Linux GUIs and scaling/font size

[SiliconWizard]

Just something I've been wondering for a pretty long time now.
One thing that strikes you visually when looking at a typical Linux desktop GUI compared to Windows is how big default fonts and GUI elements in general are.
So that a lot less fits on a given display, and it tends to make it all look "toyish" - even when other aspects of the GUI are actually more polished than on Windows.

That's at least true with Gnome, KDE, XFCE and all Gnome descendents like Mate and Cinammon (more "severe" in Gnome and GTK-based stuff in general, but still the case with default KDE Plasma.)

Sure it can be more or less tweaked to some degree, although I've found font rendering on Linux (typically Freetype) to look less sharp, especially for small fonts, than on Windows. (Yes this is probably a controversial topic, some people hate Cleartype, but after a long time of comparing Cleartype to Freetype, I still think Cleartype looks a bit better and sharper.)

So, wondering why these "huge" GUIs on Linux are the default. What are your thoughts?
And, is this "Cleartype vs. Freetype" flamewar material, do some of you agree with me, or do you all disagree?

[shapirus]

So, wondering why these "huge" GUIs on Linux are the default. What are your thoughts?

It sucks big time. It seems to be a general trend nowadays to add ridiculous padding to everything and make controls bloated. Maybe it's to make the users of tablets and other touch-based interfaces happy, but hey, I use a normal desktop computer, why force this nonsense on me?

Fortunately, we have a choice. There's a number of WMs/DEs available, some of which are configurable to make them usable, some aren't.

GNOME, for instance, isn't. GNOME UI is fundamentally broken beyond any chance to be fixed, both ideologically and technically. It won't change until its developers and maintainers are replaced by sane people and all code is rewritten from scratch.

KDE, on the other hand, is. It can be configured for a quite dense UI arrangement even out of the box, and somewhat further with things such as the Klassy window decorations plugin which I recommend.

And then we have tiling WMs, which some consider to be the ultimate solution.

You mentioned Windows. I have to say, it suffers from the same UI-bloating and touchscreen-targeting trend. Just compare the classic looks of NT4 with the new look arrived with XP (which still allowed to switch to Classic though) and everything afterwards.

[JohanH]

I have a 34" 3440x1440 ultra wide screen display and the problem is rather the opposite. GUI is rather small. I'm using Gnome. You can scale 200% and 300%, but I guess 200% is only good with a 4k display. But in the Gnome Tweak Tool, I have the font scaling factor set to 1.15, because this display is about 112 dpi (and traditional font scale 1.0 is based on 96 dpi displays). This helps somewhat, otherwise fonts are too small. In the web browser I typically have 120% zoom as default for all web pages, because most web pages assume smaller displays and become way too small to read. Eevblog requires special treatment and is currently on 133%, maybe you are supposed to use your soldering microscope to read it   

So this depends a lot on the display size and resolution that you have (dpi). Maybe try changing the font scaling?

There is fractional scaling coming to Gnome and Wayland (it's been developed for years), but I have no idea when it becomes usable.

In the past fonts were worse, so I changed and tweaked things, but nowadays default fonts are so good so I don't bother with it.

[JohanH]

It sucks big time. It seems to be a general trend nowadays to add ridiculous padding to everything and make controls bloated. Maybe it's to make the users of tablets and other touch-based interfaces happy, but hey, I use a normal desktop computer, why force this nonsense on me?

I've been using Fedora Gnome for many years on different devices and displays, from small netbooks to this 34" screen. Occasionally tried out other distros and window managers. I even had the Purism Librem 5 phone for a while (but sold it) that had Gnome on it. I have no complaints.

[SiliconWizard]

Sure will depend on your display DPI. Does that mean that everything is designed for high-DPI displays?
That could be true for the past few years, but this big scale GUIs on Linux have been there for a long time. A good 20 years. So it's not all related to targetting high-DPI displays, even though the incentive to make it default these days could make some sense. I guess.

But at 100% scaling on Full HD displays, Gnome sure looks ridiculously big.
Windows has other flaws for sure, but at least up to Win 10, compare your desktop on a Full HD display with Gnome or even KDE (unless you tweaked that), it sure looks pretty big on Linux compared to Windows. Win 11 has borrowed stuff from Gnome and macOS, and added its own bad taste, so I'll exclude Win 11.

