Screen size weird and font too small

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I shifted the hard drive from another laptop - now the fonts somehow appear pretty small (is it just my eyes? I hope not) - and websites in the browser as well are leaving too much space on the sides - for eg this image from google search shows how much blank space there is on the sides .......... how do I fix this for a "normal" font/appearance ?
googlebigscreen.png
 
SirDice said:
Maybe loading the wrong graphics driver for this laptop? And it fell back to the scfb(4) or vesa(4) driver?
Click to expand...
So I tried to check that - it's an Intel 620 graphics - which I assume required i915kms - accordingly my rc.conf has the following
Code: 
...
kld_list="i915kms"
.....

kldstat also shows the following line
Code: 
....
10    1 0xffffffff834f9000   1858b8 i915kms.ko
11    1 0xffffffff8367f000    739e0 drm.ko
....

the relevant lines in dmesg are

Code: 
....
VT(efifb): resolution 1920x1080
...........
GEOM_ELI:     Crypto: accelerated software
drmn0: <drmn> on vgapci0
vgapci0: child drmn0 requested pci_enable_io
vgapci0: child drmn0 requested pci_enable_io
[drm] Unable to create a private tmpfs mount, hugepage support will be disabled(-19).
[drm] Got stolen memory base 0x9a800000, size 0x2000000
drmn0: successfully loaded firmware image 'i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_04.bin'
drmn0: [drm] Finished loading DMC firmware i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_04.bin (v1.4)
sysctl_warn_reuse: can't re-use a leaf (hw.dri.debug)!
[drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20200917 for drmn0 on minor 0
VT: Replacing driver "efifb" with new "fb".
start FB_INFO:
type=11 height=1080 width=1920 depth=32
pbase=0xa0000000 vbase=0xfffff800a0000000
name=drmn0 flags=0x0 stride=7680 bpp=32
end FB_INFO
pchtherm0: <Skylake PCH Thermal Subsystem> mem 0xec153000-0xec153fff at device 20.2 on pci0
............

Does that seem ok - or something seems off?
 
Post your Xorg.0.log, that's the most important log with regards to Xorg.
 
Has the new laptop got a higher DPI screen than the old one? Like one of the fancy retina displays? If you're using bitmapped X fonts that would result in smaller visible glyphs. A friend of mine saw something similar when he switched from a 1080p monitor to a 4K monitor.
 
itsthosestonesman said:
Has the new laptop got a higher DPI screen than the old one? Like one of the fancy retina displays? If you're using bitmapped X fonts that would result in smaller visible glyphs. A friend of mine saw something similar when he switched from a 1080p monitor to a 4K monitor.
Click to expand...
It's not a fancy screen - although I suspect it is a move from a lower resolution to a higher resolution. How do I check the same?
 
Run xdpyinfo in a terminal and check the values you see for screen #0. You should see something like this.
....
screen #0:
dimensions: 1280x800 pixels (338x211 millimeters)
resolution: 96x96 dots per inch
depths (7): 24, 1, 4, 8, 15, 16, 32
...

Run that on the old laptop and the new one and that should tell you the two screen resolutions.
If the new one is much higher, and you're using bitmapped X fonts, that might explain what you are seeing. You can scale your browser window by hitting ctrl-+, and choose a ttf font in terminal. Anyhow check your screen resolutions first.
 
It's really the dot pitch of the panel that you want to know; is the new monitor much smaller dot pitch than the old one. The xdpyinfo command will tell you, as above. If you're using a compositor, eg gnome or kde, you might be able to have an easy fix by setting a global scale factor in your screen settings.
 
itsthosestonesman said:
Run xdpyinfo in a terminal and check the values you see for screen #0. You should see something l
Click to expand...
Here's the relevant part - resolution is 1920x1080:
screen #0:
dimensions: 1920x1080 pixels (508x285 millimeters)
resolution: 96x96 dots per inch
depths (7): 24, 1, 4, 8, 15, 16,
Click to expand...
itsthosestonesman said:
Run that on the old laptop and the new one and that should tell you the two screen resolutions.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately the older laptop might be dead - but from what I recollect it might have been 1080x720 probably

itsthosestonesman said:
If the new one is much higher, and you're using bitmapped X fonts, that might explain what you are seeing. You can scale your browser window by hitting ctrl-+, and choose a ttf font in terminal. Anyhow check your screen resolutions first.
Click to expand...
How do I fix it to the new resolution? Doing ctrl-+ on every tab/window/application seems like a recipe for carpel tunnel syndrome 😅

Using a tiling manager - old school
 
I had a quick look at your Xorg.0.log, that machine is using the modesetting driver with glamor acceleration, and the screen is 1920x1080, which doesn't seem particularly high. You don't have the intel driver loaded, you would need to install xf86-video-intel to use that driver, however the modesetting driver should work fine, the log looks OK.
 
