- Fractional scaling in GNOME allows the use of 125%, 150%, or 175% on 4K monitors, but it remains an experimental feature with an impact on performance and sharpness.
- Wayland offers a better foundation for configurations of DPI It is a hybrid of Xorg, although currently the rescaling of the frame buffer can cause blurry text and some visual artifacts.
- Distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE integrate fractional scaling differently, so you often have to enable experimental features or combine it with font settings.
- A balanced configuration usually combines native resolution, reasonable scales, adapted font size and, if necessary, tools such as xrandr or Guest Additions in virtualized environments.
If you work with 4K monitors under GNOMEConnecting and disconnecting external displays all day long, you've surely already discovered that fractional scaling can be your best friend… or your worst enemy. The 4K era is no longer "something of the future": it's in meeting rooms, at home, in portable and on almost any new monitor you buy.
The problem is that, although GNOME has advanced a lot, the fractional scaling in 4K It remains a tricky area: it works, but it can cause flickering, disappearing edges, blurry text, or even performance issues, especially when you mix multiple monitors with different resolutions or scaling factors.
What exactly is fractional scaling in GNOME?
When GNOME first appeared in its early versions, it only allowed one classic whole scaleIt was either everything at 100%, or everything at 200%, and little else. That worked acceptably on 1080p or 1440p monitors, but on 4K or 2K screens the result could be very uncomfortable: either everything looked tiny, or exaggeratedly large.
The call HiDPI Fractional Scaling It fills that gap, allowing intermediate factors like 125%, 150%, or 175%. This way, you can have a 4K screen with excellent sharpness while maintaining a reasonable text size and interface elements, without straining your eyes or wasting too much desktop space.
This feature was originally introduced in GNOME 3.32 as an experimental feature, initially intended for Wayland sessionsand later unofficially extended to X11 thanks to patches and discoveries by developers like Marco Trevisan. To this day, GNOME 4x and GNOME 47 still carry that "experimental" label in many cases, although their integration is much more mature than in the early attempts.
Wayland vs Xorg: how it affects fractional scaling
The behavior of the fractional scaling in GNOME It changes quite a bit depending on whether you use Wayland or Xorg (X11). Wayland is poised to be the future and, in theory, offers better management of mixed DPI settings, allowing you to scale each monitor separately without so many internal workarounds.
However, Wayland's current approach in GNOME for fractional scaling is a kind of intermediate solutionThe desktop is rendered at a higher logical resolution and then upscaled to the monitor's actual resolution. This introduces two problems: resource usage increases slightly, and text may no longer align with the physical pixels, resulting in the typical "blur" effect when you go above or below 100%.
In Xorg, things are even more precarious. GNOME supports fractional scaling through specific functions such as x11-randr-fractional-scalingalso marked as experimental. Internally, the mechanism is similar: the entire frame buffer is rescaled, with the same kind of consequences for performance and sharpness as in Wayland, but with greater dependence on the capabilities of Xrandr and the drivers of the GPU.
How to enable fractional scaling in GNOME using commands
If your distribution does not display the options by default scaled to 125% or 150% In the Displays settings, often it's enough to enable the experimental features of Mutter, the GNOME compositor. This is done using the settings tool. gsettings.
In a Wayland session with GNOME 3.32 or later, you can enable fractional scaling by setting the mutter parameter that enables the scaled framebuffer. The equivalent command, often found in documentation, is something like enabling the option scale-monitor-framebuffer within the experimental-features key of org.gnome.mutter. After this, new scaling factors such as 125%, 150%, 175%, and 200% should appear in the Settings > Displays panel for compatible monitors.
In X11 sessions, the process is based on activating the option x11-randr-fractional-scaling within the same experimental characteristics. The practical result is that in the Displays panel you see those same intermediate percentages again, although the internal details of how the scaling is applied change because RandR's capabilities are used.
If at any point you regret it, because you see that resource consumption increases or that the text looks bad, GNOME allows you to reset the values Experimental mutter uses another gsettings command to completely clear that key. The changes are immediate, and you don't even need to close the Settings app, although it's usually a good idea to sign out to ensure everything is applied correctly.
Fractional scaling in Fedora, Ubuntu, and openSUSE
Each major distribution deals with the fractional scaling in GNOME In its own way. In Ubuntu it arrived as one of the major new features of version 20.04 LTS, where the graphical interface offered options such as 25%, 150%, 175% and 200% based on the logical screen size, provided that GNOME with HiDPI support was being used.
In Fedora, for quite some time the graphical configuration only displayed scales of 100% and 200%This is quite limiting on 4K monitors. However, Fedora allowed enabling intermediate factors with a simple adjustment via terminalIt was enough to activate the experimental scaling functions in Mutter and, after restarting, the percentages of 125%, 150% and 175% appeared in Settings > Displays.
