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Linux GUIs and scaling/font size

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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:

--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on March 21, 2023, 08:41:13 pm ---So, wondering why these "huge" GUIs on Linux are the default. What are your thoughts?

--- End quote ---
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   :o

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:

--- Quote from: shapirus on March 21, 2023, 09:05:21 pm ---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?


--- End quote ---

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. ;D

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