Fullscreen Issues When Gaming with Niri

After running into a number of small issues on Windows over the past few days, I decided to switch my main system to Ubuntu. That led me into figuring out how to play games on Linux.

While testing HELLDIVERS 2, I found that fullscreen mode did not work the way it did in other games. After switching to fullscreen, Waybar was still visible. Even after closing Waybar, a small strip of the desktop could still be seen at the top or bottom of the screen. I also tried using Gamescope, but it either crashed or failed to start.

Then, by chance, I accidentally reset Niri’s scale back to 1 and realized the problem was caused by fractional scaling. As long as the scale is set back to an integer value, everything works as expected.

Although Wayland is already quite usable today, support for features like fractional scaling is still not perfect. If possible, it is better to avoid enabling it.