Vscode: Gnome fractional scaling not supported - blurry UI

[LennyPenny]

• VSCode Version: 1.34.0-insider
• OS Version: fedora 30-beta

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Use gnome fractional scaling on a monitor
2. Open vs code

Top is vs code file browser, bottom is nautilus launched directly from gnome

According to https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/issues/566 and https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mutter/+bug/1825625 this is an issue with vs code not having support for fractional scaling.

Is this a problem I should forward to the electron repo or is vs code the right place?

[bpasero]

We are building exploration builds that use a much newer version of our UI framework (Electron version 4.0.x). I wonder if this issue reproduces with one of these builds, could you try? Download:

• macOS: Download
• Linux: Download
• Windows: Download

[LennyPenny]

Sadly I am on fedora linux and use the .rpm builds, are these available as well?

[bpasero]

@LennyPenny https://az764295.vo.msecnd.net/exploration/a872a905cad7185d9bf55603aa95436df2df3601/code-exploration-1.34.0-1555567602.el7.x86_64.rpm

[carwyn]

This issue effects anything that's based on chromium including current Google Chrome.

@LennyPenny are you using Wayland on Fedora 30 by any chance? I'm guessing you are as I believe Gnome 3.32 fractional scaling is only available on Wayland. Anything that has to use XWayland (which I think includes current Chromium) ends up blurry as it's not using optimal scaling compared to toolkits like Gtk and Qt that have native Wayland support.

There is some work on chromium Wayland support, much of it here https://github.com/Igalia/chromium with some already upstream.

Until there is proper fractional scaling support It may be possible to force UI scaling off in chromium and instead use font scaling that would at least not be blurry. Widgets however won't be scaled.

[khvn26]

This Chromium issue needs more visibility, I hope this vscode issue will help to fix it faster.

Chromium Wayland support development is being tracked here: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=578890

I wasn't able to pinpoint what exactly should be fixed in Chromium's behavior on Xwayland, or, perhaps, in Xwayland itself. I hope something may be done with one or the other to mitigate this while proper Wayland support is underway.

EDIT: An Xwayland ticket with some discussion here: https://bugzilla.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=93315

[LennyPenny]

@carwyn yes, gnome fractional scaling is wayland only, which I am using

[bpasero]

We are building exploration builds that use a much newer version of our UI framework (Electron version 6.0.x). I wonder if this issue reproduces with one of these builds, could you try? Download:

• macOS: Download
• Linux (DEB): Download
• Linux (RPM): Download
• Windows: Download

[LukeCarrier]

@bpasero there's no change; see the link @khvn26 already posted above for the upstream Chromium effort: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=578890

[hedgepigdaniel]

This is the same underlying issue as https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/41345

[WhyNotHugo]

Note that this is not Gnome-specific. It affect any modern Linux system running on Wayland (instead of Xorg).

[pmhoudry]

Any update on this ? The lack of fractionnal support from vscode under wayland seems like a pretty big deal...

[otaviomad]

Electron has recently added wayland support and it will _probably_ be shipped with Electron 12 (which should happen in a few weeks if you go by their schedule). As is stated in #109176, VSCode will consume the new binaries when released and this issue will finally go away.