I owe a Dell XPS 13 with 4k display running Linux. Fonts are clearly much more sharper (maybe even feel darker) and pleasant to read than 1080p or even 2k . Although, I see you point. For most practical purposes it does not make difference I think, but I really love 4k when I'm programming. These days I'm not programming much, hence switched to 1080p as little experiment (and got fed up with sloppy GNOME performance), and I would say I don't notice much for general tasks.
Yes. 2x worked perfect for me at 4k, and its the default for hidpi settings I think. When I switched to 1080p I had to manually increase font sizes (not overall scaling) because the default size wasnt sharp/readable enough. Its pretty cool 4k now works so well out-of-box on Linux. It was nightmare in 2015.