I know this is an old thread. But it's the only existing one that seems relevant.
I'm running Ubuntu Gnome 14.04 in VMware workstation on my MSI laptop which has windows 10 installed. The laptop native resolution is 3840x2160. It's basically impossible to use.
As an absolute Linux noob trying to use this as a way of using linux more often on a daily basis, can anyone advise a way of getting Gnome 3 to scale so that the text is readable in this particular scenario?
Dunno about Gnome 3 (gonna try it and KDE Plasma 5 after I finish writing my thesis), but Unity 7 on Ubuntu 15.10 and 16.04 works perfectly with 4K on my 15.6" laptop.
Moved these posts from the super old Linux @ 4K thread.
Thanks, If I can't find a way of getting Gnome working I'll give unity a shot.
In a month or so, I'm gonna take a crack at running various DEs at 4K, although I suspect, I'm gonna go back to Unity (hopefully Unity 8)
I personally prefer Gnome3 to Unity, however for the light usage on my laptop, unity would probably suffice I imagine. Those are the only two DE's I've tried so far so who knows maybe I'll find more that I like in the future.
I'd love to here what results you get using any others at 4K.
I like Unity, because apart from stellar 4K support, it also has very good mixed DPI support. My two day to day computers are a 4K laptop and an old desktop with three screens hooked up to it - 19" 1280x1024, 24" 1920x1080 and 17" 1280x1024. All having very different DPIs, but with a simple slider you can make everything take up the same real estate across all screens.
I would look in gnome setting -> fonts. On Cinnamon, at least, there's a setting for "text scaling factor" which will allow you to adjust the displayed font size of all GTK applications. (native gnome programs)
Hope this helps!
Try giving something like XFCE a wing or AwesomeWM. Totally worth it.