Control Scroll and Linux

[wwblm]

For many of us, our eyes aren't what they used to be Why doesn't this amazing feature that seems to be deeply integrated with many Linux distros get more recognition? I've been daily driving Mint for months now and only learned of this function while watching a video about KDE Neon.

Someone else taught me about the text scaling factor in the font selection settings and that has been quite useful as I have a rather small laptop with a 1920 X 1080 display. However, it seems to me that control scroll is way better and way more flexible. It can even be combined with F3 and used independently with different layouts on each pane. Really neat stuff. One of the few places I have found where it does not work is in the Brave browser. However, for some reason, it does work with the Chrome that comes with Linux lite.

From the few minutes of testing I have done on VMs it works in LMDE, LMXFCE, Mint Cinnamon, MX KDE, KDE Neon, Linux Lite, and Zorin. Works with LIbreOffice and a variety of text editors and pdf editors as well as several different file managers like Nemo, Thunar, and Dolphin. Not sure why Brave is an outlier in that it doesn't seem to support it. Even tried it with Wayland in MX KDE and it worked there as well.

Seems to me like it is a great feature that deserves much greater recognition. Why did I just discover this and what am I missing?

[all41]

Many neat key features go unused, even alt+scroll for transparency

[ajgreeny]

Many neat key features go unused, even alt+scroll for transparency

Interesting!
In Xfce Alt+Scroll with mouse wheel zooms the screen if set to do so in Window Manager Tweaks.
As all41 says, many things are possible or available to us but many users do not know of them or use them.

[all41]

I suggest @wwblm open a topic regarding this, perhaps
Which keyboard+mouse shortcuts do you use often?
We may all learn something new

[rickNS]

For many of us, our eyes aren't what they used to be

Hear that.
I use the MATE desktop, with Compiz window manager, one it's valuable features is the "Enhanced Zoom Desktop" it zooms toward the mouse. Trying to count digits is especially difficult till you zoom in a couple of times.

I have a rather small laptop with a 1920 X 1080 display.

On my 14 inch laptops I find anything higher than 1600 X 900 makes print too small.

[spamegg]

Seems to me like it is a great feature that deserves much greater recognition. Why did I just discover this and what am I missing?

I was able to discover pretty much everything on day 1, by manually going through every single shortcut in Menu / Keyboard / Shortcuts and every setting in Menu / System settings.

Maybe it's just me

[wwblm]

Seems to me like it is a great feature that deserves much greater recognition. Why did I just discover this and what am I missing?

I was able to discover pretty much everything on day 1, by manually going through every single shortcut in Menu / Keyboard / Shortcuts and every setting in Menu / System settings.

Maybe it's just me

Thanks for pointing that out. Went through every keyboard shortcut. My system says that the zoom is alt-super-+=. However, that does nothing. Can't find anywhere that tells me that I can hold down the control key and scroll to zoom. Maybe it's just me
I'm a noob to Linux but have been using Mac for more than 30 years. Not sure when this feature was added to the Mac OS but I did find in the system settings a keyboard shortcut for zoom that works and an option to define a control scroll zoom that is disabled by default. Turns out I could have had the same functionality on Mac but didn't know about it there either.

[Neophyte]

Same reason "Ctrl + C" and "Ctrl + V" don't. They are just standard shortcuts.


CTRL + scrolling and CTRL + "+" and CTRL + "-" also work in Windows.

[Coggy]

Under System Settings -> Accessibility there is a whole panel dedicated to Desktop Zoom settings.
The default is Alt + Scroll but you can change this. I find myself using this more these days.
It works on the entire screen, and is different to Ctrl + Scroll which just modifies the zoom inside the browser window (and gets remembered by the browser).

[spamegg]

My system says that the zoom is alt-super-+=. However, that does nothing. Can't find anywhere that tells me that I can hold down the control key and scroll to zoom.

Alt + Super + = works for me. Note that it brings up a red square box of zoom, not a whole screen / application zoom.

Ctrl + Scroll is not a Mint feature, it works in many browsers and applications. But it's not desktop-wide or global as far as I know. So it's a somewhat common feature among applications but not mandatory.