lol, reading this as I'm trying to get the Nvidia driver working on a 2010 mac mini ... if it was an Intel graphics model it would be fine, but non-standard hardware still breaks things, even on relatively common machines
Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
551–560 of 640 posts
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#552No it does not. Give it to me for 5’ and I will find at least 10 things that are broken. Energy management, monitor color profiles, external monitors, discrete gpu / integrated switching, Bluetooth, webcam settings all these are broken. Stop defending the state of Linux in personal computing. The best we can do is to put it in a VM and run it in a OS that has actual hardware support.
Can you name a kernel with more robust hardware support?
That's a bit of a non-sequitar. If you're trying to use it on a laptop it doesn't matter that it runs on phones and supercomputers as well.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#553Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a user and I don't find being made to directly edit config files user-friendly at all. Why on earth would I want to use a text editor to configure my printer? I don't use Powerpoint to edit photos either, even though in theory I probably could, but what a hassle. That sort of paradigm is fine for applications intended for professional use to be deployed to servers etc., but config management systems exist for tho…
Because you can diff the configs after changes? You can check into git so you have a history of changes? So you can copy the config to another machine? There are lots of reasons why text files are the preferred format to store configuration in. Other than perhaps a slight performance boost, why do we want settings in a non-human readable database? Hell, even Microsoft are starting to use json config files for stuff l…
But you are talking about something else!
You are talking about the configs being stored in text files. The comment you are responding to was talking about being forced to edit text files to configure.
Yours is about the format of data representation and theirs is about UX.
The first step of not forcing users to edit text files is having sensible well thought out defaults. If I have to think about configs the designers of the app failed me.
The second way to not force the users to edit text files is by having a well thought out gui for the kind of changes you might want.
The format of how the config settings are stored is almost orthogonal to this questions. And yes, you are right, a text based format is preferable over a properitary binary one.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#554Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, it took a long time for all Windows programs to work somewhat decently, and even now the OS still does not have great multi-DPI support. For example when I move my mouse from my 192 DPI screen to my 96 DPI screen, the mouse position translates in physical pixel, not in physical location. So at the bottom it matches but near the middle of the 192 DPI screen it stops going to the left (it already ends up on the t…
Windows' HiDPI does have some glitches (like the mouse positioning thing), but most apps work seamlessly (including browsers, Electron, and IDEs) or reasonably well (Microsoft Office). Also, Windows supports any scaling level, whereas macOS only supports 100% and 200%, which makes it easier to mask any sort of issues or bugs (pixel-doubling looks less blurry than scaling things up by 125%). Many (most?) 13-15 inch Wi…
MacOS supports intermediary DPIs, it has multiple "looks like resolutions". You may have to press ALT while clicking "scaled". But you can't (easily?) set any arbitrary scaling, like 123%. You can on Windows, but it recommends against it. And I've noticed that most apps work fine at 150%, but many feel weird at 125% (which is also "standard").
The Windows mouse thing has been somewhat fixed in Win11 22H2, where you can now even move your mouse to the side "above" the other screen and it will still move there.
As for apps working seamlessly, I'm really not convinced. Not even the taskbar works well. If you change the DPI while it's running, the taskbar icons become blurry. The initial start menu (on first click) adapts fine, but then if you start typing to search something, the results are a blurry mess. Edge has weird artefacts in the tab animation after a DPI change, where half of the icon moves at a different speed. IntelliJ has funny fonts, with some of them huge, others tiny.
To me, the killer feature of MacOS when it comes to multi-DPI setups is that it remembers the per-screen-per-setup DPI. In my case, my PC has a 14" 1920x1080 screen. When I use it alone, it's much closer than with an external screen. I like it in 100% mode. When I plug in the screen, a 32" 4k, they're both much further away. They have roughly the same DPI (by design - I mostly use Linux) so there's no "matching" to do, but I'd like both of them to be at say 125%. Tough luck. If I change the laptop's screen to 125% while the external screen is plugged in, it will stay at 125% when on its own, too. MacOS would remember that with this screen it's 125%, alone it's 100.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#555Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because you can diff the configs after changes? You can check into git so you have a history of changes? So you can copy the config to another machine? There are lots of reasons why text files are the preferred format to store configuration in. Other than perhaps a slight performance boost, why do we want settings in a non-human readable database? Hell, even Microsoft are starting to use json config files for stuff l…
Windows Terminal also has a GUI for most of the settings configuration.