Some users have reported that, although fractional scaling works well on laptops in Fedora with GNOME 47, when connecting an external 4K monitor and experimenting with the scaling, they encounter problems. cut-off edges, dead zones on the screen or even flickering. These are typical symptoms of a support that is not yet fully polished, especially in environments with multiple monitors and different scaling factors.
In openSUSE Tumbleweed, on the other hand, there have been times when the distribution has chosen not to expose fractional scaling in GNOME 47. This is likely because its developers consider the feature not yet mature or stable enough to be enabled by default. This may disappoint users coming from desktops like Plasma 6, where fractional scaling is perceived as more stable and polished, but it also reduces the risk of encountering serious visual bugs in daily use.
Ubuntu, screen resolution and its relationship to scaling
In any modern GNOME distribution, including Ubuntu with GNOME 4x desktopResolution and scaling management is centralized in the Settings panel, within the Displays section. There you choose the native resolution of each monitor and, right below, the global scaling level.
Ubuntu will typically offer the highest resolution your graphics card and screen allow, for example, 1920×1080, 2560×1440, or 3840×2160 (4K). This will be the base upon which the [unclear] will be applied. scale factorAlways using the panel's native resolution is ideal to avoid artifacts and maintain the best possible sharpness, both for the desktop and for applications.
If you prefer to tweak the configuration from the terminal, Ubuntu (when using Xorg) provides the tool xrandrThis allows you to list supported resolutions, change the current mode, and even create custom modes. With a simple command, you can, for example, change the eDP-1 monitor's output to a specific resolution like 800x600, or select the second resolution from the list using an index instead of typing it manually.
It's important to note that changes made with xrandr are temporaryThese settings are lost upon logging out or restarting. To set a custom resolution, a [missing word - likely a specific setting or function] is usually used. script in the ~/.xprofile file that is executed at the start of the graphical session. This file is added commands to define a new mode using cvt and xrandr, associate it with a specific monitor and apply it automatically.
Working with multiple screens in Xorg
When you have two or more monitors When connected, resolution and scaling management becomes more complex. In Xorg, xrandr allows you to identify all active outputs with the appropriate command, which returns a list of monitors, their names (e.g., eDP-1, HDMI-1), and their current resolutions.
Once you know the identifier of each monitor, you can use xrandr to change the resolution of one without affecting the others. For example, you can force eDP-1 to use 800x600 while the external monitor maintains 1920x1080. However, the fractional per-monitor scaling Xorg is not as flexible or robust as Wayland, so it is often preferable to keep screens at their native resolution and play with other settings, such as font size or application zoom.
Screen scaling in GNOME: integers, fractions, and why it sometimes fails
Within the GNOME Displays panel, we find an option simply called ScaleWhen set to 100%, the desktop is displayed at its actual size, according to the set resolution. Increasing it to 125%, 150%, 175%, or 200% enlarges all elements: icons, windows, toolbars, interface text, etc.
On Full HD (1080p) screens, 100% or 125% is usually comfortable. For 2K resolutions, 150% is a reasonable midpoint. On 4K monitors, many users opt directly for 200% of scale to avoid straining your eyes, even if it reduces the amount of available workspace. This is where the additional option called "Fractional Scaling" comes in, officially introduced in Ubuntu 20.04 and present in other recent GNOME distributions.
Fractional scaling allows you to assign a different factor to each monitor, for example, 200% on the 4K screen and 100% on an external 1080p monitor. At first glance, this provides a unified and very convenient experience, but it's important to be aware that the internal mechanism involves a rescaling the rendered imageThis penalizes performance (because it is processed at a higher resolution than necessary) and can cause the text to lose sharpness by moving out of perfect alignment with the pixel grid.
On monitors with a very high DPI, like Apple's Retina display, this side effect is almost imperceptible because the pixels are so small that the eye doesn't easily distinguish the slight blurring. On many 4K office monitors, especially the more affordable ones, this small loss of sharpness is noticeable, particularly if you have the font smoothing activated and you spend many hours reading text, so it's convenient adjust color temperature.
Why do some apps look blurry with fractional scaling?
Not all applications react the same way to the GNOME fractional scalingThose using modern GTK tend to perform better, while many apps non-GTK (e.g., some older Qt-based, Java, or less integrated frameworks) may appear blurred.
The reason is that, for these applications, the system often scales the window as if it were a simple image, instead of re-rendering all its content to the new scale. This image scaling breaks the sharpness of text and vector graphics, and produces a visual result similar to zooming in on a screenshot.
