Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update • Hacker News Board

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#71

Post by bluedino » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #61

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…

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 betwe…

Yes, GNOME is horrible. So many hacks to get it usable. It's as if they designed it for a tablet or something.

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#72

Post by quantummkv » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 2:03 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #63

yagodragon wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Fortunately, Nvidia has finally decided to get their act together. They contributed the wayland backend for KWin/KDE that got merged just last week.

If I am not wrong gnome 3.32 also has the nvidia wayland backend

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#73

Post by bluedino » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 2:05 PM UTC

JasonFruit wrote: post #59

I was struck by something reading this article: almost none of the applications have names that express their function. If you haven't used it, what does Thunar do? Parole? GIMP? Gigolo, Garcon, or Ristretto? I don't see what's wrong with a name that has something to say about what your program does.

You're not alone. My boss was trying to research some Python stuff. Bottle, Celery..."who came up with these terms!"

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#74

Post by scottlocklin » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 2:07 PM UTC

kentosi wrote: post #66

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

Never had this problem with KDE. New KDE actually seems to work OK without killing off the file system indexer.

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#75

Post by Demiurge » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 2:08 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…

I just got a 4K 27inch monitor and it worked great on windows 10 125% scaling, using hdmi. Then, I actually had to use the macbook for work, and it didn't get past your step 1. There is no way to alter the sizes of things, its either 1080p on 27in or full 4k. But, I decided to try one more thing, and got the usb-c to displayport cable. Behold, it allowed me to have 1440p HiDPI scaling, which HDMI didn't. And, I thought it was an HDMI 2 cable. So, that's something to try, but probably just on Mac.

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#76

Post by Zardoz84 » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 2:10 PM UTC

neverminder wrote: post #68

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…

Try Plasma/KDE

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#77

Post by fulafel » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 2:10 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 train has already gone but the whole "HiDPI scaling" is such a sad solution to the problem. Were the existing DPI APIs really such a dead end? They could have been extended to support on the fly DPI changes. The web "px" debacle is part of the same culture, I guess.

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#78

Post by neverminder » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 2:18 PM UTC

Zardoz84 wrote: post #76

neverminder wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Try Plasma/KDE

I did, but to me personally it wasn't nearly as polished as Unity and I also didn't like the absence of that unified UI look across all the base apps that Unity has. I also like the global menu and abundance of themes that exist for Unity/Gnome.

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#79

Post by MisterTea » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

Demiurge wrote: post #75

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…

I just got a 4K 27inch monitor and it worked great on windows 10 125% scaling, using hdmi. Then, I actually had to use the macbook for work, and it didn't get past your step 1. There is no way to alter the sizes of things, its either 1080p on 27in or full 4k. But, I decided to try one more thing, and got the usb-c to displayport cable. Behold, it allowed me to have 1440p HiDPI scaling, which HDMI didn't. And, I thoug…

I ran into a similar problem with an older 30" 1080 Viewsonic TV/monitor which featured both HDMI and DVI inputs. I wanted to hook my Intel Nuc to it which was running Linux mint 18-something. The Nuc has VGA and HDMI so I naturally hook it to the TV using an HDMI cable. For some reason, the desktop resolution of 1920x1080 was somehow being scaled larger than the screen cutting off the edges. No amount of playing with the TV scaling settings would get the damn picture to fit on the screen.

I didn't know if it was Linux, the TV or the Nuc. So I spent the next two hours trying to figure it out to no avail. About to give up, I then had what I thought was a dumb idea, hook it to the TV using an HDMI-DVI cable. It worked. the 1920x1080 desktop filled the screen as it should. The only thing I can think of is the HDMI port is only setup to look for TV video profiles. The DVI port expects a PC so it can figure out the signal and get the picture right.

Re: Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update

#80

Post by irq-1 » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

JasonFruit wrote: post #59

I was struck by something reading this article: almost none of the applications have names that express their function. If you haven't used it, what does Thunar do? Parole? GIMP? Gigolo, Garcon, or Ristretto? I don't see what's wrong with a name that has something to say about what your program does.

Xubuntu lists the apps by name then function. For example "Thunar File Manager" and "Parole Media Player".