Cut your screen resolution exactly in half!
Posted: 30 Nov 2021, 11:06
While working in another project that needed a smaller resolution screen, a friendly dev made an amazing tip:
To keep your screen resolution nice and sharp, simply cut your /native/ screen resolution in half! Say what? Why?
In my case, I was running a pretty standard modern resolution of 1920x1080. But when using xrandr, there was NO option for exactly half the res of a non-standard 960x540 ! I thought I was limited to the monitor's built-in choices which pretty much mimicked what I'd seen everywhere else.
But something odd like 960x540 ?? Who would run that? Someone who wants exactly half the native-resolution for some reason - like keeping it all sharp and spaced properly, that's who.
(Obviously running a full Xorg in Porteus much of this is mitigated by simply changing your fonts and DE options in your native resolution)
The key was to calculate a new modeline, and get it detected by xrandr (or lxrandr gui etc), and switch to it.
So for most, this is not really news. Handy article here:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xrandr
But the real news for me was that using exactly half-your native resolution could come in handy - perhaps for those running Porteus on a super high-res TV or high-end monster monitor, and they are running out of options with fonts and DE settings, and for some reason, ALL other default choices offered up by xrandr just seem a bit "off" or uncomfortable viewing.
Moral: run your high-res native monitor at exactly HALF. You'll need to calculate the new modeline (I use CVT for that for a little extra precision as compared to the older GTF)
To keep your screen resolution nice and sharp, simply cut your /native/ screen resolution in half! Say what? Why?
In my case, I was running a pretty standard modern resolution of 1920x1080. But when using xrandr, there was NO option for exactly half the res of a non-standard 960x540 ! I thought I was limited to the monitor's built-in choices which pretty much mimicked what I'd seen everywhere else.
But something odd like 960x540 ?? Who would run that? Someone who wants exactly half the native-resolution for some reason - like keeping it all sharp and spaced properly, that's who.
(Obviously running a full Xorg in Porteus much of this is mitigated by simply changing your fonts and DE options in your native resolution)
The key was to calculate a new modeline, and get it detected by xrandr (or lxrandr gui etc), and switch to it.
So for most, this is not really news. Handy article here:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xrandr
But the real news for me was that using exactly half-your native resolution could come in handy - perhaps for those running Porteus on a super high-res TV or high-end monster monitor, and they are running out of options with fonts and DE settings, and for some reason, ALL other default choices offered up by xrandr just seem a bit "off" or uncomfortable viewing.
Moral: run your high-res native monitor at exactly HALF. You'll need to calculate the new modeline (I use CVT for that for a little extra precision as compared to the older GTF)