Framework 2880 x 1920 (new) display review
Framework 2880 x 1920 (new) display review
Wuuttup. I'm here complaining again about Framework's Linux unfriendly display. The new one this time.
https://frame.work/products/display-kit?v=FRANJF0001
Old display, 2256 x 1504 (3:2)
GNOME
100% scale
- Nothing looks blurry
- Everything is tiny
- Unusable
100% scale + large text accessibility
- Nothing looks blurry
- Most apps scale appropriately
- Some apps don’t respect GNOME’s large text setting (Alacritty)
125% scale
- Most apps look blurry (Picard, Firefox, Spotify, Alacritty)
200% scale
- Everything is way too big
- Unusable
Plasma
100% scale
- Nothing looks blurry
- Everything is tiny
- Unusable
125% scale + Apply scaling themselves
- Nothing looks blurry
- Most apps scale appropriate
- Some apps can’t scale themselves and look tiny (Picard)
125% scale + Scaled by system
- Most apps look blurry (Picard, Firefox, Spotify, Alacritty)
200% scale
- Everything is way too big
- Unusable
New display, 2880 x 1920 (3:2)
GNOME
100% scale
- Nothing looks blurry
- Everything is tiny
- Unusable
100% scale + large text accessibility
- Nothing looks blurry
- Most apps scale appropriately
- Some apps don’t respect GNOME’s large text setting (Alacritty)
- Everything is tiny
150% scale
- Most apps look blurry (Picard, Firefox, Spotify, Alacritty)
200% scale
- Everything is way too big
- Unusable
Plasma
100% scale
- Nothing looks blurry
- Everything is tiny
- Unusable
150% scale + Apply scaling themselves
- Nothing looks blurry
- Some apps can’t scale themselves, but look a little better here? (Picard)
150% scale + Scaled by system
- Most apps look blurry (Picard, Firefox, Spotify, Alacritty)
200% scale
- Everything is way too big
- Unusable
tl;dr
In the old display, GNOME at 100% + large text was the best compromise. In the new display, Plasma at 150% + Apply scaling themselves is the best compromise.
Interestingly, Picard scaling itself looks super tiny in the old display, but in the new display it looks... better. It's still not correctly scaled like native Wayland apps, but it's better.
Warning
If you can't stomach moving from GNOME to Plasma, then 🚨 DO NOT BUY THE NEW DISPLAY 🚨. The new display is worse for GNOME.
Once again
I am once again begging Framework to just give us a damn regular DPI display that works! Without workarounds. Without forcing users on specific DEs. Without forcing users to stop using their favorite apps. This new display has basically all of the flaws as the previous one.
I am once again begging Framework to just give us a damn regular DPI display that works!
Bottom Skinner is right, though. It's 2024. HiDPI has to be supported by all toolkits, desktops, and applications at this point. There are no excuses. Even 1080p on a 14" laptop screen warrants 125% scaling, IMO.
"This hardware works fine and even has compatible software that it works great with. But I'm going to prefer the broken software for other reasons. And that means it's the hardware's fault."
Software that is built to be compatible with a wide variety of hardware should be compatible with a wide variety of hardware.
If software can't handle a 16.5:16 aspect ratio, then that's bad software. I don't care how weird of a niche thing that is... just make your software abstract enough to handle those cases.
It's 2024, any resolution/aspect ratio/DPI combo should be supportable. There's enough variety of monitors out there that we should have a solution for handling things on the fly without needing to have a predefined solution.
Scaling for HiDPI displays is unacceptable on every desktop OS, it is crazy that so little effort has been put into making the experience of modern monitors good.
I feel this is one of those few sectors, like wifi compatibility, where Windows completely destroys Linux, MacOS, and BSD. As someone who regularly switches between operating systems on bare metal & 4K, trying to use a HiDPI display on *nix is painful and will only kinda work with caveats after 100 hacks (as seen here), whereas Windows has a zoom slider that just works.
HiDPI has to be supported by all toolkits, desktops, and applications at this point. There are no excuses.
I mean... yeah, I agree. Would you mind sending that email to the millions of devs around the world? Not sure if they're aware of this.
I just want to be able to read my screen. 😭
Would you mind sending that email to the millions of devs around the world?
