# Issue with screen resolution



## jmchenry110 (Aug 31, 2019)

Hello everyone,

I am a new user to freebsd, but not to unix based OSes.  I've used Linux for years but for various reasons I am switching to freebsd.  Having said that, I'm having issues with screen resolution.  I have searched through various forums, including this one and I'm just not finding a resolution (no pun intended).

The problem is that I have 4k screen and the DPI setting just hasn't scaled all the screen elements properly.  I'm using the Plasma desktop environment and I tried looking in the system settings in plasma to change the screen resolution to something lower which would have solved the issue.  However, no resolutions are listed at all.  The result is that, for example, in Firefox, the tab fonts and other elements are crazy small, but other elements are just right.  In addition, I notice that even my mouse cursor will revert to extremely small when I mouse over certain things.

Some help with this would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!


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## RedPhoenix (Aug 31, 2019)

jmchenry110 said:


> Hello everyone,
> 
> I am a new user to freebsd, but not to unix based OSes.  I've used Linux for years but for various reasons I am switching to freebsd.  Having said that, I'm having issues with screen resolution.  I have searched through various forums, including this one and I'm just not finding a resolution (no pun intended).
> 
> ...


First, what's your Xorg Config File say?  And welcome!  Also, FreeBSD has Wayland now, so I opted to use that instead.  If you uninstall Xorg, Wayland should work just fine. Xorg is being discontinued soon I think... :\


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## jmchenry110 (Aug 31, 2019)

RedPhoenix said:


> First, what's your Xorg Config File say?  And welcome!  Also, FreeBSD has Wayland now, so I opted to use that instead.  If you uninstall Xorg, Wayland should work just fine. Xorg is being discontinued soon I think... :\


RedPhoenix,
Thanks for responding.  I currently don't have an xorg.conf file because the freebsd install guide said not to configure one as it should all be handled automatically.  Should I configure one to see what it does?


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## SirDice (Sep 2, 2019)

RedPhoenix said:


> Xorg is being discontinued soon I think.


Unlikely.


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## scottro (Sep 2, 2019)

I have a yoga2 with a hiRes (HiRes? hi, res!) screen and had some difficulties.Most of what helped me in X, at least, was from the ArchLinux wiki. 
I usually make use of xrandr with something like


```
xrandr --output eDP1 --scale .7x.7
```
The smaller the number, the bigger the fonts and so on.
Also in $HOME/.Xdefaults you can try something like 

```
Xft.dpi:192
```

See the ArchWiki article
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI


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## RedPhoenix (Sep 25, 2019)

SirDice said:


> Unlikely.


Well, that's a relief..... I was worried, since Wayland is now a thing, and XenoDM is the reccomended default for OpenBSD.  That's a relief to hear.  Thanks SirDice.


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## RedPhoenix (Sep 25, 2019)

scottro said:


> I have a yoga2 with a hiRes (HiRes? hi, res!) screen and had some difficulties.Most of what helped me in X, at least, was from the ArchLinux wiki.
> I usually make use of xrandr with something like
> 
> 
> ...


Yeah, that's the beauty of FOSS.  It's more or less a total standard now, especially with Wayland and Xorg.  It's on FreeBSD and OpenBSD, it's on Project Trident, it's on Fedora and Ubuntu, etc., etc....


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## RedPhoenix (Sep 25, 2019)

jmchenry110 said:


> RedPhoenix,
> Thanks for responding.  I currently don't have an xorg.conf file because the freebsd install guide said not to configure one as it should all be handled automatically.  Should I configure one to see what it does?


Yeah, running `X -configure` should work, but on my HP EliteBook 8470p, with Intel HD Graphics (no dedicated Graphics Card), FreeBSD handled it, and all I had to do was use `pkg install` to install a Desktop Environment, all the extras, the whole nine yards.  One benefit of Linux and *BSD is that they take up much, MUCH less space, fully installed and configured, than Windows does when IT is fully installed and configured. Bottom line, the biggest Partition (Slice, you know :3) is Windows 10's NTFS, while Ubuntu and FreeBSD have less than 100 GB (which still seems like quite a lot, especially when you consider that *nix doesn't need a GUI to be functional. It does a lot already, what with OpenSSH and other Unix tools. )


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## Sevendogsbsd (Sep 25, 2019)

To avoid introducing too many variables, and this is just my advice: get Xorg working first, then install a window manager or desktop environment. I have Intel video also and it works out the box with no Xorg config, with the exception of loading the driver in /etc/rc.conf. 

It is also preferred to have separate config files for X if any are needed, rather than one large one (xorg.conf), but I think one large one still works. So, if you need to have a config: one for video card, one for monitor, etc.


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