can offer, but I can't say it produces the best font size at 100% scale for which I'd scale to the next possible and default option of 200%. This however, is too much and I lose screen real estate.

My alternative choice is to set the resolution to 2K, live with slightly blurred screen but at least everything at 100% scale appears to be perfectly sized.

I am oblivious to the use of 300% and 400% scaling by others, but won't it make sense to have default scaling options of 125%, 150% and 175% added for those with 4K monitors?

Apologies in advance for mentioning something which possibly has a clear reason as to why this is not possible, but as a less 'IT technical' user I do wonder.

Harvey

My understanding is as follows. Budgie uses magpie as its window manager / compositor which is a fork of mutter which does not support fractional scaling on X11, only supporting it on Wayland sessions. Budgie currently does not support Wayland at all (They are working on it).

So it would not appear to be possible currently with Budgie.

Solarmass

For me 100% scaling is unusable, I have to use 200% and it's okay. I can set Budgie panel size smaller. I haven't noticed problem with fonts, they are not too big, I think I am using default size.

AmsterDan

Thanks Harvey, that explains it clearly. I can take it on my own from here to follow the development surrounding Budgie's support for Wayland. It does give rise to another question though. Solus Budgie users are currently running (if updated to the latest and (greatest)) the X11 window system. If support comes available for Wayland, would you have some idea as to how one could change from Budgie 'X11' to Budgie 'Wayland' in Solus? Or would it be as simple as awaiting the Solus update containing all the changes in Budgie that allows for fractional scaling? I would almost assume the latter as Solus is a rolling release distro?

Harvey

AmsterDan

It would be as simple as selecting a Wayland session on the login screen. This is how it works on Plasma & Gnome editions.

This assumes when they add Wayland support that they continue to support X11, one day it may just login to a Wayland session without you realising if they decided to drop X11 entirely. I do not follow Budgies plans closely so I am not sure what they will do but either way it will be easy for users to switch to Wayland when available.

Adding Wayland support is a big undertaking so it will be some way off yet.

For users who may be unaware Budgie is no longer a in house Solus project it stands on its own now and has done so for 2 years? I think. While we will continue mentioning such massive changes as adding Wayland support in our ISO release blog posts and sync notes, users can follow Budgie happenings from its own blog https://buddiesofbudgie.org/blog and issue tracker https://github.com/BuddiesOfBudgie/budgie-desktop/issues

AmsterDan

Thank you kindly. That clears up a lot and will follow Budgie's development within their own house more in terms of Wayland support. As I use Solus (and therefore a Linux Desktop distro in general) longer as I go, these elaborate replies truly help in understanding the structure of these systems better. Perhaps in the most surface of levels, and yet.

Thanks again.