Acer Swift 3 Ryzen 5 (Vega 8) on Ubuntu 18.04

inx

Hi,

I have the following queries -

1. What graphics driver needs to be installed on Ubuntu 18.04 ?

2. How to enable fractional display scaling on Ubuntu 18.04 ?

Can anyone please help ?

Rudy21

Hi @inx

This device was shipped with NVIDIA graphics card. So, you can install NVIDIA drivers using the following link: https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/120917/en-us

and to enable fractional display scaling try the below steps:

Enable Scaling Controls

Because the fractional scaling feature wasn’t entirely ready for the release, you need to enable access to it yourself. It’s not too hard. You only need to run a single command.

gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']"

That command will directly interact with the GNOME Shell and enable the feature.

Set Your Scaling

Now that you have scaling enabled, you can experiment with it and find the right fit for your system.

Open your system settings and navigate to “Devices,” then “Displays.” You can choose the orientation, resolution, and, of course the scale. Currently, the scaling ranges from 100% to 200% in 25% increments. That can possibly change in the future, but it still provides a reasonably robust set of options to fit your display.

Try different options to see what looks best and save it. Because this is integrated into GNOME itself, everything is handled through your common system interface.

That’s it! Hopefully, GNOME was able to adapt to improve your HiDPI experience.

inx

Hi @Rudy21

Thanks for your suggestions.

But, this laptop does not have a NVIDIA graphics card.

It has Radeon™ Vega 8 Graphics ( https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-5-2500u )

Running the mentioned command did not enable fractional scaling. The only 2 scaling factors available are 100% & 200% .

I was looking for 125% scaling or any other fractional scaling (which is not available currently).

Also, the display resolution 1600x900 is not available as well (FYI, this method did not work and resulted in blank screen - https://askubuntu.com/questions/330293/how-do-i-set-a-monitor-resolution-that-is-not-available-in-the-display-settings ).

JackE

Sorry. Graphics hardware functionality that you are trying to achieve depend more on the operating system GUI environment than on the drivers themselves. Since this hardware is mainly aimed at WinOS, you will typically find less functionality or fine-tuning capability under LinOS. Generally speaking, I find most flavors of Ubuntu like Mint, default to about the best display presentation you can expect in the LinOS GUI environment and they do take some getting used to if you had been using Windows. Jack E/NJ