Darn high-res display :-)

[merlinsilk]

Hello - and good day from the newest member here.

I have just installed 24.04 as a dual boot on my laptop with the idea of slowly but surely moving away from Windows.
But I immediately ran into a problem I can't seem to overcome: Everything on my display - I use a 4k Samsung TV and let the built-in display rest - is too small for my aging eyes. Not a new problem (on windows I just crank up the scaling), and I quickly found the global scaling in the settings - but they don't do anything! Somebody on the interweb thought that I have to logout/in - but that made no difference.
My machine is a six year old Maingear Element with an I7 and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti.

Probably related but also very disturbing is the fact that I often can't find my cursor - just too small and nearly the same color as the background. I changed the cursors to a different scheme, but somehow still the old - small - one is shown on the desktop.

Any light shed on this dark situation would be highly appreciated.
Cheers,
Merlin

[skyfishgoo]

why are you trying to run a 4k display off a 1660?

unless you are within arms length of the screen, you can't tell the difference between 1K and 4K with the naked eye anyways.

lower your resolution and the text size will improve.

[claydoh]

I do suggest spinning up a live session of Plasma 6, say Kubuntu 25.10, or the beta of 26.04, out in a few weeks. But any distro with a currewnt Plasma 6 will do here. There is much better HiDPI support in the latest releases compared to the old Plasma 5.

Having said that, Nvidia might be throwing a wrench into the mess, as they are wont to do.

Have you used the driver manager to see if any of the proprietary drivers are available, if you haven't done so already?
This is something you can't test in a live session, though.

[merlinsilk]

I got some more info: I tried 200% and that worked, in other words, fractional scaling seems to be the problem. I think I can live with that for a few weeks till 26.04 comes out and I upgrade.
The cursor problem was handled by a reboot.

[merlinsilk]

why are you trying to run a 4k display off a 1660?

unless you are within arms length of the screen, you can't tell the difference between 1K and 4K with the naked eye anyways.

lower your resolution and the text size will improve.

I am actually at arms\'s length - with a 55 incher it saved me from glasses for quite a while :-)

[claydoh]

I tried 200% and that worked, in other words, fractional scaling seems to be the problem.

Fractional scaling is not (well) supported in x11. And using the proprietary Nvidia drivers, or not, might be a factor as well. Not sure if the stock Nouveau is capable of it anyway.

26.04 with Plasma 6 and Wayland as the default will fare much better with this.