But default Gnome on a Full HD monitor almost looks like you are on a 1024x768 resolution in terms of screen real estate, and default KDE is a bit, but barely better in that regard.

I guess we should all switch to 8K displays.

[shapirus]

I have a 34" 3440x1440 ultra wide screen display and the problem is rather the opposite. GUI is rather small. I'm using Gnome. You can scale 200% and 300%, but I guess 200% is only good with a 4k display.

HiDPI is somewhat the opposite matter, yes. Linux has been lacking in supporting it properly for many years, but I think it's improved now. I had a laptop with a 3200x1800 14" screen and it was quite a bit of a pain, but even that could be made quite usable. I however replaced it with a proper 1920x1080 14" one and said "never again" to myself.

Good DE must provide ways of configuring the UI appropriately.

p.s. there is usually a setting somewhere in the "display" section of the DE configuration that allows to set the screen DPI density. It is usually configured automatically, but sometimes needs manual adjustment. It can solve some of these issues.

[shapirus]

I've been using Fedora Gnome for many years on different devices and displays, from small netbooks to this 34" screen. Occasionally tried out other distros and window managers. I even had the Purism Librem 5 phone for a while (but sold it) that had Gnome on it. I have no complaints.

That's why GNOME still exists. Many people find it usable out of the box (or just don't care, or don't know that there can be an alternative). Those who don't like it, don't have any way of configuring it for their needs, so GNOME isn't even an option for them.

[ve7xen]

Really I've only really found this obnoxious in older desktops and Gnome. The current Plasma default Breeze theme looks good and isn't overly sparse, IMO. Maybe dropdowns and tabs could be a little shorter, and it's a little more padded than Classic Windows, but it's not crazy. The Modern Windows style (whatever they call it) is one of the most obnoxious I have seen for this, though I haven't subjected myself to actually using it.

[SiliconWizard]

Well IMO, latest Plasma versions are actually fine and usable for the most part. It's also very customizable. Now with default options, some things are still rather big.
For instance, take a default install, open a Dolphin instance and open a directory in list mode. Each row is rather large and there is a significant gap between rows. So for a given window size, the number of listed items that fit is relatively small.

While, again IMO, Gnome has gotten worse than it was, at least with default settings. I don't doubt some people like it though.

As to font rendering, I still find it not quite perfect, even though it's obviously less noticeable with a high DPI display.
macOS has better font rendering IMO.

[shapirus]

Well IMO, latest Plasma versions are actually fine and usable for the most part.

Just how many years did it take its developers to achieve this state after they screwed everything up releasing the terrible KDE5 after KDE4, which by that time had just reached a usable state after the years being terrible after it was released after KDE3?

At the time of its release, KDE4 was so much of a disaster that some people had to fork the latest source code of KDE3, which since became known as Trinity DE.

[DiTBho]

X11 + iwm + custom vect-fonts = problem solved

[SiliconWizard]

The point of this thread is not to get "solutions", as there are myriads of ways to customize that, but really a "why" question.

Why are the most common GUIs so "big" by default, unless you are on at a least a 4K display? Default up to FullHD, as I said, is way too big, at least IMO and compared to other OSs.

So, I wonder why that is, as it's nothing new as I said. It's not just because most active Linux devs would have large high-DPI screens, as OTOH defaults usually do not work that well with high-DPI displays either. Maybe most of them have poor eyesight? I dunno.
Sure the fact that Gnome has migrated to a model heavily targeted at touchscreen mobile devices is one reason (even though I doubt that many users of tablets use Gnome... )
But it tended to be like that even before mobile devices were a thing.

Maybe it has something to do with font rendering, precisely - as small antialiased fonts tend not to render very sharply on Linux compared to Windows or macOS, so they use larger defaults.
It indeed looks like this "big UI" trend started when antialiased graphics on Linux became the norm. I think there are ways to improve font rendering, but it's not quite great yet... just IMHO. YMMV.

And don't tell me to switch to non-antialiased fonts, I really don't like that. Some do, to each their own.

[abeyer]

I kind of wonder if it's still also some left overs of the huge desktop tweaking scene that kind of dominated desktop linux through the early-mid aughts when fast gpu driven compositors came on the scene and the attending visual effects were all the rage.

[nctnico]

The point of this thread is not to get "solutions", as there are myriads of ways to customize that, but really a "why" question.

