I got a bigger and better monitor recently, and I’ve been exploring calibrating it on both my Mac and my Linux desktop for the last week or so.

It started out as a necessity: at full resolution (3840 x 2160), the text was just too small for me to read. Since I hated the fact that things looked “off” at a lower resolution, and the options for my new external display on the Mac were painfully minimal, I quickly found out about BetterDisplay.

A couple of days later I was already reading about the differences between Retina and HiDPI (mostly a marketing term by Apple, though Retina does specify a higher number of HiDPI, High Dots Per Inch, which hey, should be PPI, Pixels Per Inch, but that’s another thing), how to sync brightness between my monitors, found out that TrueTone is a whole Apple thing (but Night Shift isn’t, mostly anyway) and wrote myself notes on how to set things up. I don’t know how I found the time while still researching my recent Emacs stuff recently, which I’m still very much into at the moment. All I can say is that 5 hours of sleep a night have some benefits (don’t do that. I don’t recommend).

This morning I started looking into a similar degree of power in Linux. My Desktop is mostly used for Gaming (in terms of graphics anyway). The new screen gave me that “buttery smooth” feeling in games with the new refresh rate, which I didn’t know I was missing on the old display. The new resolution is awesome, but the real big benefit is the size of the new monitor (it’s a 32-inch), and a better aspect ratio (16:9, vs my Ultra-wide, which is 21:9), which means I get to see more without moving the mouse, and things are way more immersive (I now go for solo virtuals “walks” in Helldivers to relax and enjoy the view, which is not what you’re supposed to do in Helldivers, but so what).

On Linux, Kubuntu 24.04 LTS in my case, I still use X11, which doesn’t even come with a built-in brightness bar. I could play with Dell’s firmware to get something working quickly, but BetterDisplay spoiled me. Because Kubuntu 26.04 LTS is now out, I think it’s time for me to wipe and reinstall things on the Desktop yet again (last time was when I switched from PopOS). The built-in Wayland (which will come with more options) is just one more thing I want to try, but really, my Linux Desktop is a messy collection of various libraries and programs I downloaded and set up and forgot about, and I need to do it all over again slowly with the right documentation.

I think I need another full week’s vacation to kick this one off, though, if we’re talking the kind of research and documentation I left for myself in terms of my Emacs config, but I think it will be worth it.