[deleted]
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#556Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. It's a sad state of affairs. And unfortunately Wayland is the only way to get mixed-DPI with proper scaling.
It's not. I've managed to do it in xrandr. I have my main screen (and thus all screens) rendered at 200% and then scale down the other 2 back down to 100. Basically how macOS does fractional scaling. It's not real multi-DPI no but effectively it does work. Does require a pretty decent GPU to render all screens at 200% before it scales them down though.
How's the blurriness, though?
At one point I was using two 24" screens, one 1920x1080, one 3840x2160. I've tried messing around with settings, until I ended up on xrandr scaling as being, basically, the only solution. Five minutes later, the low-dpi display was in the closet, because I couldn't stand the blurry fonts.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#557Linux worked out of the box (Ubuntu LTS or Lubuntu) with: - Lenovo ThinkPad T41 - Lenovo ThinkPad X61s - LenovWo ThinkPad X220 - Lenovo ThinkPad X230 - Lenovo ThinkPad X1 - DELL Latitude E7762 - DELL Latitude E7480 - Apple iMac 27" Problems encountered: - The touchpad on the Lenovo ThinkPad 240 mad random jumps, not sure if this is a Linux issue since I never tried Windows (I usually wipe it right after unpacking). -…
Are you talking about non-Pro MS Surface 3? Interestingly enough on my non-Pro Surface 3 I had no problem installing Ubuntu, Mint and Pop!_OS. With the first two I couldn't make wifi to work after sleep, but with Pop!_OS it worked perfectly.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#558Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would anybody expect that new hardware that has to be reverse engineered and for which no Linux drivers are provided to work out of the box as soon is it is available? It's an impossible expectation, and also one that no other OS would have a chance of fulfilling unless hardware vendors specifically catered to them. It's like asking for a book review of a book that hasn't been published. Yes, other people have pu…
Windows users don't have to reverse engineer anything before their hardware works.
>before their hardware works
Linux users don't have to either. (Linux devs do.) Another thing they don't have to do is searching vendor site for drivers which may not even be installed correctly.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#559Earlier quoted context omitted.
I greatly prefer Linux and use Windows when some software forces me to, but I don't feel that your comment is constructive in this conversation. Windows is generally a smoother experience. Linux is generally not ready for the average user with a randomly picked computer, as much as we'd wish it is.
Yeah, well, I don't really feel that Linux gettin' shit on every single time it's mentioned anywhere is entirely constructive, either. I been using Linux for many years, and over that time it's quite simply continued to improve in areas where Windows was always a huge pain for me (and most all of my family and friends with few exceptions). Most notably, that whole "Plug and Play" hardware thing. In this most recent d…
It's not shit on every time it's mentioned. Only when people post nonsense like this article. Do you expect people to just go "yep, Linux has no hardware issues, you're right".
Of course not! That doesn't mean they hate Linux, just that they aren't delusional about it's level of hardware support.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#560It's not boring. I use Arch Linux sway on my Framework laptop. I have 23 virtual screens (one for each digit, one for each function key and an additional one), and they have different scaling. This means on some screens I don't need my reading glasses. For that I wrote a script which is invoked by sway's event handler triggered by virtual screen switches. I find this exciting. It's not perfect. I still miss the smoot…
Are you on the 11th or 12th gen Intel? What's your take on Arch -- do you find most things work? I've got a Framework on order coming sometime October and I'm thinking of using Arch for install.
Things that I care about are display/graphics, webcam/mic/audio/video, a working suspend even if I have to resort to hibernate, media keys on the keyboard, and a usable trackpad.
Things I don't really care about is probably the fingerprint reader.
From the ArchWiki this seems to be a go, but I'm still a bit sceptical.