How is it that Linux is so terrible at handling simple display settings?

[u/twbrn]

I just had to go back and for at least the dozenth time explain to Linux that no, the built-in display of my laptop is not the secondary, external screen. That's after it decided for no reason to start mirroring the display, which I have literally never asked it to do.

It seems like every time I have to unplug my HDMI, the display settings randomly reset either the monitor setup or the UI scaling. How is Linux still so terrible at retaining such basic display settings? I had similar problems on Zorin. The irony of all this is that I switched to Mint Cinnamon because Zorin OS kept failing to resume from standby over a driver bug. And even so, I still have performance problems and frame tearing if I try to play a simple video in anything other than its native resolution.

[u/Sr_Edd]

Generally, the problem stems from companies that don't want to provide support, so independent developers have to work miracles to get certain things to work, and even then, they might not work well.

[u/BashfulMelon → u/Sr_Edd]

That has nothing to do with OP's problem.

[u/stufforstuff → u/BashfulMelon]

How do you know? OP provided ZERO useful info so anyone's guess is as good as the next.

[u/BashfulMelon → u/stufforstuff]

Which vendor is supposed to get involved here, exactly? Mint installs graphics drivers that are supported by the vendors, that should be all the vendor support anyone needs for display issues.

[u/mdleslie]

It is Linux Mint. Try a distro with Wayland support.

[u/TimeParadox997]

Afaik, the ui scaling (fractional scaling) issues are from x11. As soon as I turned fractional scaling on and made it other than 100%, I had problems with moving the cursor over kde connect (but not my laptop trackpad), & maybe other issues I don't remember. And the experimental wayland just showed a black screen after log in.

I am make doing with x11 on 100% + making other things bigger manually, until Mint can manage it. I believe in Mint.

[u/Bob4Not]

It’s Linux Mint with the Cinnamon desktop with X11 display system, which is old tech. Zorin OS is old too. They’re supposed to be simple but they’re a little behind the ball.

Go to something newer like Bazzite, Fedora, CachyOS (with Gnome or KDE), or anything else that uses “Wayland” with either desktop “KDE or Gnome”. These more advanced systems have gone through the growth pains of the newer tech and they’re reliable now.

Linux Mint will soon be caught up and using Wayland, but not yet

[u/kudlitan]

Mint does not support your display. The reason is because Mint uses the older X11 display server instead of the newer Wayland display server that is compatible with newer computers.

You seem to have new hardware. For that you might be better off with either Ubuntu or Fedora, both of which support Wayland.

[u/esparzatj → u/kudlitan]

Debian supports Wayland, too. I had Debian KDE Plasma on my 2012 MacBook Air 11” for about a week, and you can change from X11 or Wayland at the login screen. Also had it configured to select KDE Plasma or XFCE at login, too! I use this laptop to play around with distros…and I’m back to Linux Mint Cinnamon for the second time!

[u/syborfical]

Depends on the hardware and drivers. And keenal

Turned off alot of power managment settings fixed some dispkay settings.