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System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

blog.system76.com

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Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4K on a 14".. what is the use case for that? unless you have some hybrid long-short sightedness (d)efficiency, use your laptop as a chesttop, or want quadruple the pixels for half the battery life I really can't see any benefit

I currently have XPS 15 with 4k screen and I can easily see pixels, so 14 should be a little better. There is also the feeling that it is 2021 and should I still be seeing pixels? I think crisp high resolution view is much better for the eyes and feels more natural. I am also almost always within reach of a mains socket, so I don't particularly care about battery life, just that I can move the machine from one place…

> I currently have XPS 15 with 4k screen and I can easily see pixels

Bullshit. Unless you literally push your face close to the monitor and view it from a normal viewing distance, you won't be able to see the pixels.

Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#302

When Ubuntu dropped the hammer on Gnome2, I saw Unity desktop and was kinda... ewwww. And next I have installed Gnome 3. After 15 minutes with it I decided that Unity is actually not that bad , so I switched to it. In the following years Unity kinda grew on me, so I'm sad that it was axed and now everyone use this Gnome3 abomination. It is not as bad as it was five years before, but loss of top menu and general prefe…

I agree. So now I'm on Linux Mint. Cinnamon is the natural extension of GNOME 2. It's really really good. It's just simple and clean.

Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#303
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iTerm2 is a beauty, is there a closest equivalent on Linux? There seem to be 25 popular choices especially now with the GPU-accelerated ones. Tried a few of the classics like Termite and they all seemed painfully outdated and crappy compared to iTerm.

I don’t get the love for iTerm2. I tried it before and see nothing appealing for me over the built in Terminap.app. And it seems to be slower too. On Linux, I just use whatever ship with the distro Gnome Terminal, Konsole... and they work fine.

I had the same experience, Apples Terminal.app is a really beautifully built terminal. But newer versions of iTerm2 proved me over, it finally felt as fast or faster than Terminal.app.

What initially invited me to test iTerm2 was the one button quake style scroll-down terminal, but I stayed for the better tab management and much more customizable options.

Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note the latest AMD 5850U chip is 40% faster [1] than the M1 for the same wattage! It really deserves more media exposure than the M1 which has the only merit of beating Intel. [1] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+7+PRO+585...

> Note the latest AMD 5850U chip is... Can you buy one today other than the HP EliteBook 845 G8, which starts over $2300? Because you can buy M1 laptops yesterday for less than half that and I can't find any other 5800U series laptops for sale.

If you're looking for a cheaper model, the HP ProBook x360 435 G8 is available with either a 5800U or PRO 5850U starting at ~$1000: https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-probook-x360-435-g8-not... (performance should be the same but the PRO models include some extra security features: https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/pro-security )

Lenovo has a number of 5000U models coming out (including various Thinkpads), but if I were looking for an upgrade this year, I think I'd be most excited about the 5800H Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro (available for preorder now).

Regarding H vs U processors, based on my testing of a previous-gen 4800H laptop, it benchmarked comparably on a perf/W basis to the U series, but via 3rd party tools (I use RyzenAdj) you can easily set whatever TDP you want (eg from 10W or 15W to match a U up to 65W+).

Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? I see Geenbench gives the M1 as having 1733 (single) and 7652 (multi) GeekBench score, whereas a AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U system has 1414 (single) and 8140 (multi), so the M1 is quite faster in single core than it (22%) and slower but close in multi-core (the AMD being 6% faster). And that's with the M1 having 4 slow cores for better battery life / consumption (with 8 full speed cores it would obliterate the 5850…

They're using PassMark instead of Geekbench. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Apple-M1-8-Core-3200-MH... Apple M1 - CPU Mark: 14,872 / Single thread: 3,630 AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U - CPU Mark: 20,659 / Single thread: 3,237 The AMD is 38.9% faster on the multi-core benchmark, and 10.8% slower on the single-core benchmark.

OK, so is PassMark more accurate than Geekbench?

(And, still, that's with M1 having 4 cores tied behind its back for better battery life).

Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#307
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iTerm2 is a beauty, is there a closest equivalent on Linux? There seem to be 25 popular choices especially now with the GPU-accelerated ones. Tried a few of the classics like Termite and they all seemed painfully outdated and crappy compared to iTerm.

I don’t get the love for iTerm2. I tried it before and see nothing appealing for me over the built in Terminap.app. And it seems to be slower too. On Linux, I just use whatever ship with the distro Gnome Terminal, Konsole... and they work fine.

There are some useful features (tmux integration), but honestly I agree. I've moved back to Terminal.app entirely myself; though honestly I mostly live in the Terminal panel in VSCode these days anyway

Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#308

When Ubuntu dropped the hammer on Gnome2, I saw Unity desktop and was kinda... ewwww. And next I have installed Gnome 3. After 15 minutes with it I decided that Unity is actually not that bad , so I switched to it. In the following years Unity kinda grew on me, so I'm sad that it was axed and now everyone use this Gnome3 abomination. It is not as bad as it was five years before, but loss of top menu and general prefe…

I agree. So now I'm on Linux Mint. Cinnamon is the natural extension of GNOME 2. It's really really good. It's just simple and clean.

Yeah I've been on cinnamon consistently. It does everything I need comfortably.

Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#309

When Ubuntu dropped the hammer on Gnome2, I saw Unity desktop and was kinda... ewwww. And next I have installed Gnome 3. After 15 minutes with it I decided that Unity is actually not that bad , so I switched to it. In the following years Unity kinda grew on me, so I'm sad that it was axed and now everyone use this Gnome3 abomination. It is not as bad as it was five years before, but loss of top menu and general prefe…

You're not alone. Once I had the keyboard shortcuts down-pat, I adored Unity honestly. I can't seem to get used to Gnome 3 no matter how hard I've tried, so I've given up sadly. I don't have any desktop Linux installs these days aside from my old iMac running Linux Mint downstairs that only my girlfriend uses!

Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#310

When Ubuntu dropped the hammer on Gnome2, I saw Unity desktop and was kinda... ewwww. And next I have installed Gnome 3. After 15 minutes with it I decided that Unity is actually not that bad , so I switched to it. In the following years Unity kinda grew on me, so I'm sad that it was axed and now everyone use this Gnome3 abomination. It is not as bad as it was five years before, but loss of top menu and general prefe…

I agree. So now I'm on Linux Mint. Cinnamon is the natural extension of GNOME 2. It's really really good. It's just simple and clean.

I installed Mint on a 9 year old iMac for my girlfriend to use, who's not particularly technically inclined. She picked it up immediately, without issue, which is honestly a great selling point of Cinnamon in my opinion
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