Hacker News Reader

Comment by ayushnix | Hacker News Reader

> 4. The 3:2 display is awesome for programming and content creation, and I don't know why more devices don't adopt it.

The display on the FrameWork laptop needs to be scaled fractionally (about ~1.6x) which is a deal breaker for me. It would've been far better if it had resolution of 3000x2000 or 3200x1800, which would've given it a PPI of ~270 and integer scaling at 2x.

Linux support for fractional scaling with multiple monitors is unstable, even on Wayland. Applications like Firefox and Qt apps behave abnormally (pop menu positions are incorrect, they often flicker). There's also a subtle loss of quality in fonts and images.

https://scribe.rip/elementaryos/what-is-hidpi-and-why-does-i...

View on HN

Totally agree. All these reviews are conveniently ignoring this. Some of them I’ve seen even just left it at 2x scaling and did the whole video with a giant cartoonish UI that had no actual usable space.

For Linux users this display needs to be either 1500x1000 or 3000x2000.

> Some of them I’ve seen even just left it at 2x scaling and did the whole video with a giant cartoonish UI that had no actual usable space.

Either that or they keep it at 1x scaling and just scale the fonts instead which is a pretty degraded and compromising experience if you use GUI apps and not just the terminal.

But this is conveniently omitted when singing praises about Framework. The laptop has a broken display that'll give you nothing but headache if you enable fractional scaling and if you disable it, you're compromising after spending potentially thousands of dollars.

> Either that or they keep it at 1x scaling and just scale the fonts instead which is a pretty degraded and compromising experience if you use GUI apps and not just the terminal.

Is it? Because this is exactly what I do on mine (w/ GNOME + PaperWM) and it's fantastic having so much space. I don't even scale the fonts, either.

> Is it? Because this is exactly what I do on mine (w/ GNOME + PaperWM) and it's fantastic having so much space. I don't even scale the fonts, either.

Good for you I guess. I, for one, can't read text at size 6 or 8 and I know most people can't either. The only case where this might make sense is if you're using your display to watch movies and play games and have minimal or no involvement with text.

Even if it does work for you, I think it should obvious that most people can't use their laptops/desktops like this and anyone who sings praises for a laptop like Framework should mention the flaws as well.

Maybe I'm weird, but the 2x scaling on my Framework looks fine to me; not cartoonish. Xfce requires a few manual settings to get it right (which did frustrate me for the first week), while GNOME and Cinnamon appear to handle it well by default.

2x scaling on a display that needs 1.5x scaling would look cartoonish. Every GUI element — titlebars, headers, icons, menus etc would be bigger than they should be.

You could scale down the fonts to make the text bearable and not look like it was written for advertisement banners but then you've basically got a weird and broken setup that would be impossible to use with an external monitor or any other display.

Kinda hoping this motivates some movement towards stabilizing fractional scaling on Linux. It feels like this has worked in macOS and Windows for ages.

To be honest, I can’t say that this has been an issue for me on the Framework with Wayland and GNOME. Or at least I haven’t noticed it. My external monitor is 3840x2160, not HiDPI so maybe the issue is with multiple HiDPI displays of varying pixel density? I’m also using 1x scaling on both displays which perhaps simplifies things.

> I’m also using 1x scaling on both displays which perhaps simplifies things.

I'm sorry if I sound snarky but this right here is the problem. Using a display at 1x scaling which needs at least ~1.5x scaling for text and images to be legible isn't really feasible so I expect you've scaled just the font size instead?

If yes, you've basically chosen to compromise because all GUI apps will look out of place and odd with buttons and icons still at 1x. If you've neither scaled your display nor your font size, your eyes are exceptionally good to be able to read tiny fonts but most people don't have such eyes.

I've been told by people that they don't use GUI apps and just use the terminal but if that's the case, they should point out this caveat about their workflow being unique when singing praises about Framework laptop so that others don't get misleaded into a buying a laptop with a display that's basically broken.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com