Lubuntu change fonts DPI when using proprietary Nvidia driver

Nvidia LogoRecently during my Lubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal review I've noticed that after installing proprietary Nvidia driver my fonts were a little too small. Since I've discovered the problem was in fonts DPI value, in this article I'll show you how to specify your fonts DPI manually inside your xorg.conf.

Proprietary Nvidia drivers are smart enough to access your monitor EDID to detect it's panel DPI settings. Unfortunately that DPI makes my fonts too small because I like my fonts at standard 96 DPI. Most desktop environments come with GUI tool where you can specify your font size and DPI. LXDE from Lubuntu unfortunately doesn't have this tool so you must specify your fonts DPI manually inside your xorg.conf.

I'll assume you have your proprietary Nvidia driver installed. First thing you must do is to generate default xorg.conf like this:

sudo nvidia-xconfig --no-use-edid-dpi

This will generate default xorg.conf and disable use of DPI info acquired from your monitor EDID. Now you are free to specify your desired DPI by placing following inside section "Monitor" of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Option "DPI" "96 x 96"

You can change DPI value from 96 to your desired value. Changes should be noticeable after reboot.

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16 thoughts on “Lubuntu change fonts DPI when using proprietary Nvidia driver

  1. Mike

    Just wanted to say thanks a bunch for sharing this. After installing Nvidia drivers in Linux Mint 15 (Xfce flavor) my fonts were much larger than before. So I did what you suggested and now they are back to normal!

    Reply
  2. René

    Great. Many thanks. My characters where huge, which made it difficult to use. With your description, I installed the nvidia driver, which gave the same huge characters. Then changed the dpi to 96 x 96, end whola, finally a normal screen.

    Using Lubuntu 16.04 on a HP EliteBook 8570w

    Reply
  3. LSP

    Many thanks, it worked on Linux Mint 18.1 Serena with Nvidia 760 driver 375.39
    sudo nvidia-xconfig --no-use-edid-dpi
    sudo xed /etc/X11/xorg.conf

    Section “Monitor”
    Identifier “Monitor0”
    VendorName “Unknown”
    ModelName “Unknown”
    HorizSync 28.0 – 33.0
    VertRefresh 43.0 – 72.0
    Option “DPI” “96 x 96”

    saving and rebooting

    Reply
  4. Ed T

    This worked for me on Lubuntu 16.04. It seems to be the only solution that fixed the Arduino IDE menu (teeny font) problems. I was using .Xresources file fix before, but Java was ignoring it somehow.

    Reply
  5. nicpick

    This worked for me on Ubuntu Mate.
    Thank you so much, you were the first source who was able to help me with my issue.

    Reply
  6. clatterfordslim

    Thank you so much for this, it helped me in Peppermint OS 8 and 7, plus any other XFCE or LXDE environment. My resolution is perfect.

    Reply

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