I had a hard time with Gnome but now I got used to it and it's amazing for me. I just can't believe they still haven't implemented scrolling speed setting...
Gnome had a scroll speed setting but it broke and disappeared somewhere around the switch to Wayland without getting replaced.
Gnome says libinput should deal with scroll speed. Libinput says GTK+ should deal with it. Patches have been lying around for both but neither has gained any traction.
I like Gnome's DE in general but this issue showcases the rough edges of open source collaboration the Gnome project is infamous for.
Even KWin's (original?) implementation of the feature wasn't great and caused issues with applications, apparently: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/merge_requests/4672#not...
Broken as though it might be, at least they're trying something, which I appreciate more as an end user than the complete lack of scroll settings.
I was a Mate user for ages. It's great. Unfortunately, the lack of development is starting to show. For example, no fractional scaling for 4k monitors.
I've configured KDE Plasma to look almost identical to Mate (the defaults are similar to Windows, nice, but I prefer the Mate layout):
- top panel / bottom panel
- desktop switcher bottom right
- task bar on bottom
- desktop button bottom left
- clock top right
- app indicators top right
- app icon launchers on top bar
- app menu top left
It's not just layout, either. Gnome can be configured to do much of this, but it just feels terrible. Task bars can't be dragged to re-order. Desktop switchers just have numbers instead of contents. Animations are slow and annoying. Etc. Etc.
> For example, no fractional scaling for 4k monitors.
I don't have a 4K monitor, but what does `xrandr --output HDMI1 --scale 0.8x0.8` do? I have a 1024x768 monitor and do to all the useless whitespace in modern programs, I scale into the opposite direction.
But I agree Gnome lost the plot completely, and sadly Gtk too. Which is a pity, because I prefer GTK+ to Qt, but they deprecated so much useful Widgets and the alternative given is 'just don't do that'.
You can use xrandr to scale the desktop, but it's not the same thing.
You can render at 2x in Mate, and then scale it down slightly (ie 1.25x1.25) with xrandr, but taking a large image and scaling it down using a cubic filter won't look as sharp as real fractional scaling.
The command you gave is upscaling, which will be worse than 2x + downscaling.
Real fractional scaling scales the sizes of elements before rendering. This results in the sharpest image and there is no resizing/filtering in the loop.
Then I don't understand how this actually works. Doesn't this require support by the underlying UI kit? Because after the UI kit, there will already be pixels and scaling that will always be blury.
Yes, it needs to be supported by the UI kit. That's why GTK needs to support this, not just Gnome. Gnome uses GTK4, which supports this. Mate uses GTK3, which does not.
So applications using e.g. Motif or some custom UI toolkit have completely wrong sizes then?
> Gnome uses GTK4, which supports this. Mate uses GTK3, which does not.
Damn. I tend to build against an older GTK3 version, because GTK deprecated so much good stuff, but that means my programs won't work correctly for that. I need to look whether it's easy to backport this.
I'm not sure about GTK3. But I know that KDE plasma has a setting for legacy X11 applications (I think all this fractional scaling stuff requires wayland). It can render them as-is or scale them up (bitmap scaling).
