Settng DPI on gdm and Sessions

[Allen Kistler]

Christopher A. Williams wrote:
> Is there a way to set the DPI setting for GDM, and thus the X sessions
> called from it, without changing this in the individual user profiles?
> 
> On one system I have, F11 gdm was automatically set to 120DPI, which
> looked absolutely hideous at 1440X900 resolution. On another system, it
> set itself automatically to 94DPI, which looked better, but not ideal.
> I'd really like the default on both to be 96DPI (or perhaps 100DPI).
> 
> How do we do this, or are we just simply at the mercy of whatever gdm
> decides to do?

It's not Gnome, it's the video driver and Xorg-server.

Depending on the driver, there may be an option to set it in xorg.conf. 
  (Of course, you have to create an xorg.conf to use it.)

If there's not an option for your driver, you can override the display 
size in xorg.conf to make the driver do the math differently.  I do that 
with the radeon driver, myself, because the driver isn't doing the math 
correctly.  (... and, yeah, there's a BZ on it ...)

Check the xorg.conf man page for DisplaySize.  Check the man page for 
your driver for whatever options are special to it.