Hello,

I really don't see very well and in windows I have always had the displayed configured to 120 DPI at 1680x1050. This allows me to read the text on screen and makes all the icons bigger etc. It also increases the whitespace between lines and other helpful formatting changes that do not necessarily happen if you just change the font size. I really need to be able to change the DPI settings on KDE plasma to essentially zoom in for the entire display.

I have not been able to find anything definitive about how to do this on KDE. I looked up some instructions and have read that I should adjust the screen scaling factor under System Settings. I have looked, but I can find no such setting anywhere in the System Settings > Display interface. The only think I can do there is adjust the resolution.

Am I looking in the wrong place? I am running KDE Plasma 4.14.8 (I think) on CentOS 7.7 x86_64.

Suggestions would be appreciated.

LMHmedchem

Probably as the instructions you see may be for newer version of Plasma, as KDE 4 does not have scaling, iirc.

Font DPI settings will be in the Fonts section of System Settings. Using the search function to look for 'dpi' in System Settings should also reveal this, even in your version, I believe, just in case I am incorrect.

I really need to change the DPI settings rather than the font size. In many cases, the text is already too crowded to read easily and increasing the font size will generally make that worse. It seems odd that there would be no method to adjust the DPI since the code for KDE must set a value for that somewhere. It's not like KDE can just ignore it.

I have looked in the package manager and it doesn't look like plasma 5 is listed in the EPEL repository. Would that be in a different repository or is plasma 5 something that I can build?

LMHmedchem

The DPI settings should be at the bottom of Fonts config section in System Settings. It should be labeled 'Force Font DPI", and should look similar to this:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/HtALu.png
or
https://i.stack.imgur.com/YWo3F.png

I found the dialogue you were referring to and that worked well. I increased from the default 96 to 110, though it looks like it may treat anything over 96 as 120. Everything is now so much easier to read so that worked great.

Is there some way to make all of the desktop icons the same size? I can change the size using the toolbar that is part of each individual icon but it is hard to get them all the same by that method. I recently switched from default desktop to grid desktop since I was having trouble getting the icons lined up. Oddly, when I did that, a large bunch of my icons went to the upper left corner of the screen while several others stayed in place. The icons that stayed in place are much larger than those that moved. This would imply that some of my icons are different then others.

Is there a writeup somewhere about how to configure and organize the desktop so that my icons are the same and lined up properly?

Thanks,

LMHmedchem

Been approx 6 years since I used KDE 4, but let's give my memory a whirl:
KDE 4 uses the 'desktop' layout by default, which has zero files/folders on it, so everything is a widget, including application launchers (icons) , I think.

I don't know of a way to resize multiple widgets.

However, you can configure the desktop to use the 'classic' Folder View layout, which is the files, folders, and desktop shortcuts that we are used to in Windows. These are resized together, in the Icons section of System Settings, though the size iirc may change automatically depending on resolution. Right-click on the Desktop somewhere, and look for 'configure Desktop' or something similar, and change the Layout to Folder View. Now, any application or file you drag to your desktop, or add via right-clicking on a menu item will behave like normal files/folders, and changing the size is done in System Settings if needed.

Found a decently comprehensive guide to KDE 4 . Not complete, but graphical.
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/guide-to- ... x-desktop/

I have switched to the folder view settings. I had to remove all of the existing widgets and replace them with the link version that the folder view uses. The new icons automatically line up on a grid but System Settings > Application Appearance > Icons > Advanced > Desktop does nothing when I change the icon size. I can use an icon size anywhere between 16 and 256 and nothing changes, even on a restart. The icons that are there are so small that I need to use a font size of 8 to even see most of the icon label.

The icons were placed on the desktop by searching for the application in the application launcher, dragging the icon onto the desktop, and selecting "Link Here". It doesn't make any sense that the default icon size would be so small so I suspect I have done something incorrectly. Is there some way to adjust the size that I am missing?

LMHmedchem

I found it. The icon size is changed by right click on the desktop and select "Folder View Settings". In that dialogue, select "Display" on the menu bar on the left and there is a 6 option slider to change the icon size. The icon size setting in System Settings > Application Appearance > Icons > Advanced does not appear to do anything. This is odd since the possible value for that option change with the selected theme. Changing the size here for any of the listed categories does not appear to do anything.

Anyway, I seem to be getting to a desktop that I can work with.

LMHmedchem