Tag: tells

Dippi – Tells if the Laptop/External Monitor Best Choice (HiDPI or LoDPI)

Posted on by Kernel

Going to buy a new monitor or laptop, or want to calculate whether it’s a HiDPI display? Here’s a handy app can help!

I previously thought that 4K and 8K displays are HiDPI, but 720p that I’m being using is LoDPI. It’s 100% wrong! HiDPI, stands for High Dots Per Inch, also known by Apple’s “Retina Display”. Meaning screens with a high resolution in a relatively small format.

A HiDPI monitor may be good for displaying photo images or playing FPS games, but not all software behaves well in high-resolution mode yet. If you’re going to buy a monitor or calculate existing display DPI, then here’s a good app for choice.

It’s ‘Dippi’, a free and open-source GTK4 application developed by a GNOME Foundation member.

With it, you just need to tell: laptop or desktop, monitor size (inches), and screen resolution. Then, it shows you aspect ratio and DPI value, as well as display’s density.

They include:

  • Very Low DPI,
  • Fairly Low DPI,
  • Ideal for LoDPI,
  • Potentially Problematic,
  • Ideal for HiDPI,
  • Fairly High for HiDPI, or
  • Too High DPI

Each value has some texts below to tell the text and UI feeling (too small or too large) at typical viewing distances. As a GTK4 app, it looks good in Ubuntu, Fedora and other Linux with GNOME desktop. And, it automatically changes the UI color between light and dark mode, to follow system color scheme.

How to Install Dippi

Dippi is also available as an online service, you can visit this page to analyze your display.

For most Linux users, it’s available to install as universal flatpak package in Flathub.org.

Ubuntu user can do following steps one by one to install the package:

  1. Firstly, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to make sure Flatpak is enabled: 
    sudo apt install flatpak

    For the old Ubuntu 18.04, add this PPA repository before running apt install command.

  2. Then, install the application by running command: 
    flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/com.github.cassidyjames.dippi.flatpakref

    Like normal apps, you can search for and launch it from either start menu or ‘Activities’ overview depends on your desktop environment.

How to Remove Dippi

To remove the app installed as Flatpak, open terminal and run command:

flatpak uninstall --delete-data com.github.cassidyjames.dippi

Also clear useless runtime via flatpak uninstall --unused.

This Extension Tells Your App Startup Time in Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04

Posted on by Kernel

Want to measure your application launch time in Linux? There’s an extension can do the job for GNOME desktop.

Meaning Ubuntu, Fedora workstation, and other Linux with GNOME desktop can easily tell how much time it takes for launching an application, which is useful for benchmark and/or software developing purpose.

With the extension enabled, every time you launching an application, an on-screen display pops up shows the loading time in millisecond. Not only for native .deb/.rpm, but also for Snap and Flatpak applications.

How to Install the App Start Time Measure extension

For Ubuntu 22.04, first search for and install “Extension Manager” from Ubuntu Software.

Install Extension Manager in Ubuntu 22.04+

Then launch “Extension Manager” and use it to search & install ‘application start time measure’:

For Ubuntu 20.04, first press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to install the agent package:

sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell

Then, go to extension page in the link below and use ON/OFF switch to install it:

Applications Startup Time Measure

Install the browser extension if prompted via link in that page and refresh if you don’t see the ON/OFF switch.

After installing the extension, it should be enable automatically (verify via ‘Gnome Extensions’ or ‘Extension Manager’). You can then launch something and see the magic!