Ubuntu Mate desktop scaling for 4k displays

Solution 1:

While you can upscale to 4k in Mate, but things will start to look weird and get distorted when upscaling that big.

To change the DPI scaling Open Control Center> Appearance and click on the font tab. Once on the font tab, click on details on the bottom right corner of the window and a new window should open up.

When the font rendering detail window opens, in the top left corner, there will be an option to change the DPI. By default, it will say "Resolution: [96] Dots per inch" and mess with that number once you get a scaling you are comfortable with. For 4k laptops, I would suggest in between 200-250 DPI for the best scaling but buttons and other UI elements will become pretty badly distorted when upscaling that high.

This is what I'm talking about with the distortion