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Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

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Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#281

Post by amaranth »

pjmlp wrote: post #43
dkersten wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously if you're developing primarily for Windows, you're going to need to run Windows. I don't think that's what the person you're replying to meant by that at all, but rather that the Windows UX doesn't buy you , as the user of the OS, anything that Linux doesn't.

Sure it does, proper GPU acceleration, hybrid graphics support and hibernation that actually works, and UI/UX tooling resembling Xerox PARC way of computing, only beaten by macOS. Not everyone wants to replicate a PDP-11.

> hybrid graphics support

This works with open source drivers, it's only nvidia that is gumming up the works here. With recent drivers it should even be automatically setup, although you still need to set DRI_PRIME=1 when running something you want on the discrete GPU.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PRIME

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#282

Post by owenjones »

Hmm, so after reading the article I searched for: dell linux laptop and clicked the first link to dell.com

On the product page for the 13 inch XPS Linux I saw a notification: "Sorry, this item is not available anymore for purchase online. Please see our recommended replacement product." And a quick Ctrl-f for 'recommended' or 'replacement' turned up nothing. When I went to the product browser and clicked Operating System the only choices were Windows 7 and Windows 10.

After this experience I'm not entirely convinced Dell actually sells Linux laptops.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#283

Post by jopsen »

I tried XPS about a year ago. I ordered the top model with Ubuntu. But had to return it due to high frequency noise from CPU.

It was also super heavy compared to my X1 carbon. And then the noise, the kind of thing not worth trying to get them to repair because it's likely a design flaw.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#284

Post by bproven »

bitexploder wrote: post #187
luka-birsa wrote: post #6

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…

Agreed. One laptop worth investigating that I haven't seen anyone discussing in this thread is the Precision 7520. It is the same chassis as the XPS 15" laptop, but you can configure it with some more adult options. 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 accepta…

Sounds like what I should have bought. How long have you had it? Any issues? I'm about to swear off Dell due to the XPS15 (9550) - this laptop has been a buggy mess since I got it: had to replace the oem wifi adapter for an Intel to get any kind of stability, battery issues, issues with it waking up randomly in my bag and almost overheating, random high speed fan for no reason (no CPU load or heat reason). I think Dell has issued a BIOS update at least once per month for the past year to try and fix everything :(

I do like the fact that you can actually user repair it though (SSD, memory, wifi, battery) - otherwise it would have been gone a month after I got it. I wish Apple would do this on the "pro" macbooks... ugh.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#285

Post by user5994461 »

criddell wrote: post #175
erikbye wrote: post #165

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,…

I attribute that to a simple limitation of physics.

Scaling a pixel to one pixel and a bit of another pixel is not physically possible, there is a hard physical unit[1]. They are some zoom ratios that will smooth well to the screen and some that won't. I think it's mostly noticed on text, the eye is incredibly good at noticing minimal variations.

[1] Actually, font rendering on windows is already on a subpixel level. A pixel square is made of 3 rectangular colored sub pixels.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#286

Post by chatmasta »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #192
chatmasta wrote: post #155

It's funny how a primary criticism of consumer linux is "you'll have trouble running it on any laptop you pick at random." Isn't this an unfair criticism? If you apply the same logic to MacOS (only works on one laptop!) or Windows (only works on laptops specifically designed for it), Linux begins to look extremely compatible in comparison. Linux has demonstrated itself to be compatible with nearly any hardware combin…

> or Windows (only works on laptops specifically designed for it) Windows also works well on laptops specifically designed for MacOS. It helps that all the commodity parts that Apple uses were designed for other Windows laptops. Plus, Apple has put some effort into Boot Camp to ensure that Windows can be loaded, and Microsoft has probably spent some effort making sure that Windows runs well on Apple hardware, but tha…

ChromeBook would be a good example.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#287

Post by vetinari »

pjmlp wrote: post #238
beavis2 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to see what you develop. My graphics card supports the native UI elements of Windows. My users don't want a "Save as" dialog with life-like water refraction and fog, rendered at higher FPS than their monitor.

Software that adheres to nice designs like Material and Fluent.

So basically working vsync, alpha blending, render to texture and some basic shaders like blur, where even Intel GPUs are overkill?

Then you are in luck; even Intel GPUs under Linux do support OpenGL 4.5. 4.6 is in the works, the only missing part is the SPIR-V support and I don't suppose you need that for fluent or material design.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#288

Post by vetinari »

pjmlp wrote: post #138
microcolonel wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any capable of DirectX 12, but only gets OpenGL 4.3 drivers or similar on GNU/Linux. What GPU is this ? I don't know of a DX12 device which lacks OpenGL 4.5 support in a stable release of Mesa (or the blob, in the case of NVIDIA, since they are uncooperative with regard to firmware). > Regarding OpenGL on macOS, I don't care, that is what rendering engines are for, and all relevant ones already support Metal 2. Sur…

I was having rendering issues with a NVIDIA Quadro M1200 when I tried it out with a live CD, never bothered to check again.

You are not going to find the Nvidia drivers on the live CD.

I assume what you saw was the Nouveau driver, which is enough to have you up and running to be able to download the proprietary ones using GUI.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#289

Post by vetinari »

microcolonel wrote: post #92
blntechie wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never get to see same smoothness in graphics and fonts as MacOS/Windows/ChromeOS in the same machine with Linux. Every single time I decide that I'm moving to Linux, I give up after living with the browsers for a day or two. Rendering and fonts are just inferior to other systems in my experience.

> I never get to see same smoothness in graphics and fonts as MacOS/Windows/ChromeOS in the same machine with Linux. Well, Chrome OS runs the same stuff as your average Linux distro, however maybe most distros don't turn on subpixel antialiasing in their FontConfig out of the box. (I don't know because I've been sharing configs between machines of the same distro for about five years).

Some distros do not enable subpixel rendering indeed, due to patents and them being based in the US. The users have to download a -freeworld package then, if they want it.

With HiDPI, that doesn't matter anyway.

Another issue are fonts themselves. If you have a document that uses Arial or Cambria or another proprietary font, and you don't have it installed, you are going to get something substituted, which may or may be not metrics-compatible. Do not expect pixel-identical results then.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#290

Post by mamon »

reacweb wrote: post #11
maccard wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve a dual boot set up on one of my machines with Ubuntu 17.04. I’m consistently having Ethernet issues related to having two network cards, and the multi monitor support is lacking. I can’t use my triple monitor setup, and if I forget to disconnect my third monitor I have to reboot with only one monitor attached to get it work. Meanwhile, on the same machine, windows handles it in its stride. There’s still some imp…

ethernet ? It is the most stable part of Linux since 25 years. Do you have a link to the bug report ?

It's funny that you say that, because I'm constantly having problems with e1000e driver on my Intel NUC. Ethernet card stops working and dmesg shows "hardware unit hung" message. Tried to upgrade driver to latest version, compiled from sources - didn't fix it.
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