Column widths on UHD monitors

[John Jason Jordan]

I have been a devoted fan of Synaptic for as long as long as I can
remember, always recommending it when involved in teaching newcomers
about Linux.

About a month ago I bought a new Thinkpad P73 with a UHD monitor
(3840x2160). This has created a problem for Synaptic because apparently
the column widths are hard coded somewhere. (I know next to zero about
programming.) The result is that the columns are stacked so close
together that I can read only about half the contents.

I can drag the columns to make them wider, but the widths are not saved
in /root/.synaptic/synaptic.conf. The next time I launch Synaptic the
columns are smashed together again. And it takes a long time to drag
them out again because it is hard to position the mouse accurately
enough to grab the column handles.

I have Synaptic 0.84.3 on Xubuntu 18.04.3, except I had to upgrade the
kernel to 5.3 to get the wireless working. I would be happy to be a
test guinea pig for a new version that might improve this situation -
with the caveat that I am not very good at installing from source.

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions. :)