An example of what would be ideal can be seen in web browsers. If you increase the page zoom From 100% to 125% or 150%, the browser redraws all web elements at the monitor's actual resolution. There is no subsequent upscaling of the entire image, so text and graphics remain sharp. The challenge for GNOME and Wayland is to achieve something similar for the entire desktop and all applications, without adding excessive processing load.
Alternatives to fractional scaling: adjusting fonts and DPI
Until Wayland has a complete and robust protocol of ideal per-monitor scalingA very practical solution in GNOME is to adjust the font size instead of the overall screen scale. GNOME allows you to change the font scaling factor using tools like gnome-tweaks, applying the changes in real time.
This approach has a key advantage: it doesn't introduce an extra step of rescaling the entire image. The system continues to render at the monitor's native size, and only the content (text and interface) is drawn larger. The result is usually much sharper and smootherAnd in single-monitor setups it can be almost perfect.
For environments with mixed DPI (for example, a 1080p laptop and a larger 1080p external monitor, or a combination of 2K and 4K), an interesting idea would be to define a different font scaling factor for each monitor. This way, the same application could adjust its text size when moving from one screen to another, maintaining sharpness by not relying on global buffer scaling.
Windows It does something similar quite successfully: it adjusts the logical DPI per monitor, and many applications adapt on the fly. Implementing something like this in GNOME, possibly through external scripts or extensions that change font scaling per app and per screen, could be a pragmatic solution in the short term until Wayland incorporates a first-class fractional scaling protocol.
Common problems: when you can't properly change the resolution or scale
In some facilities of Linux With GNOME you may find that You cannot change the resolution Or the scaling options are very limited. This is usually due to incomplete graphics drivers, old kernel versions, or because the card is too new for the support provided by the default distribution.
The typical solution involves installing proprietary drivers for NVIDIA or AMD, or make sure you're using a sufficiently recent kernel. In virtualized environments (VirtualBox, VMware, Hyper-V) it is essential to install the Guest Additions or equivalent tools so that the virtual machine has access to all resolutions and window integration offered by the host.
Another curious cause of problems with resolution and scaling can be a simple defective HDMI cable or a monitor about to fail. If the system detects the monitor as "unknown," it's a good idea to try a different cable or video input. In some monitors, you may even need to adjust the panel settings (for example, the image format or modes like "Scan Only") to prevent the desktop from being cut off at the edges.
It's also worth remembering a physical limitation: if your screen only supports native 1080p, you won't be able to force it to run at 4K without encountering artifacts or, in some cases, losing the signal altogether. In these situations, GNOME will display the panel's actual maximum resolution as the limit, and any attempt to exceed it will be doomed to failure.
VirtualBox, scaling and resolution in GNOME
When you test Linux distributions with VirtualBoxIt's very common for the virtual machine's resolution to be insufficient, preventing you from seeing the entire desktop or hindering normal system use. Changing the resolution from the Settings panel may be limited until you install the Guest Additions within the virtual machine.
These Guest Additions include virtual drivers that allow the VM to use the same resolution as the host monitor, enable the automatic resizing of the window and take better advantage of graphics acceleration. Once installed, resolution and scaling control in GNOME becomes much more flexible, and fractional scaling options become usable without having to struggle so much with xrandr.
How to choose the right combination of 2K and 4K monitors
On monitors with high resolutions like 2K and 4K, the temptation is to always use the maximum resolution availableHowever, for office work and web browsing, sometimes a lower resolution or a fine-tuning of the scale can be more comfortable for the eyes than squeezing every last pixel out of the screen.
If increasing the resolution makes everything look excessively small, you have two options: lower the resolution to something like 1920x1080 (at the cost of losing native sharpness) or maintain the 4K resolution and adjust the scaling and font size. This second option, when properly calibrated, is usually the best: you take advantage of 4K sharpness without running out of space or making icons and text appear tiny.
The problem arises when applications that don't properly support HiDPI or fractional scaling start to look bad, with disproportionate interfaces or illegible textIf a particular application is causing a lot of problems, you can consider temporarily reducing the monitor resolution or looking for variants of that application better adapted to HiDPI environments (for example, flatpak versions with more modern patches or native GTK substitutes).
Getting fractional scaling in GNOME to work stably on 4K monitors, especially with multiple displays and different DPI settings, remains a delicate balance between performance, sharpness, and application compatibility. Therefore, the best strategy today involves combining native resolution, reasonable scaling (125%, 150%, 200%), font adjustments, and, when necessary, small adjustments. Tricks with xrandr or experimental configurations, until you find that configuration where everything looks good, responds smoothly, and doesn't force you to fight with the desktop every time you plug in a new monitor.
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