Right, so assuming the panels are roughly the same physical size, your new laptop has a dot pitch that is roughly half the old machine, so each pixel on the new screen will be 1/4 the physical size of a pixel on the old screen (very roughly!). If you're using xterm, you can either chose larger fonts using ctrl-button 3 and select a larger font, or install some ttf fonts and use a scaleable font. And in the browser window just ctrl and + to increase the font size. Try that.
 
itsthosestonesman said:
I had a quick look at your Xorg.0.log, that machine is using the modesetting driver with glamor acceleration, and the screen is 1920x1080, which doesn't seem particularly high. You don't have the intel driver loaded, you would need to install xf86-video-intel to use that driver, however the modesetting driver should work fine, the log looks OK.
Click to expand...
thanks a lot - I did a pkg search and this came up xf86-video-intel-2.99.917.923,1 X.Org legacy driver for Intel integrated graphics chipsets - should I install this to fix the issue?

itsthosestonesman said:
Right, so assuming the panels are roughly the same physical size, your new laptop has a dot pitch that is roughly half the old machine, so each pixel on the new screen will be 1/4 the physical size of a pixel on the old screen (very roughly!). If you're using xterm, you can either chose larger fonts using ctrl-button 3 and select a larger font, or install some ttf fonts and use a scaleable font. And in the browser window just ctrl and + to increase the font size. Try that.
Click to expand...
that's somewhat helpful to understand - but I'm looking at some kind of solution which hopefully doesn't require me to adjust every app/terminal every time I open them.
 
I don't think this is a driver problem, the modesetting driver should work fine. You just need to reconfigure your fonts to account for the smaller dot pitch of the new panel.
 
Of course if you switch to a scalable font (TTF) that will be done automagically for you. But bitmapped fonts can look nice in xterm, no dithering or artefacts.
 
itsthosestonesman said:
I don't think this is a driver problem, the modesetting driver should work fine. You just need to reconfigure your fonts to account for the smaller dot pitch of the new panel.
Click to expand...
so should I be installing the driver or is that a last resort? I'm not sure how to reconfigure the fonts - the xterm font change led to the xterminal opening - but i'm actually using another terminal and looking for a general solution - how do I go about that? ctrl-+ works but doing that every time is a serious pain
itsthosestonesman said:
Of course if you switch to a scalable font (TTF) that will be done automagically for you. But bitmapped fonts can look nice in xterm, no dithering or artefacts.
Click to expand...
thanks - will keep this in mind - once I get the basic settings right
 
Forget about installing the intel driver, I don't think that's the problem. Read the two links I posted about configuring default fonts in xterm and TTF fonts.

Ah, which terminal are you using? It it's Xt based there should be an app-defaults file for it. If it's something like terminology, then you better consult the rasterman ;-)
 
There is no global solution... unless you're running a modern desktop environment like kde plasma where you can set a default font for everything. If you're using an old-school tiling WM, you will probably need to configure default fonts for each program you're running, although it's not a very bad problem. Unless your WM has a way to do that. If I was running fvwm for example, I would need to separately configure the default fonts specifically for xterm, aterm, uxterm, etc etc
 
itsthosestonesman said:
Forget about installing the intel driver, I don't think that's the problem. Read the two links I posted about configuring default fonts in xterm and TTF fonts.

Ah, which terminal are you using? It it's Xt based there should be an app-defaults file for it. If it's something like terminology, then you better consult the rasterman ;-)
Click to expand...
this link goes onto describe how to change fonts for xterm https://wiki.netbsd.org/tutorials/x11/how_to_use_ttf_fonts_in_xterm/ - am I misunderstanding it? What I need mostly is something that fixes the issue for browsers and other applications - getting an eye strain even writing this

Using xfce4 for terminal
 
itsthosestonesman said:
There is no global solution... unless you're running a modern desktop environment like kde plasma where you can set a default font for everything.
Click to expand...
ah bummer - was hoping an easily fixable global solution :/ ......... thanks though
itsthosestonesman said:
If you're using an old-school tiling WM, you will probably need to configure default fonts for each program you're running, although it's not a very bad problem.
Click to expand...
will have to see the docs for it ......
 
An easy way to check if your terminal program is Xt based (and should therefore support an app-defaults file, IF it's been written correctly) is to use ldd to check whether it links to libXt; for example in the case of xterm:-

me3@eep3:/usr/local/lib/X11/app-defaults $ ldd /usr/local/bin/xterm | grep Xt
libXt.so.6 => /usr/local/lib/libXt.so.6 (0x8004e7000)

So we can see that xterm links to libXt, hence it's reasonable to expect that there will be an app-defaults file for it where a default font can be specified. I don't know which terminal you are using, but this is a quick way to check.
 
OK so your're using the xfce terminal app with a tiling WM... I think you need to read the docs on the xfce terminal program :)
 
And for the browser fonts... assuming firefox:-

www.wikihow.com

How to Change the Default Font in Firefox: 9 Steps (with Pictures)

Mozilla Firefox is a fully customizable web browser. You can customize its appearance, like color and themes, to suit your taste. One of the features you can customize in Firefox is the default font. Most browsers come in standard Times...
www.wikihow.com www.wikihow.com

Change the fonts and colors websites use | Firefox Help

This article describes how to customize the way you see websites by choosing font styles and colors that will override those used by the websites.
support.mozilla.org support.mozilla.org

The arch linux wiki's are always a good reference too.
 
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