Linux: how to "zoom" into a screen area à la Mac OS X?

It seems to me on Mac OS X it is possible to "zoom" (like a photocamera does) into a region of the screen.

It is handy for example to put at full monitor size a video which would otherwise be limited to be just into a small window (ie. embedded in a web page and not watchable standalone.), obviously losing some quality due to the "zoom".

Do you know of any tool or way to do the same thing on a Linux desktop (with Gnome as desktop manager if it is desktop manager dependent).

puccio

Posted 2009-10-25T13:15:26.953

Reputation: 141

Answers

On a reasonably updated gnome desktop (e.g. Ubuntu 9.04 or 8.10):

Right click on the desktop background and select 'Change desktop background'
click on 'visual effects' and select 'Normal'
make sure that the 'compizconfig-settings-manager' package is installed in your system (this is in Ubuntu... in another distributions, it may have a similar name)
go to system-preferences-CompizConfig
select the Zoom effect, activate it and look at its configuration (usually Super-mouse wheel is the default key to activate it).

user13003

Posted 2009-10-25T13:15:26.953

Reputation: 151

You'll have to make sure Compiz is your WindowManager – Vano – 2017-01-20T07:18:09.780

Hi,

thanks a lot for the very quick reply! Indeed it works like a charm, I would have never believed Gnome and Compiz would have made me happy in a few clicks (and wheel) of the mouse :-) – puccio – 2009-10-25T13:43:35.397

I think one can also use Super+1 and Super+2 or something like that. That's going from memory, you should probably look at the keyboard shortcut in Compiz Config. – Nathaniel – 2009-11-05T23:34:16.643

When stuck on a machine without fancy Compiz effects one can fall back to the good old xzoom tool, its not as pretty as a real fullscreen zoom, but gets the job done most of the time.

Grumbel

Posted 2009-10-25T13:15:26.953

Reputation: 3 100

It would be great to have a keybinding for xzoom such that you can apply it on the current window. It is difficult to have a custom part of the current window zoomed by it because of the window gui. – Léo Léopold Hertz 준영 – 2017-01-17T19:12:20.273

I've just discovered the open-source tool Virtual Magnifying Glass 3.3.2, which work really well for me. Once run (/usr/bin/vmg) you will see its icon in the notification are of your Gnome panel and can use it to set the zoom and other nice features.

This tool is multiplatform, for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X.

The only thing I don't like is that the installation package for Debian/Ubuntu is done incorrectly and places some unnecessary files under / (can be deleted safely). It would be also nice if it installed itself into the menu but you can done that easily yourself (System - Preferences - Main Menu - Add item...).

None

Posted 2009-10-25T13:15:26.953

Reputation: