Switch between different display settings

[Discostu]

Hi,

first I'd like to thank you for the great work you did with MX Linux. This is the first Linux OS I'm using so naturally I'm a bit overwhelmed. I have two questions about the desktop display settings:

1. I'm currently using MX Linux as a persistent system on a USB stick. I'd like to use this as a portable OS that I can use at home and at work. Sadly, my home laptop and my work laptop have very different displays. Home laptop is a normal 1080p screen, work laptop is a lenovo yoga 900 with high-resolution display. Therefore the settings for font size, icon size etc. that I have at home are much too small for the work hardware. Is it possible to have two display profiles in my system, so that at work I just select some kind of settings file and everything (system fonts, panel, clock, Firefox font size, etc.) is changed to match the display? Or do I have to create a separate user for this to work? (Or ... if I'm brave enough ... should I write script?)

2. I've played with all these display settings very much and now the design is a mess (on both screens). I'd like to return to the system defaults. Is this possible? Or do I have to start from scratch (install new live system or delete persistence files)?.

[fehlix]

Welcome to the forum.
Please provide for both used pc's system information e.g like the output of this command:

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inxi -Fxz

And do post this between the code tags for better readability [code] ... post here .. [/code]
There are at least two ways to achieve this, either through the save-state mechanism,
or alternatively through of menu entries for both system with boot parameters reflecting
the screen resolution.

[Discostu]

Data for my work PC, for the other one I can provide it when I'm at home (in ca. 6 hours).

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System:    Host: mx1 Kernel: 4.15.0-1-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 6.3.0 
           Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3 tk: Gtk 2.24.31 Distro: MX-17.1_x64 Horizon March 14, 2018 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: LENOVO product: 80MK v: Lenovo YOGA 900-13ISK serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: LENOVO model: VIUU4 v: SDK0J40709 WIN serial: <filter> UEFI [Legacy]: LENOVO 
           v: C6CN39WW date: 10/11/2016 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT1 charge: 59.6 Wh condition: 59.6/66.0 Wh (90%) model: Simplo BASE-BAT 
           status: Full 
CPU:       Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core i7-6500U bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Skylake 
           rev: 3 L2 cache: 4096 KiB 
           flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 20736 
           Speed: 407 MHz min/max: 400/3100 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 492 2: 465 3: 494 4: 497 
Graphics:  Card-1: Intel HD Graphics 520 driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.19.2 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa 
           resolution: 3200x1800~60Hz, 3840x2160~30Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 520 (Skylake GT2) v: 4.5 Mesa 13.0.6 
           direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Card-1: Intel Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus ID: 00:1f.3 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.15.0-1-amd64 
Network:   Card-1: Intel Wireless 8260 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel bus ID: 01:00.0 
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter> 
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 592.63 GiB used: 1.68 GiB (0.3%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: MZNLN512HCJH-000L2 size: 476.94 GiB 
           ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB vendor: SanDisk model: Ultra USB 3.0 size: 115.69 GiB 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 12.40 GiB used: 377.5 MiB (3.0%) fs: overlay dev: ERR-102 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 29.8 C mobo: 27.8 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Info:      Processes: 203 Uptime: 10m Memory: 15.58 GiB used: 1009.1 MiB (6.3%) Init: SysVinit 
           runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 6.3.0 Shell: bash v: 4.4.12 inxi: 3.0.10 

[fehlix]

Thanks. I do assume the screen resolution will be recognized and set properly when booting on both PC's.
Please in addition show us for both PC's the DPI scaling you have choosen best working for you.
I.e. show us the output of this:

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xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Xft/DPI

and to get a better picture provide the current boot parameter:

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cat /proc/cmdline

[Discostu]

For work:

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DPI: 190
Boot parameter: persist_all lang=de_DE tz=Europe/Berlin quiet

[fehlix]

For work:

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DPI: 190

If just changing the DPI would be enough, we could solve this with a simple "dpi-switcher"
e.g switching manually by just one click bewteen 190 at work and e.g. 104 at home.
Which would look like this:

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[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
# filename : DPI_Switcher.desktop
# by fehlix
Type=Application
Name=DPI Switcher 
Comment=Switch between 2 given DPI's
# ----------------------
# adjust DPI values here:     
Exec=bash -c 'A=104; B=190; declare -A T;T=([$A]=$B [$B]=$A);tn() { xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Xft/DPI "$@";}; tn -s ${T[$(tn)]}'
# ----------------------
Icon=indicator-workspaces-7
Path=
Terminal=false
StartupNotify=false
Categories=XFCE;Settings;DesktopSettings;X-XFCE-SettingsDialog;X-XFCE-PersonalSettings;

Save the code above into a file with filename on Desktop like "DPI_Switcher.desktop"
If more settings needs to be switched, we might adjust this.

[fehlix]

A slight adjusted variant of the DPI_switcher,
to always switch between given values reagrdless of the current settings:

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[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
# filename : DPI_Switcher.desktop
# by fehlix
Type=Application
Name=DPI Switcher 
Comment=Switch between 2 given DPI's
# ----------------------
# adjust DPI values here:     
Exec=bash -c 'A=104; B=190; declare -A T;T=([$A]=$B [$B]=$A);tn() { xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Xft/DPI "$@";}; C="${T[$(tn)]}";  tn -s ${C:-$A}'
# ----------------------
Icon=indicator-workspaces-7
Path=
Terminal=false
StartupNotify=false
Categories=XFCE;Settings;DesktopSettings;X-XFCE-SettingsDialog;X-XFCE-PersonalSettings;

[Discostu]

Thanks. As mentioned above there are many settings that have to be adjusted for the MX Linux interface to work on a high resolution display. There are even some settings I haven't found yet, like height, font and icons of the title bars. If this was just about DPI, I could change it manually when switching machines.

[fehlix]

OK. So we have is DBI, font-size,icon-size, not sure about "height and icons of the title bars" as this a part of the theme you choose.

[Discostu]

Also Firefox settings, sizes for the clock and I think I also had to change something in the panel settings. I've to research a bit this evening. Somewhere in the Wiki there's also an article about what settings have to be tempered with for high res displays.