This is on a 1440p monitor: in this image you can see that I have set all the fonts to 8 pixels, but look how HUGE everything is.
Using ctrl+scroll-wheel I’ve shrunk up the text in the Konsole in Kate to show what I expect. After fighting with this for the last few years using an online pixel ruler I have now verified that I am not going crazy.
Top Panel height setting: 24
actual measured height: 24
global font size setting: 8
actual measured height: 16
This issue is even worse when on a system using a 1080p monitor, it feels like I’m using a 720p or smaller display.
Like I said its not just KDE, its EVERY OS and GUI, including Windows, Mac, Android, Gnome, Hyprland, all of them.
Is there ANY way to actually get pixel to pixel true size in the UI so that I don’t have to set display scaling to 50% and then have to increase the UI for each other app and program separately that actually adheres to pixel scaling. Am I missing something? Shouldn’t 1:1 be the default?!?
Hi! To help folks best guide you, could you please provide your basic system information from the Info Center app (using the Copy Details button) or kinfo from a terminal?
Something is clearly not responding to the font settings there - information about your display server (Wayland/X11) and graphics device (AMD, Intel, NVIDIA) and drivers could help guide some further troubleshooting.
I should point out that this issue is hardware agnostic, it has been the exact same thing for at least the last 2 years since I started getting back into Linux desktops as a DD.
Other systems include but not limited to:
My wife’s:
Operating System: Garuda Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 6.4.0
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.15.0
Qt Version: 6.9.1
Kernel Version: 6.15.3-zen1-1-zen (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 24 × AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core Processor
Memory: 32 GiB of RAM (31.2 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: Nvidia RTX 2080 TI
… And various others including Lenovo 1ltr Intel PCs, MinisForum Ryzen/Vega mini PCS, Old intel and old AMD FX systems, VMs, integrated or dedicated graphics, it doesn’t matter its always the same thing.
Hmm, something’s definitely funky…this is what windows on my screen look like, without any major changes other than adjusting font sizes a bit and display scaling a bit:
There, it definitely doesn’t look like the general UI fonts are multiple times the size of the “General” font size in the Fonts dialog - there must be some sort of configuration difference?
Could you recap any settings changes that you make from how the operating system is installed by default? Are those systems all with “clean” installs (ex. no imported configuration files from other devices) of a single desktop environment, using each distribution’s defaults?
On my system I don’t use KDE the vast majority of the time, I have it installed so that I have access to my “Configuration” session In Kate in the event that I break my Hyprland install. That said, I pretty much always just make some changes to the panels, making them 24px tall, move everything to a top panel, and then set all the fonts to 10.
On my wife’s and kid’s comps I just leave everything as it is when its installed, less for me to troubleshoot later, and they don’t care that their screen looks like a “kids first computer”.. lol
All the other systems I’ve been installing it on over the last couple years were just left bone stock too. I was installing and reinstalling, testing with different things to get all the software my wife needs and all the games my kid plays working before transitioning their systems from Peeping-Gates-OS.
I just checked and your text in that snip that is set to 10 is all being displayed at 15px tall, 8 is being displayed at 12px, so you probably have your display scale set to 75%, am I right?
My display is set to 150% scaling - the reason I added that screenshot, though, is that it doesn’t seem normal for the word “General:” in the Fonts settings page to be a different size than the name and size of the font right next to it, the way it is in that screenshot:
Is that the case on each one of your devices, including ones that only have KDE Plasma installed as a desktop environment? Just trying to narrow down where and how that could be happening - I’d assume that’s related to the feeling that everything is unexpectedly large!
For what it’s worth - as someone in their 40s, with astigmatism, I don’t think default settings that enable easier-to-read text constitute a “fisher-price” “kids first” computer. Scaling and fonts should be responsive to how you set them, though, so you should be able to make your device impossible for me to read without it getting out of proportion as shown in those screenshots - I just wouldn’t dismiss the benefits of more accessible defaults
Yes, every single system has been the same, even the ones that have only KDE installed.
I too am deep into my 40s, and also have a slight astigmatism in one eye. I am in no way trying to say that having a default setting that makes things easier to read for folks with less than perfect vision is a bad thing.
You’ve said it better than I could, and that is all I want… I should be able to set 8 pixel text and get 8 pixel text, at 100% display ratio, no mater if the default is 150% with 14 pixel text. Like: 100% should actually be 100%, right?
I guess I’m a little bent that it seems so simple, but has been a continuous issue for me.
Do the text sizes on that Fonts page of System Settings mismatch like that when you have a live USB booted? Just trying to think of how early in the process things must get funky.
