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Using Ubuntu to consume media such as watching TV, movies, or listening to music, one occasionally wants to surf the web off the couch or control other applications with the computer screen standing at a further distance, making it hard to read UI buttons etc.

Basically I would like to have a desktop as if decreasing the screen resolution to a quarter or so, but that would make everything look pixelated, of course.

So what are usable solutions to increase accessibility here?

  • Compiz has "Enhanced Zoom Desktop", but it only shows a portion of the screen, and people might not use compiz but e.g. unity-2d instead

  • Decrease dpi settings?

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  • changing dpi via Appearances to a much higher value seems to be an option -- is there a command to that via the terminal, plz?
    – type
    Jul 29, 2011 at 9:36
  • e.g. gconftool-2 --type float --set /desktop/gnome/font_rendering/dpi 96 -- cud hack an indicator to adjust this setting ;)
    – type
    Aug 1, 2011 at 18:13
  • For GNOME 3's gnome-shell there's gnome-tweak-tool with an adjustable "Text scaling factor"
    – type
    Sep 26, 2011 at 18:28
  • This question appears to be abandoned, if you are experiencing a similar issue please ask a new question with details pertaining to your problem. If you feel this question is not abandoned, please flag the question explaining that. I am flagging this for closure. Regards,
    – Ringtail
    Mar 12, 2012 at 2:34

1 Answer 1

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I know if you go to System>preferences>appearance. And then click on the fonts tab you can actually change font sizes for most everything.

Then you can just install a theme that has larger icons, and you should be able to see everything pretty well.

I realize this may not be optimal, but it's likely the best you can do besides actually plugging the desktop into the tv. Most tv's have oddball resolutions that look much better than they should given the tv's size.

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