Chrome UI scaling issue on XFCE 4.20 (Tumbleweed, Intel GM45)

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Hello everyone,

I’m experiencing an issue with Google Chrome UI scaling on a fresh install of openSUSE Tumbleweed running XFCE 4.20.

Hardware:

  • CPU: Intel Pentium T4500
  • GPU: Mobile Intel GM45 Express (Integrated)
  • Display: Laptop panel, 1366x768

The Problem: The Chrome interface (tabs, address bar, menus) looks oversized, as if a high DPI scaling (like 1.5x or 2x) is applied automatically. However, my system DPI is set to 96 in XFCE Appearance settings. Other GTK/Qt applications display correctly at 1:1 scale.

Details:

  • I am using the standard xf86-video-intel (or modesetting) driver.
  • The issue persists even after restarting the session.
  • Launching with --force-device-scale-factor=1 fixes the issue temporarily, but I’m looking for a way to understand why this happens on Tumbleweed + XFCE 4.20 specifically.

Is there a specific environment variable or a flag in XFCE 4.20 that might be triggering this behavior for Electron/Chromium apps?

Thanks in advance for any help!

2
  1. First question … is this Chrome, or Chromium? If it’s Chrome, where do you install from? Using the Google-specific Repo(s)?
  2. Have you tried this … create a new user account that has not been used before… then logout (your user) and login as the new user and test Chrome - any difference?