Increasing Font Size in Xming Server

Most of the time I use Linux on my desktop and use the default X server for remote X clients. On the rare occasion of having to use Windows to ssh to a Linux server, my preferred X server is Xming. Now by default the fonts displayed by default X server on Linux is much more readable than the tiny size displayed by Xming. My initial solution was to increase the font sizes of the few applications (gvim, gnome-terminal) I typically used. But once I switched back to Linux desktop, the fonts were too big.

There is a better solution. By default Xming uses a DPI of 96. We can increase this value to have bigger font sizes (not only fonts, everything scales proportionately). I found anything in the range of 108-112 DPI to be appropriate. Xming takes the DPI config as part of its command line parameters.

Right click on the Xming icon and select properties. You should see a similar dialog box. You can edit the “Target” field (see screenshot) and add -dpi 108 to set the DPI config to be 108.

The final command should look something similar to

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Xming\Xming.exe" :0 -clipboard -multiwindow -dpi 108

Xming has a whole bunch of other options too. You can see a full list by giving

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Xming\Xming.exe" -h

A notepad with all options should popup.

EDIT: If you are having trouble with Xming hijacking the clipboard, you can give Cygwin X Server a try.

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