Yes, I mind. For Qt5 applications, basic HiDPI support can be patched in with a single line. I actually did that for a handful of applications, tested them, and then submitted pull requests on Github. I cannot program, so all I could do is to copy and paste that one line from the Qt documentation. It's not much but I already did my part.
🤣on 14” 1080 i would need 50% scaling to make it usable for me, since I can not work with such a tiny space for my apps.. You can’t even use two apps side by side on 1080 these days, since everything is designed for higher DPI.
And even on 100% is the font so blurry that it is hard to read. Got do I hate 1080p 🤣🤣
Everything I use needs high DPI like 2k to 3k on 14” - 16”, everything bigger needs at least 4k
I get needing more space for certain workflows but if fonts are blurry on 1080p at 100% there's something wrong with your setup. Misconfigured font renderer or so. Configure your FreeType to set font smoothing to sharp and hinting to slight. If your distribution has other defaults, file a bug report with them. Back in the day when screens had a lower pixel density (I had 15" 720p once), FreeType might have been configured "smoother" because it would match print output closer.
So hardware manifacturers need to adapt to XOrg now? LOL the reason that some apps dont scale right even on Plasma is that they are probably not Wayland native yet.
And GNOME still doesnt have stable fractional scaling, unlike Plasma.
Hardware vendors shouldnt need to adapt to GNOME too.
Agreed. HiDPI is the way to go and we should appreciate Framework for putting that in their laptops instead of continuing the use of shitty 1366x768 screens.
Xorg is the reason why OP is facing the scaling issues. OP, try to force the apps to run on native Wayland if they support it but don't default to it. The Wayland page on Arch wiki has instructions on that. Immensely improved my HiDPI experience.
I finally stopped having problems on Wayland plasma after the release some months ago that included fixes to fractional scaling. Me after many months and years complaining about wayland not working properly now can say that I can barely notice the difference and things work as expected. Had to cry to make discord and zoom work for screen share and zoom still crashes but at least kinda works. But that's different than blurry fonts at least 😅
Wayland forced me to discover third party discord apps. Honestly I consider it a win overall lol
Blurry apps come from xwayland compatibility. Firefox and alacritty (or other terminal like wezterm or kitty) have native wayland, with no blurry check Archwiki for example HiDPI. With Spotify, live with it or use spot (gtk client). Hopefully next gnome release incorporate something like plasma, and then ctrl+ native in spotify increase its size.
Or use spotify from the browser
I dunno why I hate web apps so much. But I found a Firefox extension that keeps me happy on my m2 Mac mini. Running asahi on it and it’s got all sorts of weird restrictions. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/app-for-spotify/
This guy I love though.
Blurry and tiny apps come from Framework's poor choice of display. Other laptops don't have this problem.
Yes, I'm aware of software-side issues, but it's still their fault for seeing the software issues and then picking a broken display anyway.
Lmao it's not framework's fault if linux can't handle hidpi well. The display ain't broken, linux is. Btw I have a display of the same resolution on my laptop, and I have had zero issues on plasma at 125% scaling (most apps of my apps are wayland-native) and gnome works great after setting it to 125% via dconf too.
Other laptops don't have this problem.
You can't be serious. It's 2024, and my laptop from 10 years ago needs 125% scaling at least. Get real.
Meme is right, in 2024 poor HiDPI scaling is a software issue
I have basically zero issues with fractional scaling with Gnome on Wayland, I thing you probably have something configured wrong.
Here's a screenshot of how a few programs look for me with 125% scaling on my original framework display. The only thing slightly blurry is spotify but it's not enough to be noticeable in normal use.
Edit: Looks like lemmy actually compressed my screenshot a fair bit but I think you can still tell that things are scaling properly
You can launch spotify under native wayland instead of xwayland, it gives scaling without blur
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Spotify#Running_under_Wayland
this way works for all electron programs like discord, motrix
96 DPI should be a choice, agreed. But it's a software issue when an app or a framework doesn't display well on HIDPI.
Agreed! Not saying it's not a software issue. Of course the software is broken. Of course I wish it was updated.
But, Framework seeing the landscape and picking hardware with known issues is a bad choice. They could offer lower DPI and eliminate entire pages of workarounds and half fixes.
