2.3 KiB
DPI scaling
Qubes OS passes on dom0's screen resolution to VMs (this can be seen in the output of xrandr
) but doesn't pass on dom0's dpi value. Recent distributions have automatic scaling depending on the screen's resolution (eg. in fedora if the vertical resolution is greater than 1200px) but for a variety of reasons one may have to set a custom dpi scaling value.
Dom0
The simplest way to set dpi scaling in dom0 is to use the desktop environment's custom dpi feature:
- Xfce: Qubes Menu → System Tools → Appearance → Fonts tab: Custom DPI setting:
xxx
- KDE: Qubes Menu → System Settings → Font → Force font dpi:
xxx
Replace xxx
with a number that fits your setup and is a multiple of 6, as numbers that aren't sometimes result in annoying rounding errors that cause adjacent bitmap font sizes to not increment and decrement linearly.
VMs
We'll make use of the Xft.dpi
X resource in VMs. Most toolkits and applications honor it so it is the prefered way to set dpi scaling instead of using toolkit-specific features.
Get the current value of Xft.dpi
:
xrdb -query | grep Xft.dpi
Test with a different dpi value: in a terminal issue the following command and then start an application to check that the menus/fonts' size is increased/decreased; replace '144' with the value set in dom0 (it's possible to set a different value in VMs though):
echo Xft.dpi: 144 | xrdb -merge
Once you found a value that fits your setup you'll likely want to permanently set the dpi Xresource. You can do so on a per-template or per-VM basis:
- add (or modify)
Xft.dpi: xxx
in the TemplateVM's Xresource file (/etc/X11/Xresources
or/etc/X11/Xresources/x11-common
for whonix-ws-template). - or, add
Xft.dpi: xxx
to$HOME/.Xresources
in each AppVM.
Note for Qubes 3.2: the Xft.dpi
resource should work but if you have issues you may want to try the following (replace 2
and 0.75
accordingly):
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 2
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface text-scaling-factor 0.75
Resources
- Related official issue: https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/1951
- Mozilla DPI-related Font Size Issues on Unix: https://www-archive.mozilla.org/unix/dpi.html
Contributors: @taradiddles