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I have two monitors at work. One is a Dell 27 inch with 4K resolution and the other one is a Dell 20 inch at 1680 x 1050.

However, due to the resolution difference between these two monitors, the system interface look so small on the 4K monitor. I tried the unity tweak tool to scale the font and system interface to make the 4K monitor looks great however, it simultaneously enlarges the font and interface of the small monitor and makes it hard to use.

Is there a way to adjust the font and interface scaling independently for these two monitors? I'd also need one to be rotated by 270°

I am using Nvidia GTX 980 as the display card.

Tim
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YasinLi
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1 Answers1

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if you're using Gnome on Ubuntu, you can use xrandr command to make screens different from one another. For example:

xrandr --output HDMI1 --scale 2x2 --mode 1920x1200 --fb 3840x2160 --pos 0x0
xrandr --output DVI-0 --scale 1x1 --pos 320x2160

--scale 2x2 - make everything on 4K screen twice larger

--mode XxY - explicitly set the resolution for the screen (not necessary if is already set)

--fb XxY - set the size of a virtual screen (framebuffer) (this iss very important. Without this, you will be able to use only a fourth of your screen). That maximum framebuffer size might be specified in xorg.conf - then you cannot exceed it (it is written in the first line of xrandr -q output).

--pos XxY - in my case I set the absolute positioning of the screens, so my laptop screen is directly on the bottom of the external screen.

sources: Arch Wiki Page and This post

AliReza Mosajjal
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    Thanks for your answer. I am using Gnome currently. However, since I use the Xinerama to use one rotated screen and one non-rotated screen simultaneously, it may disable the xrandr. When I type xrandr in the commend line, it shows like this: RandR extension missing – YasinLi Aug 17 '15 at 14:52
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    you can just rotate one screen with xrandr too. take a look at here.

    as for your extension missing error, you can use this command to fix it (let's say the error was created for display :22)

    Xvfb :22 -screen 0 1680x1050x24 -extension RANDR &

     – AliReza Mosajjal Aug 17 '15 at 14:58
  • Thanks a lot. Does that means I can achieve what I want and still use the Xinerama ? – YasinLi Aug 17 '15 at 15:02
  • when you run xrandr and shows you the virtual display created by Xinerama, you can pretty much do whatever you want. you can even create two virtual displays with Xinerama and use xrandr to cast them into your displays. – AliReza Mosajjal Aug 17 '15 at 15:04
  • Thanks a lot. I can type xrandr --help and it displays all functions. But when I use xrandr --current, it still display : RandR extension missing Hence the current problem is: I can not output the screen or display list by typing xrandr or xrandr --current. At the same time, if i open system tools -> preference -> Displays, it shows: RANDR extension is not present. – YasinLi Aug 17 '15 at 15:09
  • take a look at this post – AliReza Mosajjal Aug 17 '15 at 15:13
  • Hello. After using xrandr setting everything fine, why everything go back to normal after I unlocking my screen? How to get xrandr effective after unlocking the screen ? Thanks – YasinLi Aug 23 '15 at 22:26
  • @YasinLi Hi! It's apparently a bug now but there are workarounds for it.You can take a look at here to see how re-run your xrandr after screen lock/suspension. – AliReza Mosajjal Aug 24 '15 at 05:11
  • Thanks a lot. I will try to write a script and put it into the sleep.d folder. One other question is still about xrandr. When I try to use --scale 2x2, it makes everything smaller and if I use 0.5x0.5 it will make everything bigger but the screen resolution is also half of native resolution. Is this normally or do I made any mistakes when using xrandr ? Thanks for you quick reply – YasinLi Aug 25 '15 at 12:26
  • How did you configure your --mode ? you can tinker with that as well. Maybe you can configure it for the bigger resolution, then scale it down by 2 by using --scale 2x2 ?! – AliReza Mosajjal Aug 25 '15 at 12:36
  • --mode 3840x2160 – YasinLi Aug 25 '15 at 12:43
  • can we keep the native resolution but change thi dpi setting to make font and manu looks bigger ? – YasinLi Aug 25 '15 at 12:45
  • yes that's absolutely possible – AliReza Mosajjal Aug 25 '15 at 13:09
  • xrandr: unrecognized option 'output' – Karl Morrison Apr 09 '19 at 06:13