Please Cater for UHD Laptops

[NoWorries]

Currently there are UHD Laptops available and the best 5 are listed here:

https://bestlaptopsworld.com/best-4k-laptops/

I have the HP Spectre x360 15-ch004ng and when I installed Kubuntu on it, I was faced with a very tiny login screen and desktop. To solve the login screen size, I entered the following:

cd /usr/share/sddm/scripts
sudo nano Xsetup
add line /usr/bin/xrandr -output HDMI -1-1 --off
xrandr --output  eDP-1 --dpi 220 --output DP-1 --auto

The display names are found by entering "xrandr".

This solved logging in, however the display icons were tiny. To fix this I used System Settings > Display and Monitor >Scale Display. I changed the scale to 1.5. The main problem with scaling is that it applies to both displays and cannot be set to individual displays.

I also have Windows 10 on this Laptop and it behaves normally and does not give the "tiny" images I encountered with Kubuntu.

I would expect that display size and resolution should be available and therefore this can be taken care of automatically on installation and not require a web search to get the tiny login and tiny images back to normal.

[woodsmoke]

Hi
yep, I can "feel" for ya! I ran into it, surprisingly, on my Sony Vaio a looooonnnnnngggg time ago! And also did kind of the same workarounds as you.

Fortunately the Vaio was..."kind of" toward the "end" of the "beginning" and within a relatively short time an update fixed the situation.

woody

[oshunluvr]

Re. the icons, what's the DPI settings? That has an effect on icon size I believe.

EDIT : nevermind, I see you set it at 220, why not set it at 110 and see how that looks? That's what I use on my 3840x1600 monitor.

[NoWorries]

Re. the icons, what's the DPI settings? That has an effect on icon size I believe.

EDIT : nevermind, I see you set it at 220, why not set it at 110 and see how that looks? That's what I use on my 3840x1600 monitor.

The 220 was to make the look of Login Screen more like "Normal". My DPI settings were 160 and changing that to 110 made it a little small on a 15" Laptop screen.

The point I was endeavouring to make is that if Kubuntu and other Linux flavours are to make it "User Friendly", I should not have to make obscure changes to make the desktop "useable" after a first installation on a system with a UHD screen.

[oshunluvr]

The point I was endeavouring to make is that if Kubuntu and other Linux flavours are to make it "User Friendly", I should not have to make obscure changes to make the desktop "useable" after a first installation on a system with a UHD screen.

Fair enough and I totally agree, and while we're at it, let's fix Kscreen and docking for laptops.

However, my point is this isn't the place to lodge complaints or bug reports because it's not an official forum for that. It's a user forum that typically is a great place to come and ask questions or get help for a problem. Not all solutions are what we expect or are perfect. If you feel this is a bug, you should definitely go and report it as a bug.

Back to the issue; now that you've given a bit more info, it seems maybe you've had to exchange a reasonably sized log-in screen for reasonably sized desktop icons. What about going to a DPI that works for the desktop then exploring resolution options for log in? It may not be possible to have more than one DPI but login is handled by sddm and can easily be set for a different resolution. Sure, it might not be as sharp looking as it could be but it's just the log in screen.

BTW, I'm probably going to buy an HP Spectre x360 later this year so I'm very interested in any issues you encounter.

[NoWorries]

Fair enough and I totally agree, and while we're at it, let's fix Kscreen and docking for laptops.

However, my point is this isn't the place to lodge complaints or bug reports because it's not an official forum for that. It's a user forum that typically is a great place to come and ask questions or get help for a problem. Not all solutions are what we expect or are perfect. If you feel this is a bug, you should definitely go and report it as a bug.

I don't consider this a bug like the one I have encountered with LibreOffice Presentation with inserted videos and I have added to a bug report on this matter - of course nothing is being done to fix this problem. I looked on the problems that I encountered as being the result of the developers not considering UHD displays in the development of the desktop presentation. I thought that Kubuntu User Testimonies was the place I could use for reporting user experience.

Back to the issue; now that you've given a bit more info, it seems maybe you've had to exchange a reasonably sized log-in screen for reasonably sized desktop icons. What about going to a DPI that works for the desktop then exploring resolution options for log in? It may not be possible to have more than one DPI but login is handled by sddm and can easily be set for a different resolution. Sure, it might not be as sharp looking as it could be but it's just the log in screen.

In my search for locating how to use sddm to make a larger login screen, I found the approach that I used at: https://github.com/sddm/sddm/issues/894

I hope that when you get your Laptop with a UHD screen that the desktop automatically caters for the high resolution.

[claydoh]

I don't consider this a bug like the one I have encountered with LibreOffice Presentation with inserted videos and I have added to a bug report on this matter - of course nothing is being done to fix this problem. I looked on the problems that I encountered as being the result of the developers not considering UHD displays in the development of the desktop presentation. I thought that Kubuntu User Testimonies was the place I could use for reporting user experience.
.

The problem is that virtually no one from KDE or Ubuntu (or even Kubuntu for the most part) do not visit this website. Kubuntu has pretty much zero involvement with how the Linux drivers and xorg/wayland handles hidpi resolutions. KDE is working on it continually, I believe. I am sure Ubuntu are as well. Unity was supposed to be fairly good with it, not sure how they are coming along with getting Gnome there.

