I have two monitors:
DP-1: 1920x1080 (hd, secondary)
eDP-1: 3840x2160 (4k, main)
My problem:
I want to set my 4k monitor to 200% scaling @ 3840x2160, and my HD monitor to 100% scaling @ 1920x1080
What I have attempted:
Running i3, it appears, visually the default setting is to keep everything at 4k @ 1x1 scaling. (When I check arandr it appears the HD monitor is set to 1080 but visually this does not appear to be the case).
In the gnome desktop environment, I must do a bit of trickery to get my two monitors to display properly. I run: xrandr --output eDP-1 --scale 0.999x0.999 --pos 3840x0 ; xrandr --output DP-1 --scale 1.999x1.999 --mode 1920x1080 --fb 7680x2160 --pos 0x0
In Gnome, that works like a charm, but when I run this in i3, it appears to set everything to 3840x2160 @ 100% scaling (very very small). I also get the error:
X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
Major opcode of failed request: 140 (RANDR)
Minor opcode of failed request: 7 (RRSetScreenSize)
Serial number of failed request: 33
Current serial number in output stream: 34
What I've done:
âï¸ I can make the HD monitor work as follows:
xrandr --output DP-1 --scale 1x1 --mode 1920x1080
Now when I adjust my main 4k monitor, it has the following curious behaviour:
âï¸ xrandr --output eDP-1 --mode 3840x2160
adjusts it to the right resolution
â xrandr --output eDP-1 --scale 2x2
makes it REALLY small
âï¸ xrandr --output eDP-1 --scale 0.5x0.5
makes things the right size, but blurry
â xrandr --output --dpi <attempted with value 96, 192>
doesn't work and fails with:
X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
Major opcode of failed request: 140 (RANDR)
Minor opcode of failed request: 7 (RRSetScreenSize)
Serial number of failed request: 33
Current serial number in output stream: 35
So I am able to have both monitors at the correct resolutions, but I am unable to have crisp 200% scaling in my 4K monitor. For some reason where I had to do 2x2 scaling in Gnome to make things bigger, I must do 0.5x0.5 scaling in i3 to make things bigger, and this makes it blurry.
Edit: oh yeah and although the UI elements are proportional, the mouse is REALLY big