Can't Uninstall and return to pre-betterScale state

[staranto]

I decided to give betterScale a go. Play around a bit, etc. Cloned the repo and ran ./setup.sh. I had some artifacts floating around the desktop, so I decided to back out and play around when I had more time. No big deal.

So, per the README, I ran ./setup.sh again and selected option 10-100%. Rebooted. That got rid of the artifacts, but ALL of my apps (for me that's primarily Chrome, VSCode and Konsole, though I tried a few others too) now have "super-sized" text, menu components, etc. I can't seem to get the apps sized back to the way the were pre-betterScale. I've also removed the 20-intel.conf with no difference. Any ideas on how to troubleshoot?

Dell XPS-13 9310
Linux xps13a 5.13.0-35-generic #40~20.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Mon Mar 7 09:18:32 UTC 2022 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Dell 34" Ultrawide

[rbreaves]

Sorry - I should have added this in the readme &/or script to fully remove its changes.

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings overrides "[{'Gdk/WindowScalingFactor', <1>}]"
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 1

then log off & back on

[rbreaves]

The artifacts are likely due to needing tearfree &/or dri3 to your xorg conf file & a rebooting for your GPU. Please consult archwiki for detailed info on what those options look like. I have not integrated fixes for artifacts for very many GPU types just yet but I do plan to.

[staranto]

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings overrides "[{'Gdk/WindowScalingFactor', <1>}]"
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 1

then log off & back on

Worked perfectly! I'll experiment some more soon and report back if I still have tearing problems. Thanks for your work here and w/Kinto.sh!

[gina-stoffel]

Hey, I have the same issue as staranto described above. I have got a Dell XPS 13 9310 laptop with 3840 × 2400 resolution. Because of its high resolution, I set the scale in settings to 200%. The external displays I use have 1920 × 1080 or 2560 × 1440 resolutions, thus I usually configure my screen to go back to a lower resolution and set the scale to 100% when an external display is plugged in.

I tried betterScale because of the flickering mouse pointer issue with fractional scaling, but gave up fractional scaling because of its bad performance anyway. So I did want to revert the installation of betterScale, but I still have issues with it. The issues I experience are:

1. When plugging in a second screen, in-app text/content seems to be 200% scaled, for example in VScode, Firefox or Spotify while the shell and 'frames' around the apps have 100% scaling (which is the correct one in this case, since I use FullHD when plugging in another screen, and thus need to use scale of 100%)
2. I can run the above command then, and it resets the 'in-app-scale' to 100%
   gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings overrides "[{'Gdk/WindowScalingFactor', <1>}]" gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 1
3. Now when I plug out the external screen, my laptop switches to 100% 'in app' scaling at 3840 × 2400 resolution but 200% scaling for the shell again... Before installing betterScale, my device somehow always fell back to its 'initial configuration with the internal screen' (so, 200% scale), but since I have run the setup script, it can only keep one config and does not change back when plugging in/out an external screen

Now since I use external screens every day it is a bit annoying to run the setup script or also the gsettings command for multiple times a day. @rbreaves do you have any idea what steps I might be missing to fully go back to the way how my device worked before installing betterScale?

So here is what I did:

1. Run setup script again. It did not persist across booting and across plugging external displays in and out.
2. Deleted 20-intel.conf, did not change anything
3. Run gsetting commands and log back in. It helps when plugging an external monitor in (needs to be run every time...), but it does not help when I plug the monitor out again --> it seems that my device does not remember the config that I did set for the built in screen

What I want:

• When using the built-in screen, 'in app' scale should be 200% otherwise it does not match shell and is too small to read.
• When plugging in an external display, 'in app' scale should change to 100%
• When plugging out external display again, the device should automatically go back to 200% 'in app' scale... (which it does not....)

I use Linux gina-XPS 5.14.0-1051-oem #58-Ubuntu SMP Fri Aug 26 05:50:00 UTC 2022 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[rbreaves]

Sorry, just now seeing this. Only thing that comes to mind is maybe uninstall autorandr in case it is trying to re-apply settings? This app creates profiles in-conjunction with that app, perhaps the uninstaller did not remove autorandr.

As far as how the app works - it is designed to make use of the 2x scale feature in Gnome and Gnome shell based DE's, aka Budgie as well, and possibly Mate. While doing that we double your native screen resolution or simply increase it by a particular multiplication that can then be downscaled to your native display resolution.

Doing this for multiple displays is possible but I never fully implemented that in an automated fashion, but the concept is mentioned in the readme and how to do it by hand via a reddit link. Sadly working with xrandr is a bit.. annoying and often requires a good bit of experimentation imo. Taking some of that out with a script like this is possible but I ran out of time to fully develop this script, hopefully I can free some time up in the future to complete this project and package it properly for some distros.

Also the upscaling and then downscaling does have some impact on the CPU sadly - but it is mostly fine till you do a lot of watching of video imo. macOS isn't much different in this regard - it is the better way though from a purely app to app standpoint as scaling will be unified and sharp across the board - but Windows hap hazard way of scaling applications might actually be better in terms of video playback happening from a site like Youtube as an example. Of course Linux also by default often times uses a hap hazard way of scaling as well.

[GeorgeCodes17]

I also had this issue but the changing gnome settings stuff didn't work instead resetting the dconf (all the settings for how ur desktop is setup dock size position, display settings) worked for me https://ostechnix.com/backup-and-restore-linux-desktop-system-settings-with-dconf/

[fungiwnl]

Sorry, just now seeing this. Only thing that comes to mind is maybe uninstall autorandr in case it is trying to re-apply settings? This app creates profiles in-conjunction with that app, perhaps the uninstaller did not remove autorandr.

As far as how the app works - it is designed to make use of the 2x scale feature in Gnome and Gnome shell based DE's, aka Budgie as well, and possibly Mate. While doing that we double your native screen resolution or simply increase it by a particular multiplication that can then be downscaled to your native display resolution.

Doing this for multiple displays is possible but I never fully implemented that in an automated fashion, but the concept is mentioned in the readme and how to do it by hand via a reddit link. Sadly working with xrandr is a bit.. annoying and often requires a good bit of experimentation imo. Taking some of that out with a script like this is possible but I ran out of time to fully develop this script, hopefully I can free some time up in the future to complete this project and package it properly for some distros.

Also the upscaling and then downscaling does have some impact on the CPU sadly - but it is mostly fine till you do a lot of watching of video imo. macOS isn't much different in this regard - it is the better way though from a purely app to app standpoint as scaling will be unified and sharp across the board - but Windows hap hazard way of scaling applications might actually be better in terms of video playback happening from a site like Youtube as an example. Of course Linux also by default often times uses a hap hazard way of scaling as well.

Thanks, uninstalling autorandr worked for me.

[ChasmanV]

I installed this to run it on my ubuntu laptop. I didn't realize it would remove my multi screen capability. I did the uninstall autorandr and it is still not letting me do multi-screen. I removed and reinstalled displaylink as well. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Ian