This post isn't about TDD, but I just wanted to gather some notes into one place about how to get Hi-DPI working on Ubuntu. I found other sources but my hope is that this will bring all the important tips into one place.

I have a character flaw as regards overly shiny laptops, and when my golden Sony Vaio Z series finally packed in after 3 years of service, it was time to get a new one. The sensible choice would have been a Thinkpad or a Galago from System 76, but then I saw this thing, and I had to have it. It has a ridiculous 3200x1600 Hi-DPI screen, which I knew for sure was never going to work properly under Linux. But then, GNU/Linux is meant to be a bit rough on the desktop. It's all part of the fun.

Hi-DPI on Ubuntu in brief

• Set two Gnome UI settings:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings overrides "{'Gdk/WindowScalingFactor': <2>}"

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 2

(You can also install gnome-tweak-tool to fiddle with these, cf the "Window" section for the most important one).

• In Firefox and Thunderbird, open about:config and change layout.css.devPixelsPerPx to somewhere between 1.6 and 2

(Do not touch layout.css.dpi, that's a red herring).

• Then fix up your grub prompt and TTY consoles, more info on that below.

Credit to the ever-impressive Arch linux documentation for those tips.

Adjusting the grub boot menu to make it readable

You'll have noticed that the GRUB boot menu is in a ridiculously small font because of all our teeny-tiny pixels. Fix it by generating a new font in 30-point:

sudo grub-mkfont -s 30 -o /boot/grub/DejaVuSansMono.pf2 /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSansMono.ttf

DejaVu works well because it has all the glyphs for the line art, others may not work so well.

Edit /etc/default/grub and add a line saying GRUB_FONT=/boot/grub/DejaVuSansMono.pf2, and run update-grub to commit. There's more info here. While you're at it, why not add a delightful background image to your boot screen? Check out the Ubuntu wiki for details.

Adjusting your TTY console

One final thing that's pretty much unusable out of the box are the TTY consoles you get from pressing, eg, CTRL+ALT+F1. To change their font, you'll want to do a:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

I picked the VGA font in 32x16, and it looks fine, if somewhat retro.

And that's your lot!

Loads of things will still look pretty wrong. Chromium is a bit broken, but I don't use it enough to warrant a lengthy investigation. I haven't tried any non-gnome apps, but presumably they will suffer.

Next challenge is getting reasonably good touchscreen support!

I leave you with a screenshot...