Fractional scaling works perfectly well on Xorg Linux and Windows, but looks blurry on Wayland Linux. Maybe it's not micrometer-scale crisp, but I can't see that. Text on Wayland is very visibly blurred.
And it's not just text, but UI controls too. It looks like Wayland just renders the lower integer scale factor and then stretches the resulting bitmap image. That's bullshit.
MacOS way is better, text is blurry, but much less. I still don't like it though, but can use it in an emergency.
But there apparently is another way that Xorg and Windows uses. I have perfectly crisp (as far as my eyes can tell) UI and text on both systems at 150% scale (27" 4K display).
> for tech debt reasons
I thought Wayland was supposed to fix the tech debt - so now it introduced some that makes bare basic features impossible?
It does for any app that can't scale; all modern OSX apps can scale natively. I've been using that trick for integer-like scaling for years to deal with fractional scaling while preserving the quasi-aliasing ("crispness") of the source image.
However, Wayland does not prescribe any method for non-integer scaling. Any Wayland WM could choose to do the same thing, and it would be hardware accelerated essentially for free.
Both X11 and Wayland WMs typically don't use this trick, and neither does Windows.
It is exactly (some) Xorg apps that render blurry on Wayland. You are blaming the wrong party for “bullshit”. Xorg scaling sucks, whereas Wayland’s is great.
And it's not just text, but UI controls too. It looks like Wayland just renders the lower integer scale factor and then stretches the resulting bitmap image. That's bullshit.