Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

blog.system76.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 427 posts

Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#391

Post by aidenn0 »

ktpsns wrote: post #87
aidenn0 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my biggest missing feature from the Mac. Do any of the major GUI toolkits for linux support this?

There is for instance http://afiestas.org/appmenu-runner-meet-the-kde-hud/ , and I bet there are similar tools for Gnome. However, from what I heard of Unity, it seems to be a hell of a work to keep/maintain it running for all kind of programs (regarding the different UI toolkits).

Right. If KDE or Gnome were to automatically generate searchable actions as part of the toolkit, that would be enough to get me behind one of them as a toolkit.

Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#392

Post by Const-me »

foldr wrote: post #388
Const-me wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M1 CPU consumes up to 30W of electricity. That’s impossible to do with minimal or no active cooling. Instead of designing good cooling, Apple does aggressive thermal throttling. The problem is not specific to Apple, many other companies are offering ultra-thin laptops with similar tradeoff. As a consumer, I don’t like that tradeoff. I’m already paying for a fast CPU. Yet due to the lack of a proper fan assembly (a lo…

The M1 Macbook Pro has active cooling, if that's important to you as a matter of principle. However, real world tests show that the performance gains from actively cooling the M1 are pretty marginal. More broadly, it seems that you prioritize performance over everything else when it comes to laptops. Apple doesn't – especially not in its 13" range. What they are providing is a small form factor with crazy good batter…

> you prfioritize performance over everything else

More or less. I’m a programmer, and I want computers to compute things.

If I only wanted them to play youtube, I’d get a tablet instead. If I only wanted a laptop to run a word processor, I would look at these MacBooks or equivalent Windows devices.

> If you have a fixed amount of thermal headroom to play with

In case of ultra-thin laptops like macbooks, the primary reason why it’s fixed to just 10-15W is to look good on marketing materials. Technically, it’s easy and cheap to make it fixed to the value several times higher than that. After all, 10 years ago mainstream laptop CPUs were dissipating 35-45W: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge#Mobile_platform

Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#393

Post by foldr »

Const-me wrote: post #392
foldr wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The M1 Macbook Pro has active cooling, if that's important to you as a matter of principle. However, real world tests show that the performance gains from actively cooling the M1 are pretty marginal. More broadly, it seems that you prioritize performance over everything else when it comes to laptops. Apple doesn't – especially not in its 13" range. What they are providing is a small form factor with crazy good batter…

> you prfioritize performance over everything else More or less. I’m a programmer, and I want computers to compute things. If I only wanted them to play youtube, I’d get a tablet instead. If I only wanted a laptop to run a word processor, I would look at these MacBooks or equivalent Windows devices. > If you have a fixed amount of thermal headroom to play with In case of ultra-thin laptops like macbooks, the primary…

It's not fixed to 10-15W in the Macbook Pro.

I'm also a programmer, but don't find performance particularly important once it reaches an acceptable level. I would rather have a thin a light laptop (as would most people, judging by sales).

Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#394

Post by pkulak »

akvadrako wrote: post #331
pkulak wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4K at 14" is probably not a great idea because you'd need fractional scaling. I'm holding out for 13" 1440p, which is a perfect 2x.

I use 4K on 14". Windows defaults to 300% scaling so clearly the defaults agree with you. But 200% scaling is usable; things are a little small but the extra real estate is worth it.

I guess if my math is right, that's 104 ppi after 3x scaling? Bit large, but not bad. Take a couple fonts down in size a tad and you're probably golden. I've been writing off 4k laptops, but this brings them back into consideration for me.

Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#395

Post by wing-_-nuts »

varispeed wrote: post #34

I wish they had a laptop with a latest and top AMD, 14" 4K IPS matte panel, programmers friendly keyboard (pg up/down home end on dedicated keys at least), expandable RAM and nvme drive, silent fans and metal chassis and a Linux support. Less important physical camera and wi-fi cut off switch. If there was an ARM chip with comparable performance to M1 I would consider it too if it was running Linux. After watching th…

Why a 4k display on a screen that small? That is well beyond the limits of human visual acuity.

Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#396

Post by ajosh »

khazhoux wrote: post #317
favadi wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On iTerm2 my windows are full-screen, black background, zero border or window decorations. I cycle between windows with cmd-` it switches instantly from one full-screen terminal to the next. It's what to me a console should be. Every terminal app I've tried on Windows or Linux insists on having a goddamn window border. I don't want even a single pixel of border. And yes, this is enough to make me a die-hard iTerm2 us…

In KDE, in addition to being able to do this full screen, you can have regular windows without any chrome if you want. You just right click on the window title bar and change settings. You can easily set a rule to do this as well if you'd like.

Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#397

Post by Const-me »

foldr wrote: post #393
Const-me wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you prfioritize performance over everything else More or less. I’m a programmer, and I want computers to compute things. If I only wanted them to play youtube, I’d get a tablet instead. If I only wanted a laptop to run a word processor, I would look at these MacBooks or equivalent Windows devices. > If you have a fixed amount of thermal headroom to play with In case of ultra-thin laptops like macbooks, the primary…

It's not fixed to 10-15W in the Macbook Pro. I'm also a programmer, but don't find performance particularly important once it reaches an acceptable level. I would rather have a thin a light laptop (as would most people, judging by sales).

> I'm also a programmer

I should have noted I specialize on desktop and embedded development. I can always find uses of faster CPUs, more cores, and more RAM.

> I would rather have a thin a light laptop

I agree, but to an extent. I don’t have a gamer-targeted laptop because heavy to carry around.

But still, I believe these unupgradable ultra-thin laptops are a bad deal.

They only saving a few millimeters of thickness and ~0.2kg of weight, for a huge performance cost. BTW, I have installed 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD in my reasonably thin (2cm) and reasonably light (1.6kg) 13” laptop.

> as would most people, judging by sales

Judging by sales, most people don’t need a computer at all, they prefer phones and tablets. On the internets, more than half of page views are now from mobile devices.

Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#398

Post by qshaman »

I just hope they offered another theme , i dont think the current one is very aesthetically pleasing, i love their vision as a company , I just dont like their laptops really, I bought a gazelle a few years back , i loved the unboxing experience and the very good support but it just feels cheap , the keyboard isn’t great either, and is pretty noisy . Seems like all linux laptop manufacturers are using similar chasis ? I want to support them , they are doing important work , but their laptops are not competitive for the price, you can install linux on a xps or a thinkpad, and get a better quality device for a lower price.

Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#399

Post by samstave »

6bb32646d83d wrote: post #220
samstave wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My hp omen is pretty bad ass, check them out - has most of all that - no metal case though sadly..

+1 on HP Omen. Fits most of your demand except for the 4k screen. I have the AMD Ryzen 7 4800H version and it's significantly faster than the beefiest macbook pro you can buy. Linux runs great on it. It costs ~$1000

I have the same one - and the symmetry in the design when you open the case is beautiful, the dual SSD lots mirrored on each side from each other is really nice.

Re: System76 Developing “Cosmic” Desktop Environment

#400

Post by AtlasBarfed »

varispeed wrote: post #34

I wish they had a laptop with a latest and top AMD, 14" 4K IPS matte panel, programmers friendly keyboard (pg up/down home end on dedicated keys at least), expandable RAM and nvme drive, silent fans and metal chassis and a Linux support. Less important physical camera and wi-fi cut off switch. If there was an ARM chip with comparable performance to M1 I would consider it too if it was running Linux. After watching th…

Laptops that aren't apple are dog slow at adding HDMI 2.0, USB-C in sufficient numbers, etc etc etc.

You'd think the amount of business laptops still made by Dell and HP would lead to a better set of mobos for laptops in general (since they are made by such a smaller number of vendors I think), but it is dog slow. The Desktop is supposed to be totally dead but the mobo support for features runs way ahead of still kind relevant laptop market by 12-18 months.

Post reply on HN