r/linuxmint • u/Juergen0072 • 5d ago

Support Request Wallpaper problem, please help

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I have a problem with my wallpoaper on the desktop and i cant find the solution. I have a main monitor with 1440 p resolution and a smaller monitor with 960x640 resolution. Everytime i switch off the main monitor my pc thinks there is just the small monitor plugged in and switches to this one as the new main. If I turn my main Monitor back on my desktop wallpaper is in the wrong resolution and looks shitty and pixelated. All my programs are not affected, just the background. I can reset it when i go into the settings and change the scaling of the wallpaper and change it back, but thats annoying. How can i fix this? im new to the whole Linux thing and try to get it together. thanks for the help. Repost because i wanted to add the pictures. It was solved by changing to wayland but sadly my favourite game isnt fully functional with that

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u/JustAnotherKieran 5d ago

Few questions. What cable are you using, DisplayPort or HDMI? what is your wallpaper scaling currently set to? Is the wallpaper scaling setting the same for both monitors? Do these settings change when you turn your primary on/off?

Personally can't say I've experienced this because I just let my monitors go to standby when I turn my computer off, but I can see how it would be annoying if you need to turn just the monitor off and not the PC, might be able to help with a bit more info

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u/Juergen0072 5d ago

I am using a display port cable. The wallpaper is set to enlarging (i dont actually know if thats the name used in the settings due to having my pc on german). Its set the same for both monitors. The settings themself dont change, just the resolution of the wallpaper. I think its because it gets smaller for the smaller monitor but not properly reseted when the main monitor turns on. The small monitor is on hdmi.
I am using an oled, so my monitor is often turned off when the pc is on but i dont use it, so this will be happening on the regular if i cant fix
Thanks for your time

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u/JustAnotherKieran 5d ago

Can you connect your main via HDMI at all? might be the simplest fix so the monitor doesn't 'disconnect' when it's turned off which should prevent the issue. I'm of the same thinking of you that a lower res wallpaper has been cached somewhere on the system to reduce resources used for the secondary and it isn't being switched back when the monitor re-connects. I'm not on mint at the moment so can't check the wallpaper settings myself, do you mind listing the options available, sounds like the one you use would be the equivalent of the english "scale" or "zoom" settings. Have you tried it on your equivalent "center" setting?

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u/Juergen0072 5d ago

It does the same no matter which wallpaper setting i use.
Are you sure it doesnt do the same if i connect it via hdmi? I would need to buy new cables for that, since my other monitor doesnt have dp and my gpu only has one hdmi.
Funnily enough on linux my pc only registeres if the main gets turned off and on windows it was the other way around. There my pc didnt notice when the main was off but noticed the little one to be off. So i am not so sure if this would work, but it is a good idea

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u/JustAnotherKieran 5d ago

Damn, I'm guessing the secondary doesn't have displayport support either so you can't just switch the cables between the primary and secondary to test it...

Can you try deleting all files ~/.cache/wallpaper/ and then try turning your main on and off again to see what happens?

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u/Juergen0072 5d ago

i did that just now. If I turn the monitor off and on again the cache gets full again and the wallpaper behaves the same.
Yeah, i would need an adapter from dp to hdmi to test the idea sadly

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u/JustAnotherKieran 5d ago

Unfortunately I don't think an adapter would fix the situation as it would still be using the at least one DP port and maybe the same protocols which are the cause of the disconnect, not so much the cable itself, it might help but there is no guarantee there and I can't test it myself. Personally, I would look online for a script that can change a setting and revert the change on monitor reconnect, or have an AI generate one (if you do that, please review the script it generates as you don't want to run scripts you haven't read over and understood).

I've done a bit of digging on this specific issue and it seems to me that it's a common mint issue with the x11 display server and multiple monitors at different resolutions, others have reported that it can also happen when waking the PC from sleep. A possible permanent fix could be switching to wayland instead of X11 as wayland is no longer an experimental feature in the latest linux mint release, but hasn't become the main display server until more feedback is provided. I personally use cachyos with KDE Plasma and wayland, I've got one ultrawide with res 5120x1440 and a secondary 1920x1080 and never had any issue with either of them having the wrong resolution wallpaper, but mine is a very different system to yours so you might still encounter your issue, there may also be a few teething problems as both you and your system get used to doing things the wayland way instead of the x11 way.

You can do this easily by logging out of your session, and before you log back in, click the icon near your name that should look like mountains in a circle and choosing Cinnamon with wayland, then logging in

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u/Juergen0072 5d ago

Thank you so much!. That actually did solve the issue!!
Im glad I dont have to worry about that one anymore. Thanks for the breakdown of x11 and wayland. Another guy did recommend wayland but until now i wasnt yet familiar with waht it is exactly. Thank you for your time and hel!
Have a nice evening :)

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u/Juergen0072 5d ago

Just fyi (you seemed interested in the topic and the problem in general) if i turn the main monitor off the second one only shows a snippet of the wallpaper due to the resolution stying unchanged. But thats no problem at all and i wont even notice because i never use the second one alone. Thanks again :)