181–190 of 319 posts
Using multiple monitors can be another pain point. It works for the most part, but full-screen a video on one monitor and you get flashing and artifacts on the others, you'll "lose" a screen, all kinds of weird stuff. And that's Fedora/Ubuntu/SuSE on two different laptops.
At my company, most of the developers use Ubuntu end-user machines, all from Dell. Not only does this avoid us having to pay for Windows licenses we never use, but we know the hardware is actually going to work fine with it. There's some quirks, of course - Ubuntu doesn't much like the 4k screens in our 13" XPSen so there's a lot of tweaking involved, but we're getting some very good hardware at a good price, and stu…
> Ubuntu doesn't much like the 4k screens in our 13" XPSen so there's a lot of tweaking involved > stuff just works I can't reconcile these two statements.
I must agree that the support of high DPI displays is not optimal just yet. However, it is not that bad. At a corporate level one person can do the tweaking and create a great user experience for an entire organization.
Given the amount of tweaking and "management" goo organizations foist upon the average OSX installation blasting out a few lines of DPI tweak commands is almost nothing.
So it just works in the sense that you can do sane configuration activity and it behaves as you might expect.
Also, Unity out of the box is still pretty good on a scale like this: very bad, bad, tolerable, pretty good, good, great. It does "just work" for the most part :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Windows has gotten a lot better, but the rules regarding new computers hasn't changed in the past 30 years, you still need to wipe the hard drive and install it yourself from scratch, and then spend a little time disabling the ads, bing crap, telemetry, etc. Once you do, it's rock solid, but it should be OOTB and it annoys me that it isn't. It leaves those not familiar with Windows with a bad first impression, and th…
"It leaves those not familiar with Windows with a bad first impression" But an accurate impression. Windows main focus is Microsoft and partners product sales and ad delivery. No matter how much you remove after install, they're likely to override your very obvious wishes not to be bothered in a forced update.
meanwhile in Thinkpad land... honestly I never understand why people go for Macbooks or XPS. X/T model user since 7 generations. I did look at the XPS but there are so many disadvantages with those modern one-body-all-closed-no-mods laptops. Before you down vote me, I still applaud Dells decision to get Ubuntu Laptops out there. But I don't really see what the big game changer is whether a laptop comes preinstalled w…
The game changer (IMHO) is that it becomes a sustainable economic model for Linux users to buy modern (rather than out of date) Linux laptops with good driver support.
I'm aware that Thinkpads generally have excellent Linux support for the basics; I suspect that this is because of a combination of a reasonably supportive manufacturer (in a not hostile sense) and the number of Linux kernel developers who use Thinkpads.
However, what about buying a new Thinkpad that just came out? Now I'm not sure whether everything will work and what non-working bits will continue to not work for years.
With a pre-installed Linux, I have more confidence that everything will work from day one, and (if this continues) that this is a sustainable model. Because some of my money actually gets allocated against Linux support, rather than being misdirected to Windows support.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not Windows' fault, though. It's up to developers to update their apps to handle DPI scaling.
Windows is getting better at high DPI even for non-DPI aware applications. It's weird though. Windows seems to do different things depending on the scaling factor and how you set the factor. 125% might look terrible but 150% is tack sharp. Setting 125% as a custom scale factor does something different than choosing 125% as a standard scale factor. Usually, you have to log out and log back in after changing the scale,…
As a 20 year Linux user I really appreciate Dells support in proving the market exists. This improved support across all manufacturers. I've recently acquired a HP Envy 13 2017 laptop with Windows preinstalled. I've really wanted to try Windows out, but after installing Google Chrome and Docker (1hr after starting it up) it stopped working - windows boot up into a blank black screen. In a hurry I've downloaded Ubuntu…
As another 20+ (24 actually, 0.99pl15) Linux user let me counter: with the Linux subsystem for Windows there's no reason to wrestle with Linux any more. While Linux certainly works on laptops it doesn't work well. Wifi and battery life are absymal and for me seemingly every other update either breaks the printer half or the scanner half of the MFC device (and if not, then it's time for another bluetooth breakage, you…
$ git clone ssh://blahblahblah.space/repo.git
[...]
$ code repo
As a 20 year Linux user I really appreciate Dells support in proving the market exists. This improved support across all manufacturers. I've recently acquired a HP Envy 13 2017 laptop with Windows preinstalled. I've really wanted to try Windows out, but after installing Google Chrome and Docker (1hr after starting it up) it stopped working - windows boot up into a blank black screen. In a hurry I've downloaded Ubuntu…
It is 2017 and I finally own a laptop with 32GiB of ECC(!) RAM. That is pretty damn cool. Allow me to roll out my specs, just cause I love this laptop:
* Quad Core Xeon (1505M)
* Discrete GPU with acceptable gaming performance and great at cracking passwords in a pinch
* 32 GiB of ECC RAM
* 1920x1080 15.6" (144ppi) display with no mic or web cam
* An actually decent keyboard
* Touchpad that is actually nice
* So many ports. All the ports. The best ports (4 USB-3, 1 USB-C, HDMI, mini DP, Ethernet, SD Card slot, Smartcard Slot)
* For the cost of equivalent Applecare, someone will show up to my house same day and fix this beast if something breaks
* Expandable and replacement storage and memory
Tell me all those ports don't make you a little jealous if you are using a Macbook, I won't believe you ;). It does come at he cost of this laptop being a bit chunky, so it won't be for everyone. You can also get it with a HiDPI display, but I actually prefer things right in this 120-144ppi range more than Retina.
It is just a great computing package. End of story. I also still love my 2013 MBP. It is also a beautiful machine for its own reasons, so I am no Dell / Linux fanperson, but I have a bit of a crush on this laptop as I just got it about a month ago :)
At my company, most of the developers use Ubuntu end-user machines, all from Dell. Not only does this avoid us having to pay for Windows licenses we never use, but we know the hardware is actually going to work fine with it. There's some quirks, of course - Ubuntu doesn't much like the 4k screens in our 13" XPSen so there's a lot of tweaking involved, but we're getting some very good hardware at a good price, and stu…
> Ubuntu doesn't much like the 4k screens in our 13" XPSen so there's a lot of tweaking involved > stuff just works I can't reconcile these two statements.
There's no actual issues with the hi-DPI aspect, it does work, but it's obviously very difficult to read without tweaking. All the other applications we use just work out of the box.
As noted elsewhere, hi-DPI problems aren't exclusive to Ubuntu.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In arch that laptop works pretty well without tweaks. Don't try to use the GPU and the CPU at the same time for longer than 5 minutes or you will be very disappointed (I own the same model).
What are you referring to? Does it overheat? Battery run down?
Is Dell still offering those? I cannot find anything. For example this dell page has no current offerings: http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/dell-linux-ubu...