Alternatives to Gnome's Zoom feature - display delay

hello,

first of all, my apologies for my mistakes in english. English is not my native language.

I’m visually impaired and zoom feature are important for me.

I’m having trouble with Gnome’s Zoom feature.
Firstly, I don’t find it practical because you can’t use the mouse wheel (unless I’m mistaken)
Secondly, as soon as the ZOOM function is activated, the display jerks. (cursor’s movement is done with a delay). This delay makes the use of this function impossible.

Do you have the same jerky problem ?

do you know any ZOOM software or extensions that are better than Gnome ? (I couldn’t find a Gnome extension)

my config :
XPS 17 (year: 2011)
cpu : intel i7
geforce GT 555M, NVIDIA driver 390.147, X11,
2 screens (32", 1920*1080)
RAM 16 Go,
SSD Disk

Thanks in advance for your replies.
Regards

Welcome to ask.:fedora:edora @newsnews

Could you please give us more info’s as :

inxi -Fzx in terminal and post the output as </> Preformatted text here.

I personally believe the problem can be the video driver/hardware and not really the zoom app it selves.
I tested it with my hardware and it works fine.

thanks for the reply.

this is the output:

System:
  Kernel: 5.17.13-300.fc36.x86_64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc
    v: 2.37-27.fc36 Desktop: GNOME v: 42.2
    Distro: Fedora release 36 (Thirty Six)
Machine:
  Type: Portable System: Dell product: Dell System XPS L702X v: N/A
    serial: <filter>
  Mobo: Dell model: 0XN71K v: FAB1 serial: <filter> UEFI-[Legacy]: Dell
    v: A19 date: 09/07/2012
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 70.4 Wh (100.0%) condition: 70.4/73.3 Wh (96.1%)
    volts: 12.2 min: 11.1 model: LGC Dell status: full
CPU:
  Info: quad core model: Intel Core i7-2670QM bits: 64 type: MT MCP
    arch: Sandy Bridge rev: 7 cache: L1: 256 KiB L2: 1024 KiB L3: 6 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 798 high: 799 min/max: 800/3100 cores: 1: 798 2: 798
    3: 799 4: 798 5: 798 6: 798 7: 798 8: 798 bogomips: 35124
  Flags: avx ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics
    vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0
  Device-2: NVIDIA GF116M [GeForce GT 555M/635M] vendor: Dell
    driver: nvidia v: 390.147 arch: Fermi bus-ID: 01:00.0
  Device-3: Quanta Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_2HDM type: USB driver: uvcvideo
    bus-ID: 1-1.4:3
  Display: server: X.Org v: 1.20.14 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.2 driver: X:
    loaded: modesetting,nvidia unloaded: fbdev,nouveau,vesa gpu: i915,nvidia
    resolution: 1: 1920x1080 2: 1920x1080~60Hz 3: N/A
  OpenGL: renderer: GeForce GT 555M/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 390.147
    direct render: Yes
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel 6 Series/C200 Series Family High Definition Audio
    vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
  Device-2: NVIDIA GF116 High Definition Audio vendor: Dell
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 01:00.1
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.17.13-300.fc36.x86_64 running: yes
  Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 15.0 running: no
  Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 0.3.52 running: yes
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1030 [Rainbow Peak] driver: iwlwifi
    v: kernel bus-ID: 03:00.0
  IF: wlp3s0 state: down mac: <filter>
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
    vendor: Dell driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 2000 bus-ID: 0a:00.0
  IF: enp10s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6230 Bluetooth adapter type: USB
    driver: btusb v: 0.8 bus-ID: 2-1.5:5
  Report: rfkill ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: see --recommends
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 585 GiB used: 60.19 GiB (10.3%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Crucial model: M4-CT128M4SSD2 size: 119.24 GiB
  ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Crucial model: CT500MX500SSD1 size: 465.76 GiB
    temp: 24 C
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 114.63 GiB used: 59.82 GiB (52.2%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-0
    mapped: luks-79931574-babb-4b98-9156-30068444b5b7
  ID-2: /boot size: 1.15 GiB used: 380.8 MiB (32.4%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/sda1
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 1024 MiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%)
    dev: /dev/sda2
  ID-2: swap-2 type: zram size: 8 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) dev: /dev/zram0
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 62.0 C mobo: 30.0 C sodimm: SODIMM C gpu: nvidia
    temp: 50 C
  Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 2450
Info:
  Processes: 327 Uptime: 4m Memory: 15.52 GiB used: 2.59 GiB (16.7%)
  Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 12.1.1 Packages: 34
  note: see --pkg Shell: Bash v: 5.1.16 inxi: 3.3.16

any idea ?

I had some weird artifacts depending on the zoom level that was set and where I was on the screen but it was not jerky. (AMD 5600 with AMD 6600xt)

You may want to chime in on this bug, Replace Accessibility Zoom default shortcuts with more standard shortcuts (#693) · Issues · GNOME / gnome-settings-daemon · GitLab

You can also use
super alt = increase zoom
super alt - decrease zoom

I was playing around, on the weekend and today, with the zoom feature.

First I tried it with virtualization. My experience was very bad too. The reaction of mouse movements where very slow.

Today I was making me a live image F36 Workstation and the experience was totally different. It seams to work fine. My hardware is older. I do not have Nvidia gpu.
(Intel Core i7-3517UE / Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics driver: i915)

Please try to make a live boot device and check if you get the same results. The live session also seams to be with Wayland instead of x11.

1 Like

@Joe grumpey
i will check that. thanks

1 Like

@ilikelinux

Thanks for the reply.
it works perfectly with live image F36.

tomorrow, i will uninstall nvidia drivers and test with wayland session.

I will keep you informed

2 Likes

nvidia drivers uninstalled
Display with wayland
and unfortunatly, same behaviour… the display jerks.

Device-1: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics
    vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0
  Device-2: NVIDIA GF116M [GeForce GT 555M/635M] vendor: Dell
    driver: nouveau v: kernel arch: Fermi bus-ID: 01:00.0
  Device-3: Quanta Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_2HDM type: USB driver: uvcvideo
    bus-ID: 1-1.4:3
  Display: server: X.Org v: 1.22.1.2 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.2 driver: X:
    loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa gpu: i915,nouveau resolution:
    1: 1920x1080~60Hz 2: 1920x1080~60Hz 3: 1920x1080~60Hz
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 3000 (SNB GT2)
    v: 3.3 Mesa 22.1.1 direct render: Yes

Hi,

i have tried several configurations (Nvidia drivers and x11, nouveau Drivers and wauland then x11 and also Intel Card alone ), always the same behaviour.

No solution so i did a fresh installation of Fedora 36 workstation.
Gnome Zoom works properly. No artefact, no jerk.

my previous fedora configuration was an F32 that i had upgraded each year until F36.
perhaps this configuration was too messy.

thanks for those who tried to help.

2 Likes

It seems common for those kinds of upgrades to have lingering problems. It seems that the upgrade from gnome 3.x to gnome 40+ was not totally painless and some of the configs remaining in the users home directory structure may have been conflicting.

Glad to see you were able to recover. :slightly_smiling_face: