KDE's HiDPI Scaling Support For X11 Is Getting Into Better Shape

While KDE on Wayland has generally enjoyed good HiDPI support, it's now taken until 2021 for KDE's X11 HiDPI support to be in a position of greater usability after evolving over the years.

With KDE Frameworks 5.85, when using a high DPI scaling factor on X11 with the default Plasma scaling system, task manager icons, system tray icons, and tool button icons are now displayed the correct size. But this isn't "the end" as there still are issues being tackled with some elements being too small and the like. At least more of the KDE desktop is behaving correctly under X11 with the HiDPI scale factor.

Separately, KDE Frameworks 5.85 will now handle recursive changing of directory ownership and permissions properly / more reliably, various user interface improvements, the Plasma Wayland session in the System Settings shortcuts page no longer listing "KWin" multiple times, and other fixes.

More details on the KDE HiDPI X11 improvements and other work this week to end out July can be found via this blog post by KDE developer Nate Graham.