Yes, high DPI should work, but it doesn't everywhere. That's just the reality, I wish it wasn't.
Hardware should lead. It's easier to upgrade the software to make the hardware work, then it is to upgrade the hardware when the software decides to support it.
Would you be happier with 640x480?
Seriously, cannot go back. When MacBooks came out with retina, got one and got a program to run at native resolution. So much data and text on a screen! Looking forward to this display with 100% scale. Full stop. Everyone always says my text looks tiny but I love it! Dual 4k monitors, no scaling on my desktop Linux. My old Alienware laptop was 4k oled, gnome and KDE looked fan frickin tastic! I'm not buying pixels to not have em go to full use.
If it meant I could actually see my apps because they're not blurry and not tiny. Then hell yeah! Luckily, it's not a choice between all the DPI and none of the DPI.
- Dell XPS 13 - 1920X1200
- Lemur Pro - 1920x1200
- Thinkpad X11 - 1920 x 1200
It's possible.
scaled by system/themselves ... looks like those are x11 apps. why is firefox into this? run it as native wayland with
MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLANDNot necessary anymore with current version Firefox. It has Wayland enabled by default now.
Sexy
Weird... My experience with the old display is quite different
Plasma
100% Scale
- Nothing looks blurry
- Everything a perfect size
- Wonderful
I guess you are working closer to the screen, but I feel you, I use 100% on 2000:3000 surface book 3 screen as well as 100% on 4k 32” and I love it 😂 but I think I am the only one in our office…
You want hardware manufacturers to provide shitty screens in perpetuity just so Linux devs can avoid implementing proper scaling? Yeah, no.
Just to make sure, have you logged out and back in after applying the scaling? Some apps look blurry until you do that. Try to avoid quarter scaling, no x25% or x75%...
I really hope that all Linux desktop software gets scaling support soon. Can't live with only integer scaling increments
You should try 110% and 130%. Dunno if it's the 5's but those seem to work better for me.
Just tried 100% + large text on Gnome, it feels much better than 125% scaling, thanks for letting us know it's a possibility!
Gnome looks better with font scaling instead of display scaling, because the buttons and top bar are already way too large by default.
True!
GNOME sucks, both in their community engagement culture, and actual look. I've never liked their culture, but they used to have a superior desktop IMO.
I like GNOME. I make it look good and provide a great workflow.
Thanks for the write up. I was in a similar situation with a 4k 14 inch Dell something, instead of scaling at 200%, I lowered the resolution to half at 1080p and it worked flawlessly. Maybe you could try it too?
The issue here is that some apps don't support scaling, so they show in a lower resolution, making them look blurry.
Your solution just makes everything do that.Nope, it wasn't blurry. In principle, I lose some DPI goodness, but it didn't make any difference to me on my daily usage of the laptop
Isn't scaling to 200% the same as lowering the resolution to half? And you lose the high DPI for apps that support it too.
No, resolution is on layer display server (X11, tools like xrandr), while scaling is, like compositing, on layer window manager (xfwm, kwin, etc).
And you lose the high DPI for apps that support it too.
Is the dispkay 4k on notebook-size? 2k would've been enough, you don't lose pixels if you couldn't have seen them anyway, which is why everything was too small.
It's called angular resolution.
Edit: my bad, visual acuity was the word i looked for.
Btw, https://tftcentral.co.uk/articles/the-obsession-with-4k-and-do-you-need-it-on-a-new-monitor
I did lower my DPI, yes. But avoiding scaling also made me avoid some Plasma 5 bugs with multiple screens
I installed one of these new displays this past weekend and it looks fantastic in Linux. Granted I've only tried Plasma so far on Wayland but that's because I really don't find Gnome usable. It looks good at 200% though and a similar scale to 150% on the old display.
My exposure to Linux is pretty minimal, especially Linux with a GUI, so forgive my ignorance. Even reading over this thread I'm confused as to the issue here.
I don't need an ELI5, but maybe someone can explain it like I don't know what Wayland is?
My understanding is that an app should ask the system to display an object at X size, let's say text at size 14. The system then works out that at the currently selected display resolution, size 14 will be Y pixels big. If needed, the system can scale that based on user preferences- a small, high DPI screen could render size 14 at only a couple of millimetres, for example.
