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Window Managers for High Resolution Displays?
cfish asks: "Recently, I was told by a manager at a major monitor maker that CRTs are phasing out. I have a very weak eye and I read text at 1024x768 on a 21" monitor, sitting 2 feet away. Each alphabet is about 1/4" tall. What makes me panic is the fact that LCDs have fixed resolution and they are simply too small for me to read icons and widget text, like Microsoft's. This is a great chance for Linux to get a head start in a certain market: older folks and those who have eye strain problems. Generally speaking, not many people can read Microsoft's widget text on a 150dpi display, which may explain why no one buys them even that they are available. Imagine how frustrating it could be for medical display (x-rays), cad, image editing to have a high resolution realistic image but cannot read the menu and text. If someone can come up with a Window manager to beat MS on 200dpi displays, no doubt this will capture a strong following in image related applications. I have read about these debates 5 years ago. What has been done about it?"
Use a magnifying glass! ;)
This is the perfect opportunity to invent some sort of magnifying device...Yes..it should be portable and light. I'll call it glasses.
YAFIRL (Yet another Free iPods referral link)
No, LCDs do NOT run at anything less than their native resolution. They rely on (usually poor) scaling circuitry, which blurs, antialiases, and generally destroys any picture quality benefit the LCD would have gained you. And it sitll doesn't solve the conundrum of applications where high-resolution imagery is needed with reasonably sized widgets.
Oh well. Go ahead and buy your overpriced, useless LCD monitors and run them at suboptimal resolutions, as long as I don't have to look at them. It makes my next Trinitron cheaper.
But but, you don't understand. You can't just go ahead and come up with solutions that have worked on M$ products for years now.
This was supposed to be the killer app for Linux to obtain world domination! It was to open up that huge untapped market of 'older folks and those who have eye strain problems', because everyone knows that Linux is _the_ product for older folks. The only thing keeping it back was the font size.
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I can't believe this story was posted. The story should have read: I don't know how to configure my system, what do I do?
(And to all the replies bitching about an LCD being ugly at lower resolutions, read the gawdamn comment. There is a perfectly viable alternative at native resolution. btw. I have a friend who is practically blind, and he actually chooses to run his 1600x1200 LCD at 800x600 mode. He's happy as a clam)