Using GNOME on a Small Screen
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 21st Aug 2008 19:24 UTC
Gnome Last week, we reviewed the Aspire One, Acer's entry into the netbook market. The small but powerful device comes preloaded with either Linux or Windows XP, and we reviewed the Linux version. Even though most people will never need to go beyond the default Linpus Linux offering on the One, more advanced users will quickly hit the wall Acer set up: it has more or less completely locked down the Xfce 4.2.2 installation on the One. This bothered me - this is a powerful machine, so I want a powerful operating system. I went for Ubuntu 8.04.1 - read on for a few thoughts on how well GNOME's user interface fares on a small-screen device such as the One.
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zlynx
Member since:
2005-07-20

That is how a high-DPI screen is supposed to look. If the font is set to 72pt size, the character cell should be exactly one physical inch. Not more, not less.

If you want 6pt fonts, then set the font to 6 or 4 or 2 or whatever you like.

And yes, I do go around telling old people that they are doing it wrong when they set Vista to 640x480 on their 20" monitor.

Reply Parent Score: 2

iain.dalton Member since:
2006-02-28

I think you mean pixel, not character cell. A character cell would be the box containing the entire character.

Reply Parent Score: 1

siride Member since:
2006-01-02

That's exactly what he meant. You obviously don't want a pixel to be exactly one inch.

Reply Parent Score: 2

siride Member since:
2006-01-02

It's not the fonts...I can deal with that. It's the layout of everything else. It's just so big and you can't do anything about. I didn't get a high resolution screen so that I can look at the moral equivalent of 800x600. Other environments let you adjust font sizes and the like so that, if you so choose, you can make it look like 800x600, but Gnome basically decides for you that clearly you want to have terrible use of screen real estate and the only option is to hack the themes yourself. And that still doesn't fix the problem of apps that waste empty space.

Reply Parent Score: 2

zlynx Member since:
2005-07-20

The Gnome components should be the same size no matter what your screen resolution is. I agree with the Gnome defaults. Start out big, that way everyone can read it, then let them make it smaller.

Get a thin-frame theme, there are several. Make your task bars smaller. Set the font sizes smaller. All of that can be changed.

Reply Parent Score: 1

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abraxas Member since:
2005-07-07

It's not the fonts...I can deal with that. It's the layout of everything else. It's just so big and you can't do anything about. I didn't get a high resolution screen so that I can look at the moral equivalent of 800x600. Other environments let you adjust font sizes and the like so that, if you so choose, you can make it look like 800x600, but Gnome basically decides for you that clearly you want to have terrible use of screen real estate and the only option is to hack the themes yourself. And that still doesn't fix the problem of apps that waste empty space.


I have no idea what you mean when you say "apps that waste empty space". That doesn't mean anything. Maybe you mean the iconbar in GNOME applications? No that can't be it, you can turn that off in the Appearance preferences.

Reply Parent Score: 2