Scaling in distrobox apps?

Is there a way to make apps run with distrobox use the gnome scaling settings?

I’ve got an unusual set up where I use my 4k tv as a computer monitor, and most of the apps I’ve used have worked with the gnome scaling settings (though the log in screen can be tiny), however I’m trying to get a windows app to run with wine on a debian distrobox. I can run it with the bottles flatpak, and there are no scaling issues, but there is an experimental feature in the windows app which requires some dev libraries for recompilation to get native linux sound support, which is a feature I can’t get to work with the bottles flatpak. So I installed wine and the dev libraries under with a debian distrobox and the experimental feature compiles and works fine. The only problem is the win/windows app isn’t scaling according to gnome settings, so everything is too tiny.

I imagine this scaling issue won’t be limited to wine under distrobox, but will also happen with other apps in a distrobox. Is there a way to fix this?

Alternately, if there is a way to get bottles to be able to access the dev libraries I installed under distrobox debian, that might fix the problem? Is there an easy way to get flatpaks and distrobox to work together?

Thanks for any help!

Wow. I saw “Scaling” in the title and immediately thought scaling in the multiple container sense. :zany_face:


Anytime you go between containers (use a library from one container in another) especially involving different tech stacks (distrobox vs flatpak) there needs to be an integration adaptation supported that will involve the host.

Think like this:

distrobox hosted library ==> some glue on the host ==> flatpak app

If :

  • the distrobox mounts your home dir
  • and the flatpak app has access to your home dir

Then it should be theoretically possible to integrate the library that way assuming you can symlink, etc. the needed dependency somewhere under your host home dir from within the distrobox (via a startup script or equiv.).

Note that you can only export executables from distrobox - and not files (e.g. libraries).

I realize this is not a concrete answer. But I hope it gets you thinking towards a possible solution.

My guess is that it is more than one library though (that depends on another, etc.).

Please do let us know if you find a solution!

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The solution was to run winecfg under distrobox and adjust the DPI. I guess this is a just a wine thing, lol.

Also, I exported the wine bin, and now I can just open a terminal and run the program I want, and it works beautifully.

I love this “dstro”.

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You can also place a .desktop file for it in ~/.local/share/applications and use the launcher to open it.

See if one exists already in your distrobox in /usr/share/applications or equiv. and just copy it.

Glad you found the solution. Awesome.

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