New user - mostly a good experience (and a bit bad)

[Mikkel]

I needed a replacement for my old work laptop - a Thinkpad T60 running XP. The lack of a modern browser and the speed was beginning to become problematic...

So about a week ago, I got a new (refurbished) laptop. I needed an OS, so I installed Zorin OS 16, after discovering it on YouTube.

The install completed without problems, and all hardware appears to work just fine. Everything was a bit small on the screen though - 125% fractional scaling fixed this problem (and created another problem).

Most of the applications work just as I'm used to, since I was already using mostly open source apps.

And now the few problems... I guess I should expand on these in separate posts.

The main problem/productivity killer is the scrollbars. They are usually not a problem, except in Thunderbird. How do you navigate through a folder with thousands of e-mails, without scrollbars (and buttons) allowing accurate control?

The second problem is Wine - I have two Windows apps I have to run. It looks like 125% scaling makes Wine scale to 80% instead. The window size increases, if I move back to 100% scaling.

And finally a feature, that I may just haven't found. In the file manager, I'm used to typing 'f' for instance, to move to files starting with f. In Zorin I get a search field, which is very handy in other circumstances. But is it possible to just jump to a file instead?

[Aravisian]

@Mikkel

The main problem/productivity killer is the scrollbars. They are usually not a problem, except in Thunderbird. How do you navigate through a folder with thousands of e-mails, without scrollbars (and buttons) allowing accurate control?

Which applications are lacking scrollbars? ( I agree with you and this is why I am very vocal about Gnomes removal of the Scrollbar Steppers...)

I wonder if you are experiencing Overlay scrollbars, which hide the scrollbars when they are not in use.
I disable the things so that the Scrollbars are always visible.

@Mikkel

And finally a feature, that I may just haven't found. In the file manager, I'm used to typing 'f' for instance, to move to files starting with f. In Zorin I get a search field, which is very handy in other circumstances. But is it possible to just jump to a file instead?

It does.

I prefer to use Nemo File Manager and it, too, will jump directly to the file in question.

@Mikkel

The second problem is Wine - I have two Windows apps I have to run. It looks like 125% scaling makes Wine scale to 80% instead. The window size increases, if I move back to 100% scaling.

This... is an issue... Fractional Scaling on Linux is a work in progress and is not yet really finished...

[TGRush]

Fractional scaling has it's own little issues, I would recommend (if you aren't using an Nvidia GPU) to select "Zorin desktop on Wayland" on the password screen before logging in
(select your desired user, then without putting in the password, check at the bottom right for a small gear icon)

Wayland is a more modern display protocol, that doesn't have to mean much to you, though it should run faster and more reliably than the default (X11), and support scaling better for apps which natively run under Wayland

any apps which don't run under Wayland are run using XWayland automatically, and might still look a little off. Notably Wine and Steam could look a bit weird still

[Mikkel]

@TGRush

Fractional scaling has it's own little issues, I would recommend (if you aren't using an Nvidia GPU) to select "Zorin desktop on Wayland" on the password screen before logging in

Don't think I would ever have discovered that option

any apps which don't run under Wayland are run using XWayland automatically, and might still look a little off. Notably Wine and Steam could look a bit weird still

It actually fixed the Wine problem! Now Wine apps are displayed at a reasonable size with 125% scaling.

The only problem I have discovered in Wayland so far, is blurry(er) text in Firefox and Thunderbird. Are there any font smoothing options/settings hidden somewhere?

[TGRush]

@Mikkel

is blurry(er) text in Firefox and Thunderbird. Are there any font smoothing options/settings hidden somewhere?

no need for that
these apps are probably just running under XWayland

you can add export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 to your .bashrc (located in /home/yourusername/.bashrc) and I assume that would work to make Firefox+Thunderbird use Wayland natively (because yes, they do support that)

(adding MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 to .bashrc will also make this fix work on Thunderbird without any additional work needed)

---

if you want to check if this would work before applying anything, you can just run Firefox (or thunderbird) with this manually in a terminal:

MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 firefox
# if you're done testing, just hit ctrl+C or close the Terminal.

[Mikkel]

@TGRush

no need for that
these apps are probably just running under XWayland

you can add export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 to your .bashrc (located in /home/yourusername/.bashrc) and I assume that would work to make Firefox+Thunderbird use Wayland natively (because yes, they do support that)

I added the line to the bottom of .bashrc, logged out and back in. The text display looks the same in Firefox (and Thunderbird), so perhaps it was already in Wayland mode?

But fiddling around with different settings, got me another possible solution. Switching scaling back to 100%, enabling the "Large Text" option in "Accessibility", and setting Wine dpi to 120 looks like a good compromise, to make everything readable

[TGRush]

@Mikkel

perhaps it was already in Wayland mode?

I think in about:support in Firefox you could see which system it was running on, I'd assume you can just CTRL+F and search for "Window Protocol" there, if it doesn't say Wayland then something didn't go quite right