4k Monitors, DPI, and Linux

A couple weeks ago, I got my first 4k monitor and hooked it up to my systems. The mac tolerates it (barely, at 30hz instead of 60.) The Linux machine... has been a struggle. So here are my collected hints. Bear in mind, my system is Xubuntu, at least for the moment.

1. Make sure you're getting the full resolution at 60Hz, assuming your video system can do that. I had to switch from a single link HDMI cable to a DVI cable.

2. The print gets really small. Set your font DPI (Settings, Appearance, Fonts). For my monitor, a 28 inch diagonal, at 3480x2160, that DPI works out to 157. There are calculators online.

3. Some applications still have tiny print? Like most especially LibreOffice, where the benighted fools took scaling //out// of the code this version? There's a trick. See, at least with XFCE's settings system, it doesn't propagate your new DPI to the X server itself, and Libreoffice gets its DPI settings from the xserver, not your desktop manager. Edit your .Xsettings or .Xdefaults file (whichever you feed to xrdb) and add this line:

Xft.dpi:157

(where 157 is whatever you set your DPI to previously.) Save, log out and back in, and libre office should behave itself properly.

I also have a multi-GPU setting and I keep getting kernel panics at startup (but not all the time). Some kind of race condition is happening, and I think the Nouveau drivers are being naughty (even though they're not supposed to be involved at all.) But that's a different struggle

-JRS

E-Bikin' 3

So I've been riding every day or two for a while now. More observations:

1. Lights. It gets dark //early//. I have circuit breakers on order and lights already installed on the bike. I'll put up another post when I have everything working. Or I've set the bike on fire.

2. I finally found a situation where my brakes were a little bit inadequate. There are some fairly steep walking/bike trails around here. I'd never tried them before when I was on lung power only, and even with the boost at full power (750 watts) my legs were burning quite a bit by the time I got to the top. Then, of course, I had to get down.  On a dirt trail, 15-20MPH seems a lot faster than it does on the road. I had enough brake to slow down, but I had to use some front brake, which I normally shy away from doing. (Too many trips over the handlebars). If I'd needed to stop in a hurry, I might have been in trouble. This isn't my usual riding pattern, so it's not urgent to do the brakes. But like I said before. If the wheels give me grief and I have to build new ones, drum brakes for me.

3. When it's freezing out, wear some freakin' gloves. Even at a placid 14MPH, my fingers were going numb where they stuck out of my riding gloves. I need to investigate cold weather gear that's appropriate to biking if I'm going to keep doing this on cold days.

4. It's STILL fun. :)

-JRS