I am investigating, in detail, a change from mate de (after about 10 years) to kde plasma.5 on the same computer. Evaluation is done by logging in back and forth between de.
In plasma5 text displayed everywhere was very fuzzy and not easy to read. If the mouse was hovered over the text, it would get crisper looking. Mate text is clear and crisp.
After days of tweaking font type, font size, looking at fading and transparency details in plasma5, and comparing values between mate and plasma, I found the cause of the fuzziness in plasma5 was due to plasma5 using 96 dpi (dots per inch) for display hardware info. mate was using 92 dpi. The dell specification for my dell U2419hx monitor was 92 ppi (pixel per inch) which I have assumed to be same as dpi for this discussion… Changing plasma5 dpi in font settings to 92 solved the fuzziness problem. Both desktops now have similar clarity.
Mate was using correct value and plasma picked up a wrong (spurious) value somewhere. I am assuming that hardware info is availabe or read in the kernel. Each desktop then reads that data into it’s own system and acts accordingly. Question is how did plasma5 pick up wrong value from kernal while mate picked up the right value.
Else, does each desktop read hardware stuff itself and mate read it correctly and plasma5 did not. How does hardware info, like dpi, get into the desktop?
I hope to learn more about opensuse in this thread but also if someone is having “fuzzy fonts” in plasma5 look at the dpi value used by the fonts process.
thanks, tom kosvic