Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update • Hacker News Board

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#61

Post by microtonal » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 1:28 PM UTC

Sangeppato wrote: post #56

yagodragon wrote: post #48

What really sets me off with linux DE's is how poorly they handle dpi scaling on external monitors. I recently bought a 24" 2560 × 1440 monitor for my 15.6 laptop running Ubuntu Mate 18.04. This is what i went through just to make it work. 1. Plugged the hdmi, everything looks so small. 2. Mate desktop had HiDPI support but only by a scaling factor of 2. Now everything looks very large. 3. I have to manually change t…

Unfortunatey, in my experience Gnome is simply by far the most "modern" DE regarding this kind of features, basically the only one able to compete with Windows and macOS (For example, the touchpad behaves like I would expect in 2019). I haven't used KDE in a while so I have no idea about their Wayland situation (at this point, I simply refuse to mess with Xorg config files, so it's Wayland or nothing for me, at least…

My experience is the same. I mostly use macOS on the desktop, so I am used to Lo/HiDPI screens to work together. On my Linux workstation, I tried several desktop environments, but GNOME on Wayland was the only environment to nail it 6-12 months ago (there may be improvements in other desktops now). HiDPI worked with Wayland and X11 applications and I could just use both screens with different DPIs, drag windows between them without oddities, etc.

It's a shame that they nailed this, but decided to remove menus, desktop icons, system tray icons, etc. GNOME could have been a great competitor to macOS and Windows, if they actually talked to real-world users. I wish that they had an UX steward like Sun Microsystems back in the days.

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#62

Post by bluGill » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 1:33 PM UTC

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #13

k__ wrote: post #2

Did they go back to the roots and made it more lightweight again?

not sure if kde can be considered as having ever been lightweight. as far as I remember it was always one of the most heavy DE's around. edit: I'm rate-limted[x] from commenting for defending myself against people calling me a brown-nosed European and white supremacist so I can't really reply below to @Crinus: here reply inline: oh I didn't know about v1, I think the first version I used was kde2 and that was the hea…

What is lightweight? This is actually a complex question. Back in the day KDE has the largest in memory footprint when you first started up, but once you launched a realistic set of apps: suddenly KDE (using only KDE apps) has by far the smallest memory footprint.

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#63

Post by microtonal » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 1:33 PM UTC

yagodragon wrote: post #57

Sangeppato wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunatey, in my experience Gnome is simply by far the most "modern" DE regarding this kind of features, basically the only one able to compete with Windows and macOS (For example, the touchpad behaves like I would expect in 2019). I haven't used KDE in a while so I have no idea about their Wayland situation (at this point, I simply refuse to mess with Xorg config files, so it's Wayland or nothing for me, at least…

Did you encounter any issues with Wayland? I've heard that it's not production-ready and that's why ubuntu decided to go with Xorg in 18.04.

Fedora has had Wayland as the default since Fedora 25 (2016). In my experience, it has been stable since Fedora 26/27. I am not sure what the situation is now, but Wayland pretty much excluded NVIDIA. The proprietary drivers did not have support and Nouveau is buggy [1]. In my experience, it works great with both AMD (amdgpu) and Intel GPUs.

[1] The developers are doing great work, but it is a uphill battle without support from NVIDIA.

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#64

Post by microtonal » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 1:37 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #50

pojntfx wrote: post #43

XFCE is great but OSTree really is the future. I don't see any reason for still using the dinosaur Ubuntu in a world where one can have Fedora Silverblue.

What does OSTree have to do with XFCE? OSTree: https://ostree.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manual/introduction/ -> The underlying architecture might be summarized as "git for operating system binaries" vs XFCE: https://www.xfce.org/ -> Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly. Also that…

The charitable reading is that they meant 'Xubuntu'. They probably argue that Xubuntu is nice, but not the future because it does not do atomic upgrades with rollbacks.

(I largely agree that OSTree-based systems are better, but Ubuntu is so popular that it is unlikely that Silverblue replaces it soon. By the way, Silverblue fans should look at Nix ;).)

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#65

Post by jraph » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 1:40 PM UTC

imglorp wrote: post #51

pojntfx wrote: post #43

XFCE is great but OSTree really is the future. I don't see any reason for still using the dinosaur Ubuntu in a world where one can have Fedora Silverblue.

