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
accordingly with a number that 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' accordingly with a number that is a multiple of 6):
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