High screen resolution give tiny text and windows

Hello.
I got my daughters HP Spectre 360. I used Ubuntu Mate on my old HP and want to use it on this also. My problem is that I cant scale up the window text and it is therefore difficult for me to read the menus and so forth. Is there a way I can scale up menus and so without set down the resolution?

Thanks, Laffen.

My laptop:

System: Host: laffen-HP-Spectre-x360-Convertible-13 Kernel: 4.10.0-21-generic x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 6.3.0)
Desktop: MATE 1.18.0 (Gtk 3.22.11-0ubuntu3) info: mate-panel dm: lightdm Distro: Ubuntu 17.04
Machine: Device: laptop System: Hewlett-Packard product: HP Spectre x360 Convertible 13
Mobo: Hewlett-Packard model: 802D v: 58.62 UEFI: American Megatrends v: F.43 date: 09/28/2016
Chassis: type: 10
Battery BAT0: charge: 36.5 Wh 78.1% condition: 46.7/46.7 Wh (100%) volts: 12.7/11.4
model: Hewlett-Packard Primary Li-ion serial: N/A status: Charging cycles: 0
CPU: Dual core Intel Core i7-5500U (-HT-MCP-) cache: 4096 KB
flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 9577
clock speeds: min/max: 500/3000 MHz 1: 1634 MHz 2: 1708 MHz 3: 1711 MHz 4: 1721 MHz
Memory: Using dmidecode: you must be root to run dmidecode
Graphics: Card: Intel HD Graphics 5500 bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:1616
Display Server: X.Org 1.19.3 drivers: modesetting (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
Resolution: [email protected]
GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 5500 (Broadwell GT2)
GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 17.0.3 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio: Card Intel Broadwell-U Audio Controller
driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:03.0 chip-ID: 8086:160c
Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.10.0-21-generic
Network: Card: Intel Wireless 7265 driver: iwlwifi bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:095a
IF: wlo1 state: up mac:
Drives: HDD Total Size: 256.1GB (2.9% used)
ID-1: /dev/sda model: AXNS381E size: 256.1GB serial: 2F2020009653
Optical: No optical drives detected.
Partition: ID-1: / size: 234G used: 7.0G (4%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
label: N/A uuid: 53546f53-b6ea-4da6-acec-be2a5fe9be54
ID-2: /boot/efi size: 511M used: 3.5M (1%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1 label: N/A uuid: 8E8D-59E9
RAID: System: supported: N/A
No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Unused Devices: none
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 49.0C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info: Processes: 188 Uptime: 28 min Memory: 1199.9/7889.4MB
Init: systemd v: 232 runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: N/A Client: Unknown : systemd inxi: 2.3.8
’

That’s a nice display you have there :slight_smile:

Assuming your system fonts are set to a decent size (see System->Preferences->Look And Feel->Appearance and then click the Fonts tab), somewhere in the ballpark of 10-14 font size, since your screen is so large you will need to adjust your system DPI to scale everything up.

On that same fonts tab, you have a Details button. Click it. The Dots per Inch setting should be initially set somewhere around in 90s.

This website tells you the DPI setting for a given monitor size. But those are true DPI values and you may not want to use so large values. Try half of what is shown to your display size and start adjusting from there. Higher DPIs increase your font, smaller decreases.

2 Likes

That sounds like the same kind of graphics card my xps13 has (3200x1800) and it does require a driver. Look at mate-control-center->Hardware->Additional Drivers. I’m not seeing something specific that i can recognize as the intel-5500 driver but i’m not sure what is considered “additional”. I am just guessing that is where your problem is, i’ve had the microscopic-font problem before. I know nossing.

Thank you. My old HP run perfectly with Ubuntu Mate, but I decided to try Ubuntu Gnome on this one. And Gnome work out of the box for me on this HP.

Thanks for reply.

Laffen.

Ubuntu Gnome worked ok, but after a month I now is back on Ubuntu Mate. Mate is better for me. I tweaked it and turned down the resolution to 1080, so now its ok. But my question now is:

I just installed Mate on top of the Gnome desktop. Will this give me any problem when I upgrade from 17.04 to 17.10 and further on?

Thanks.
Laffen.

Edit: I just reinstalled my laptop with Ubuntu Mate 17.04 :slight_smile: