Is it possible to have two monitors with different scales?

Question

I have currently two monitors :

Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 6400 x 2160, maximum 32767 x 32767
DP-2 connected primary 3840x2160+2560+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 600mm x 340mm
   3840x2160     60.00*+  30.00  
   2560x1440     59.95  
   1920x1080     60.00    59.94  
   1600x900      60.00  
   1280x1024     60.02  
   1280x800      59.81  
   1280x720      60.00    59.94  
   1152x864      59.96  
   1024x768      60.00  
   800x600       60.32  
   720x480       59.94  
   640x480       59.94    59.93  
DP-4 connected 2560x1440+0+360 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 598mm x 336mm
   2560x1440     59.95*+ 165.00   144.00   120.00    99.95    84.98    23.97  
   1024x768      60.00  
   800x600       60.32  
   640x480       59.94

My problem is, tha the 4k one (DP-2) is way to small. If I increase the scaling, then the DP-4 is way too big.

I saw other posts that told that the multiple scaling is possible in wayland but since I have a nvidia there were no drivers currently...

I also tried some commands with xrandr but none worked for exemple :

xrandr --output DP-4 --scale 2x2 --pos 7680x0; xrandr --output DP-2 --scale 1x1 --mode 3840x2160  -fb 8960x5040  --pos 0x0

I'm running Ubuntu 18.04 with Gnome 3.38.2. Are there currently a solution to this ?

It is hard to achieve using xorg, but if you try wayland, it works from the settings. Nvidia cards not supported though, afaik — Кристиян Кацаров, Mar 30 '20 at 08:01
Are you mirroring the primary screen? Or created second workspace on second monitor? — Kulfy, Apr 02 '20 at 19:08
have you already tried this? https://askubuntu.com/a/555812/839631 — , Apr 04 '20 at 08:20

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 02 '20 at 13:09

0

It should be possible. I have not tried doing this with xrandr directly. I used the Display Settings. I am on xUbuntu, and for me its Menu->Settings->Display

The Iiyama is set to 1920x1080, whilst the Dell is 1280x1024 (I normally have them the same, I just changed them for you!)

answered Apr 02 '20 at 13:09

Adrian Challinor

66
2

Your monitors have approximativly the same scale, thats why this is working fine. – Dimitri Danilov Apr 03 '20 at 08:00
Where in your screenshot of the "Display" window would you change the scale? – Andrew Apr 06 '20 at 06:05

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 04 '20 at 20:32

What you want is Display independent DPI scaling. Which automatically change size of windows depending on the the screen they are on.

This isn't a supported in Xorg. But one of the main benefits of Using Wayland which is the long awaited successor to Xorg.

Ubuntu hasn't yet changed it to the default so you have to select it from the login screen like this:

All Xorg applications need to add Wayland support for the DPI scaling to work. So it wont work for all programs.

Legacy applications will not scale up / down on different screens as they are running in a rootless Xorg under Wayland.

All gnome application work so you can try with files or terminal. Firefox also support Wayland natively.

Is it possible to have two monitors with different scales?

2 Answers2