Thank you for pointing out an interesting project. Ubuntu has the full force of upstream Debian behind it, while Centos/Fedora has Red Hat upstream, which just got bought by Oracle. Is anyone in the Centos/Fedora ecosystem concerned about the sale? What happens if management simply quits making public RH streams available? What if the lawyers come out as usual?

Hasn't Red Hat been bought by IBM?

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#66

Post by kentosi » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 1:42 PM UTC

yagodragon wrote: post #48

What really sets me off with linux DE's is how poorly they handle dpi scaling on external monitors. I recently bought a 24" 2560 × 1440 monitor for my 15.6 laptop running Ubuntu Mate 18.04. This is what i went through just to make it work. 1. Plugged the hdmi, everything looks so small. 2. Mate desktop had HiDPI support but only by a scaling factor of 2. Now everything looks very large. 3. I have to manually change t…

Yes I went through this exact thing recently. I tried Gnome, then XFCE, then i3.

I settled with i3 reacting to my connecting/disconnecting my laptop from my monitor, but even then the resolutions never looked correct.

I ended up selling my Lenovo Carbon x6 and bought a macbook pro. I was so bitter about the experience, but on the other hand I'm no longer worrying about things that should just work.

/rant

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#67

Post by kgwxd » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 1:43 PM UTC

willvarfar wrote: post #23

Whaoo I can't wait! Where does Xubuntu and Kubuntu stand, install-base-wise, compared to the default Ubuntu? And other distros, for that matter? I'm one of many people who left Ubuntu as soon as they started doing their big UI changes. I went to Xubuntu. But I have no bigger idea of which distro is hot anymore; once I settled on Xubuntu, I haven't really been shopping around for alternatives.

I've been on Xubuntu since the Unity move too, so there's at least 2 of us :) I've dabbled, but never found a good reason to use anything different, simplicity and stability are all I care about.

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#68

Post by neverminder » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 1:46 PM UTC

yagodragon wrote: post #48

What really sets me off with linux DE's is how poorly they handle dpi scaling on external monitors. I recently bought a 24" 2560 × 1440 monitor for my 15.6 laptop running Ubuntu Mate 18.04. This is what i went through just to make it work. 1. Plugged the hdmi, everything looks so small. 2. Mate desktop had HiDPI support but only by a scaling factor of 2. Now everything looks very large. 3. I have to manually change t…

Unity has fractional scaling for many years now that I never had a single problem with - no blur, nothing like that. I've used it on multiple monitors from 12 to 27 inch, resolutions ranging from 1920x1080 to 4K. Gnome is a massive disappointment in this regard - feels like a serious downgrade. I'm still using Unity on Ubuntu 18.04 and waiting for a DE that will at least have a matching feature set, but it looks like it's gonna be a long wait.

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#69

Post by tbrock » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

yagodragon wrote: post #48

What really sets me off with linux DE's is how poorly they handle dpi scaling on external monitors. I recently bought a 24" 2560 × 1440 monitor for my 15.6 laptop running Ubuntu Mate 18.04. This is what i went through just to make it work. 1. Plugged the hdmi, everything looks so small. 2. Mate desktop had HiDPI support but only by a scaling factor of 2. Now everything looks very large. 3. I have to manually change t…

The way to get the best results with gnome is to not scale the screen: keep it 100% (unscaled) then use gnome tweak tool to increase the font size to your liking.

Works great no matter what monitor I plug it into using an X1 Carbon with the hidpi screen.

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#70

Post by bluedino » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

yagodragon wrote: post #48

What really sets me off with linux DE's is how poorly they handle dpi scaling on external monitors. I recently bought a 24" 2560 × 1440 monitor for my 15.6 laptop running Ubuntu Mate 18.04. This is what i went through just to make it work. 1. Plugged the hdmi, everything looks so small. 2. Mate desktop had HiDPI support but only by a scaling factor of 2. Now everything looks very large. 3. I have to manually change t…

Try Fedora. GNOME 3 has fractional scaling (you have to enable it in 29, it's out of the box in 30)

The problem then becomes, if you don't have a 200dpi display, the scaling is noticeable.. Just like if you scale the display on a non-Retina monitor on a Mac.

You shouldn't really need to scale 2560x1440 @ 25" unless you have bad eyesight. Go up to a 27 or 30" display.