Why are the most common GUIs so "big" by default, unless you are on at a least a 4K display? Default up to FullHD, as I said, is way too big, at least IMO and compared to other OSs.

So, I wonder why that is, as it's nothing new as I said. It's not just because most active Linux devs would have large high-DPI screens, as OTOH defaults usually do not work that well with high-DPI displays either. Maybe most of them have poor eyesight? I dunno.
Sure the fact that Gnome has migrated to a model heavily targeted at touchscreen mobile devices is one reason (even though I doubt that many users of tablets use Gnome... )
But it tended to be like that even before mobile devices were a thing.

Maybe it has something to do with font rendering, precisely - as small antialiased fonts tend not to render very sharply on Linux compared to Windows or macOS, so they use larger defaults.
It indeed looks like this "big UI" trend started when antialiased graphics on Linux became the norm. I think there are ways to improve font rendering, but it's not quite great yet... just IMHO. YMMV.

IMHO you are reading too much into it. More likely it is a choice from a graphical designer following the hype of the day. Personally I'd really like to have a border around a window instead of a stupid shadow effect because it is much easier to resize a window. Probably not important for people that run all applications full screen but I typically don't do that because for me it is easier to switch between applications if there is a piece visible so I can choose the right one (out of several instances).

And don't tell me to switch to non-antialiased fonts, I really don't like that. Some do, to each their own.

I can't work with anti-aliased fonts due to astigmatism (instant headache) so I'm very happy with Linux  being able to still use non-anti aliased fonts

[shapirus]

Personally I'd really like to have a border around a window instead of a stupid shadow effect because it is much easier to resize a window.

Meet KDE: you have your window resize handles for any thickness of the border, even down to zero, if you want to. You can also choose if you want those handles for maximized windows.

There's also the "More actions -> Resize" action in the window menu if for whatever reason the handles don't work.

And then, for the windows whose designers have forced the "non-resizeable" property, KDE can override this and allow their resizing. It also allows to set many customized properties based on the window/application name/class/role, such as size, position, focus stealing prevention level, window decoration theme (e.g. to set different titlebar colors for chosen apps), virtual desktop, activity etc.

[madires]

So, wondering why these "huge" GUIs on Linux are the default. What are your thoughts?

You should ask that the developers of those desktop environments. I'm using an old-fashioned windows manager which allows me to configure things the way I like.

And, is this "Cleartype vs. Freetype" flamewar material, do some of you agree with me, or do you all disagree?

The font business isn't that simple. If you're using a non-scalable font in a specific size not natively available you can end up with a nasty looking disaster. And there are also differences in quality between font packages.

[MrMobodies]

You should ask that the developers of those desktop environments. I'm using an old-fashioned windows manager which allows me to configure things the way I like.

I remembered in 2011 when this left side panel appeared, and an "activities" thing appeared over it later on and I used the removal instructions to rid of it. I think it was called Unity. It was in the way and bloated my experience but once gone with a few customizations I found it was usable but now I see it is still see that left side panel there with more decorations when I last had a look at Ubuntu with Gnome which had everything imaginable that annoyed me including some dimming annoys which was a great put off oh yes and another thing that p*ssed me off was dimming inactive windows.

I might be doing some work with different folders open and they obscure it;
What do they think I am, STUPID and can only focus on one thing at a time that I need everything else hidden.

Like with many things it wasn't a problem before until they added things that are not easy to turn off.
That was the final nail in the coffin.

Someone on eevblog IRC mentioned to me about Plasma in KDE two years ago and a couple of hours of turning off the decorations and it was lovely to use after that.

[SiliconWizard]

KDE Plasma looks like the most feature-packed and most customizable at the same time, at the moment. Actually the amount of features in 5.27 surpasses any other DE in existence that I know of, macOS and Windows included, even by far.

If you want to make your own themes, it can be a bit involved and the documentation isn't that great, but you can virtually achieve any look you want.

So KDE would be my pick until something better comes up.

[MrMobodies]

Just had a look at some stuff and some asked for it:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1244802/how-do-i-dim-inactive-windows

How do I dim inactive windows
To Do Asked 2 years, 9 months ago Viewed 2k times
Back in the Unity days, there was a Compiz setting where you could force inactive windows to dim. I frequently work with two monitors and multiple windows open and it regularly happens that I start typing in the wrong window.

I already tried changing the colour of the titlebar, but it doesn't seem to help me much.

