In 2024, with GNOME 45, Wayland, and 1.25 fractional scaling, regular DPI displays still look better than HiDPI displays. This is a photo of Discord on two laptops side by side.
The blurry one is the HiDPI display from Framework 13. The sharp one is a regular DPI display from Dell XPS 13. Both laptops.
The difference is even more stark in person.
Even the screenshots from the Framework are blurrier than the screen shots from the Dell.
This is an Xwayland and Electron issue, not a Discord or Gnome or a Display issue. This is because Electron under Xwayland (and also somewhat under Wayland) doesn’t behave well with fractional scaling. If you want a true comparison, try opening Discord on Firefox with Wayland. It will be night and day in terms of sharpness compared to regular DPI displays
It’s also posaible to open Discord with Wayland directly by editing the exec command in the .desktop file. Can’t remember what it was ofd the top of my head, but it’s the same for all electron apps.
Add
--ozone-platform-hint=autoto the command, I’ve done it so may times for electron stuff it’s engrained into my head now haha. You can check that it works withxlsclients.Also
QT_QPA_PLATFORM=waylandfor QT based apps is handy to know too if they’re not behaving.It works but as soon as I close it to the tray, it’ll crash