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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Why is Gnome fractional scaling 1.7518248558044434 instead of 1.75? (unix.stackexchange.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 93 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The actual answer in on Stack exchange in their comments.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/740319/why-is-gnome-fractional-scaling-1-7518248558044434-instead-of-1-75

It is related to a mix of actual display resolution vs conversions to virtual resolutions (the scaled resolution), and use of single precision floating point calculations.

Essentially my understanding is what it is doing is storing the value needed to convert your actual resolutions number of pixels (2160p) to a virtual resolution number of pixels (2160/1.75 horizontally) but that gets you fractions of a virtual pixel. So instead of 1.75 it scaled by 1.75182... to get to a whole number of virtual pixels to work with. Then on top of that the figure is slightly altered from what we'd expect by floating point errors.

If you take the actual horizontal resolution 2190 and divide it by the virtual resolution it's trying to use 1233 pixels, you need a conversion value of 1.75182.... to convert to it so you don't get fractions of a pixel. If you used 1.75 you'd get 1234.2857... pixels. So gnome is storing the fraction that gets you a clean conversion in pixels to about 4 decimal places of a pixel.

Full credit to rakslice at Stack Exchange who also goes into the detail.