My own experience is to blame Nvidia
my 40 inch 4k tv using Nvidia 1050 , the screen was scaled way too small, but moving to a AMD rx560 it was much less so. Not perfect but reasonable to start with. Hooking my Intel laptop to the TV and outputting 4k from there I don't recall any issue with scale there (the laptop screen itself is only 1080)

I wonder if some of the problems stem from how well (or not) screens keep to whatever standard is used report their capabilities, plus blaming Nvidia

[NoWorries]

I don't have an Nvidia graphics driver but a AMD Radeon RX Vega M GL / 870 as well as an Intel HD Graphics 630 card. The latter is being used by my system as I do not yet have the drivers for the AMD card. So I do not think my problems are related to the video cards.

[woodsmoke]

well I had a long post but I will defer to Claydoh.
But...Claydoh is one of "the old guard"... unfortunately, many such as he...have left these hallowed halls...

and I defer because... Clay...ONE OF THE OLD GUARD...doh...knows what he is doing...

YOU...and I...are lucky that he has "stuck around" for so long...



and woodisadoofonmanythingssmoke

[sithlord48]

Been running HIDPI for some time and its pretty simple todo with KDE. We can do this two ways

Set the DPI (use your screens physical DPI)
1. set your dpi in sddm.conf add something like to the file /etc/sddm.conf

[X11]
ServerArguments=-dpi DPI

2. once logged in goto system settings -> font ->force dpi match the DPI used for sddm.
3. System settings -> icons and bump the sizes up by one for the smaller sections.
4. log out and back in.

Use scaling
1. set Sddm as above.
2. system settings-> display -> scale display

[NoWorries]

Been running HIDPI for some time and its pretty simple todo with KDE. We can do this two ways

Set the DPI (use your screens physical DPI)
1. set your dpi in sddm.conf add something like to the file /etc/sddm.conf

[X11]
ServerArguments=-dpi DPI

Thanks for your response, however I do not have sddm.conf anywhere on my system. I do have a directory /etc/sddm which contains the file Xsession.

[claydoh]

Thanks for your response, however I do not have sddm.conf anywhere on my system. I do have a directory /etc/sddm which contains the file Xsession.

You don't need to have one but you can create one with just the settings you need. This can also be done in a couple of other locations.

See:
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/...dm.conf.5.html

Sent from my LG-H931 using Tapatalk

[oshunluvr]

If you use sddm to generate an example config, this is what you get:

[FONT=monospace][COLOR=#000000][Autologin][/COLOR]
# Whether sddm should automatically log back into sessions when they exit
Relogin=false

# Name of session file for autologin session (if empty try last logged in)
Session=

# Username for autologin session
User=


[General]
# Halt command
HaltCommand=/bin/systemctl poweroff

# Input method module
InputMethod=qtvirtualkeyboard

# Initial NumLock state. Can be on, off or none.
# If property is set to none, numlock won't be changed
# NOTE: Currently ignored if autologin is enabled.
Numlock=none

# Reboot command
RebootCommand=/bin/systemctl reboot


[Theme]
# Current theme name
Current=breeze

# Cursor theme used in the greeter
CursorTheme=

# Number of users to use as threshold
# above which avatars are disabled
# unless explicitly enabled with EnableAvatars
DisableAvatarsThreshold=7

# Enable display of custom user avatars
EnableAvatars=true

# Global directory for user avatars
# The files should be named <username>.face.icon
FacesDir=/usr/share/sddm/faces

# Theme directory path
ThemeDir=/usr/share/sddm/themes


[Users]
# Default $PATH for logged in users
DefaultPath=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin

# Comma-separated list of shells.
# Users with these shells as their default won't be listed
HideShells=

# Comma-separated list of users that should not be listed
HideUsers=

# Maximum user id for displayed users
MaximumUid=60000

# Minimum user id for displayed users
MinimumUid=1000

# Remember the session of the last successfully logged in user
RememberLastSession=true

# Remember the last successfully logged in user
RememberLastUser=true

# When logging in as the same user twice, restore the original session, rather than create a new one
ReuseSession=false


[Wayland]
# Enable Qt's automatic high-DPI scaling
EnableHiDPI=false

# Path to a script to execute when starting the desktop session
SessionCommand=/usr/share/sddm/scripts/wayland-session

# Directory containing available Wayland sessions
SessionDir=/usr/share/wayland-sessions

# Path to the user session log file
SessionLogFile=.local/share/sddm/wayland-session.log


[X11]
# Path to a script to execute when starting the display server
DisplayCommand=/usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup

# Path to a script to execute when stopping the display server
DisplayStopCommand=/usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xstop

# Enable Qt's automatic high-DPI scaling
EnableHiDPI=false

# The lowest virtual terminal number that will be used.
MinimumVT=1

# Arguments passed to the X server invocation
ServerArguments=-nolisten tcp

# Path to X server binary
ServerPath=/usr/bin/X

# Path to a script to execute when starting the desktop session
SessionCommand=/etc/sddm/Xsession

# Directory containing available X sessions
SessionDir=/usr/share/xsessions

# Path to the user session log file
SessionLogFile=.local/share/sddm/xorg-session.log

# Path to the Xauthority file
UserAuthFile=.Xauthority

# Path to xauth binary
XauthPath=/usr/bin/xauth

# Path to Xephyr binary
XephyrPath=/usr/bin/Xephyr



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