Is the problem that devs are building things in a way that bypasses scaling? For example, hardcoding size 14 text to be Z pixels high?
One of the issues at hand is that X11, the predecessor of Wayland, does not have a standardized way to tell applications what scale they should use. Applications on X11 get the scale from environment variables (completely bypassing X11), or from Xft.dpi, or by providing in-application settings, or they guess it using some unorthodox means, or simply don't scale at all. It's a huge mess overall.
It is one of the more-or-less fundamentally unfixable parts of the protocol, since it wants everything to be on the same coordinate space (i.e. 1 pixel is 1 pixel everywhere, which is... quite unsuitable for modern systems.)
Wayland does operate like how you say it and applications supporting Wayland will work properly in HiDPI environments.
However a lot of people and applications are still on X11 due to various reasons.
That is basically the problem. Also that fractional scaling on Linhx generally still gives blurry results. Fractional scaling without explicit support from the apps side is very difficult to implement.
And yes, there are a ton of of apps that don't correctly respect OS hints for size. Even more common among apps that aren't Linux first, or are proprietary.
Honestly I might be dumb, but I don't understand why I can't scale any app individually to custom fractions. Why don't DEs add this as a feature?
How are you feeling about the Framework otherwise?
It's all right otherwise. Not phenomenal, but not crap. The specs you can get with other laptops. The hardware feel isn't as good as a Dell XPS or an X1 Carbon. The expansion card stuff is kinda cool, but other laptops have ports too. I've never swapped out the cards.
The main reason I bought this laptop is repairability. If that's not your main priority, then I probably wouldn't recommend this laptop.
If you want to use this laptop with Linux and not spend time fixing hardware compatibility issues, then I definitely would not recommend this laptop. Definitely get a Dell XPS for a Linux laptop that Just Works.
If you want to use this laptop with Linux and not spend time fixing hardware compatibility issues, then I definitely would not recommend this laptop. Definitely get a Dell XPS for a Linux laptop that Just Works.
Have you tried the
-frameworkimages from uBlue?This has not been my experience with my FW16. I also have an XPS for work, and had a Gigabyte Aero before that, but I would hands down take the the FW16 over the XPS 9510. While the XPS doesn't have any major issues running Linux (though I am unhappy with the trackpad), I haven't had any issues running Linux on the FW16 either, and I absolutely love having whatever ports I want available. I really missed the great port selection I had on the Aero, which made the XPS painful for me to use (I am so sick of dongles). I use my FW16 for a bunch of different requirements and have a ton of ports for it: ( 4x Ethernet, 3x USB-A, 3x USB-C, 2x HDMI, 2x DP, 2x MicroSD, 2x 3.5mm). Being able to reconfigure on the fly for whatever my workflow is for the day has been great.
Also, something that really galls me about working on the XPS series vs. the Latitude series, is that even though the XPS is supposed to be the premium line, the Latitudes are much nicer to work on. For example, Latitudes have captive screws on the back cover whereas the XPSes don't, and they also have razor sharp un-polished edges on the covers (always great to have to clean the blood off your motherboard traces before you can power it back on. )
As for the display issues, I can't speak to that because I use Hyprland and don't have a DE, but don't see any issues.
XFCE
Huh, I actually run Plasma at 100% with my FW13 2256x1504. I didn't know there was a new display, but if I had it, 100% wouldn't cut it anymore. Frankly, for such a small display, I wouldn't desire a higher resolution than what I have in the FW13, even if all the software scaled properly.
Try changing display resolution instead of scaling. Scaling was always a hack.
Scaling is the future, too low set resolution was always the hack…
No, the problem is, built-in displays have too high resolution for their usecase (because vendors can demand more cash for it). Things don't get less sharp if you scale that (via resolution) to comfortale size, your angular resolution doesn't get better just with that. You don't lose pixels you can't see.
The hack is the solution that sometimes works and sometimes not, which is the case with software scaling.And your "future" is at least five years ago.
edit: "too low set resolution", what are you talking about? It's too high originally, heating your notebook and lowering battery live for nothing.
sober (RoL support) has scaling issues for me too