Is there a way to dim inactive windows while letting them remain legible?

I'm using Gnome as my Desktop Environment.

A year later it got implemented with no way to disable it:
https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru/issues/2788

Add an option to disable dimming of inactive windows #2788
Closed
jay opened this issue on Apr 13, 2021 · 1 comment
jay commented on Apr 13, 2021 •
Expected Behavior

There should be an option to disable dimming of inactive windows

Actual Behavior

Inactive window is dimmed

Steps to Reproduce the Problem

Switch to window 1
Switch to window 2
Observe window 1, now inactive, has dimmed
System information

GNOME Shell 3.36.7
Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS

Yaru version

Package: yaru-theme-gnome-shell
Version: 20.04.10.1

Ref: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1146348/disable-inactive-window-dimming

Feichtmeier commented on Apr 13, 2021 •
*** Do you mean the :backdrop dimming?
This is out (OUR) gtk styling, which comes from upstream gnome.
We control the backdrop colors in _colors.scss and changed them a little bit from upstream to use rather transparentized white than gray color in the dark theme
* Apart from this change we did not change much and follow upstream with the backdrop look.
I am personally very happy with it. ** We discussed this topic a lot
#212

https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru/issues?q=is%3Aissue+backdrop+is%3Aclosed
https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru/pulls?q=is%3Apr+backdrop+is%3Aclosed

If you only talk about a toggle, this is not something we can provide from (s)css, and sounds like a gsetting that does not exist

So in both cases this is either a "won't fix" because we are happy  with the design or a "can't fix" :)

But NOT the users who are affected by this and don't want this and may not be happy.

So THEY (the developers) are very happy to force/subject the user to dimming parts of their screen with no option to turn it off .

* That little  change can mean a lot to some people and put them off due to the interference and distraction it can cause as it did to me but that was amongst few things. I only tried it about about 30 minutes and thought what a pile of shit and not worth cleaning up.

** With whom I wonder, the upstream developers, inbetween themselves or did they just refused outright when a complaint was made.

I wonder how would they feel if parts of their screens were constantly dimmed in a way that was out of their control?

*** It WASN'T a problem before why can't they provide an option for this "optional thing" or simply leave it alone or is that that developer's job (Feichtmeier) hinges on doing crap like this and forcing their user base to see it.

https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru/issues/212

Separation between active and passive (backdrop) windows is very harsh #212

I don't find it harsh I find a nuisance/interference and incredible annoying where I couldn't use it like that.

They do stuff and all talk talk talk about it's effects without the providing the most basic simple principle in place that, as an effect or animation/addon/not necessary where it could impact on user experience there should be an option to turn it off.

When I do work for people I try to do it in the way where it is flexible with adjustments so they can be comfortable. I don't dictate my feelings onto them that they have to use it in a certain way and force them see things in a certain way where it may not provide any benefit or maybe even detrimental to their experience.

Dear upstream and downstream developers, what part of "leave it alone" don't you understand?
Not all of us wanted decorations and animations or brightness/contrast meddling forced upon us.
Also think of those who maybe dyslexic or maybe sensitivity to light.

[Karel]

I experienced a similar problem with a software program I wrote and still maintain.
It uses Qt for the gui and runs on Linux and windows.
Despite the fact that Qt is doing a reasonable job (In respect to other graphical toolkits), it cannot avoid
that on some monitors with very high or very low dpi, the size of dialogs & windows become too big or too small
and text strings get cut.
The way I deal with it in my software is to take a "reference" string of text like
"0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ" to get an average length in pixels
for that string using the actual truetype font at runtime. The lenght of that string measured in pixels is used to correct
the initial and/or minimum size of dialogs, windows, widgets and other objects. This way my program behaves nice
on all kinds of monitors and setups. In addition, if the user changes the fontsize, the program's dialogs and windows
scale in the same degree. No need to interpolate and no risk that things get fuzzy.

Now, if only all the other programmers would do the same with their software...

[DiTBho]

making and using software has become frustrating nowadays.
OpenSource and Microsoft have become frustrating nowadays.

[Karel]

making and using software has become frustrating nowadays.
OpenSource and Microsoft have become frustrating nowadays.

In my experience, writing your own software on Linux has become easier & better during the years.

[DiTBho]

In my experience, writing your own software on Linux has become easier & better during the years.

In my experience, exactly the opposite.