Tag Archives: linux tiny fonts and window frames

Post updated. Small fonts and window frames: a problem of lightweight window managers

Original entry from 6th of March

Usually things go fine. You have your Openbox, Fluxbox, PekWM or Awesome  etc.  window manager running and everything scales up nicely. Sometimes you end up into a situation where you are not that lucky: window frames are too small and the desktop font is just too tiny – and you cannot even read the text properly.

Luckily, the previous issues are easy to fix. Usually, the root cause of them is that you have a big display and your window manager does not know how to size things correctly by itself. Another reason might be that you have changed your wires. For example, I replaced a broken old HDMI wire with a newer one and the issues appeared. You should edit your .Xresources file to apply changes to Gtk and QT programs alike. If you are only using GTK apps it might be a bit easier to change your DPI value via .Xdefaults file. Continue reading