Been annoyed by terrible font rendering on my external monitor with Linux (Fedora + GNOME). After a week of frustration, I finally found a simple solution worth noting down.
Here’s what worked for me:
- Keep fractional scaling exactly at 100% (just disable it completely)
- Use gnome-tweaks to increase font size instead
- That’s it!
Most people try messing with resolution or enabling experimental fractional scaling, but those always caused other issues for me (lag, UI glitches, etc).
For reference, here’s how I set it up:
# Install gnome-tweaks if needed
sudo dnf install gnome-tweaks
In Tweaks, I went to Fonts section and set scaling factor to 1.25. Also set hinting to “Slight” and antialiasing to “Subpixel” which looks best on my monitor.
The best part is this approach doesn’t mess with the actual UI scaling - only text gets bigger, which means everything stays crisp without weird pixel artifacts. Much easier on the eyes during long coding sessions.
I’ve been using this setup with a 4K 32-inch IPS panel and it has been working great for me. The text is sharp and readable without any of the blurriness that fractional scaling introduces.
If you’re on Wayland + external monitor and having similar issues, try this before going down the rabbit hole of Xorg configs and scaling patches.