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Recently I bought the Dell XPS 15 7590 and I wanted to hook up a second screen. But as it turns out the external monitor, which is connected through HDMI, is only Full HD (1920x1080).

And so when Ubuntu boots up and I log in the screen on my laptop the scaling is perfectly fine (what a surprise), but the second screen is MUCH bigger than it has to be.

Screenshot of the scaling issue

How is it possible to run two different screens with different resolutions, but with the right scaling?

I have heard about LittleBigMouse for Windows, but haven't found any alternative for Linux. It would be nice if somebody could tell me a similar software.

Snieder
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3 Answers3

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You can scale screens independently from built in settings:

settings -> devices -> screen display

Click on the monitor you want to change then choose appropriate scale.

If you need more customization you could use xrandr (built in configuration utility to the RandR (Resize and Rotate) X Window System extension). it does affect the resolution though.

use xrandr | grep 'connected' to find active displays, identify which monitor you wish to change. The part you're after is the characters on a new line before the first space.

for me: eDP-1

Then you can use xrandr --output eDP-1 --scale 0.5x0.5

Edit: Then you can use xrandr --output eDP-1 --scale 2x2 to zoom out (0.5x0.5 zooms in)

For more indepth use of xrandr scaling without the negative side effects you could try reading this blog. Looks legit, but not tested.

Smurfz87
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I found that I needed to not only change the scale, but also enable "Fractional Scaling" in Settings > Displays to solve this problem. My first monitor was 3840X2400, and my second monitor was 1920X1080. I set the scale of the first to 200%, the second to 100%, and enabled fractional scaling.

After I enabled the Fractional Scaling I had to move the screens around in the GUI to get them to be side by side (they were separated). Now I have both monitors at different scales.

enter image description here

plasmapotential
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I've recently discovered Cursr, it works on windows, mac and linux. It seems to be in early stage/new but so far I didn't have issues with it, works fine. I tried LittleBigMouse couple times over few years before on windows but just couldn't get it to work properly

rene4
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