Dr. Nikolaus Klepp composed on 2026-02-04 10:47 (UTC+0100):
2026 Wed, 4 Feb 09:29:02 +0100
Thierry de Coulon scripsit:
My eyes are no more what they were, however I've always likes the idea to run Linux on a tiny thing (got some Sharp Zaurus) and I've purchased a (second hand) GPD Pocket (I thing I got the idea from a post on this list).
OK, so I've installed my favourite MX-Linux (and TDE) on it. However, the 1200x1920 screen has very tiny pixels and the setup is quite uneasy (with magnifying glass sometime), so before I poke everywhere to try, maybe someone here âlready went through sometiing like that and could suggest settings that work.
I notices that TCC lists the sceen as "Philips PHL 273V7" but Internet search suggests it's a 27" monitor....
I would:
Scaling? Can we do that in TDE? And this machine won't stand KDE (neither would I). xfce did a little better, not much.
Change the screen size? I'd like to try something like 600x960 but nothing such is offered by TCC
Anything less than 1024x768 is capable of producing some pretty awful looking fonts.
That is the bastes option, you might use "tderandrtray" or plain xrandr dor this.
Other option: set the DPI value to e.g. 200 in ~/.Xresources: Xft.dpi:200
Depending on distro, Xresources in /etc/X11/ somewhere should also work.
... or in .xsession: echo "Xft.dpi: 200"|xrdb -merge
Fonts tend to scale best from size to size when DPI is set to a multiple of 24, or at least, 12, so 192 or 168 or 216 or 204 may be better selections.
For GTK apps use lxappereance to set that value.
Then there are some environment variables that might come in handy: QT_FONT_DPI=150 QT_SCALE_FACTOR=1.5
1.5 is actually equal to 144, not 150, as 96 is the 100% level foundation created by Windows95 on which fonts have since been based. 150 isn't evenly divisible by 12 or 24. It is by 6, which isn't as good for fonts.
Not all apps one might wish to use pay any attention to Xft.dpi or any envars, but do to X's own DPI, which can be set via DisplaySize in /etc/X11/xorg.con*, or using xrandr or any of the tools that employ xrandr, such as arandr. Simply xrandr will report available supported modes, then xrandr can be used to employ one's choice. On a 1920x1200 screen, likely available modes best supported due to same aspect ratio should include 1680x1050 and 1280x800. Arandr will build an xrandr script that can be used on session start, as xrandr changes don't impact whatever is already running when it's employed. Or one can build such script manually.