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At my company, most of the developers use Ubuntu end-user machines, all from Dell. Not only does this avoid us having to pay for Windows licenses we never use,
by gargravarr 9y ago
At my company, most of the developers use Ubuntu end-user machines, all from Dell. Not only does this avoid us having to pay for Windows licenses we never use, but we know the hardware is actually going to work fine with it. There's some quirks, of course - Ubuntu doesn't much like the 4k screens in our 13" XPSen so there's a lot of tweaking involved, but we're getting some very good hardware at a good price, and stuff just works. It's the right choice to target the high-end of the market, since the users are likely highly Linux-knowledgeable and so far we've never had to contact Dell for any software issues, which is going to improve their profits while our stuff just keeps working.
The only issue is the long lead times between actually ordering a batch of laptops and them being dispatched. It can be a fortnight or more. Currently I (as the sysadmin) keep a cupboard full of them ready for use, but I never look forward to ordering more.
- bunderbunder 9y agoFWIW, Windows has problems with 4K screens, too. Most apps work fine, some display at the size of a postage stamp.
- erikbye 9y agoNot Windows' fault, though. It's up to developers to update their apps to handle DPI scaling.
- AsyncAwait 9y agoWell, that's the same for Linux really, both GTK3 and Qt5 support 4K screens.
- erikbye 9y agoAbsolutely it is. Such a simple fix too, at least in terms of avoiding things becoming too small. In terms of clarity and scaling up pixel-based GUI elements like icons you need to do a bit more work (new icons, double the res).
- bunderbunder 9y agoTrue, and I'm pretty sure the reason's the same for Linux. Doesn't affect my opinion on the usability of the platform, though. For my part, I got my work to do, so I ultimately ended up back on a Mac (yet again, ugh) because, for all Apple's recent problems, none of them bother me as much as things like, "I just flat-out can't use this app that I need without a microscope."
- erikbye 9y agoRegarding usability, been a little while since I've used macOS now, so sincere question: Is it still true that you need third-party software to do keyboard-based window management? Even just something as simple as Windows' Win+arrow keys.
- gargravarr 9y agoI think it is. I haven't dug much into Sierra, but there's no obvious window management options. I remember using BetterTouchTool on Snow Leopard to Mavericks which did the job very well, but I think you're correct in that there's still no native support.
- oneweekwonder 9y agoLike spectacle[0]? I'm not on the latest macOS but I believe you still need a app like this for macOS. [0]: https://www.spectacleapp.com/ https://www.spectacleapp.com/
- wlesieutre 9y agoYes, still true. Lots of options though. Divvy, Spectacle, ShiftIt, Moom, Amythest, SizeUp, Cinch, Slate, Flexiglass, probably others. If you want something very configurable and don't mind writing some Lua, Hammerspoon is a fun utility.
- theossuary 9y agoI'll throw Mjolnir in there too. As somebody who came from a pretty customized Awesome installation on Arch to Mac OSX, Mjolnir scratches that same itch. It allows you to completely script your hotkeys with lua, do grid based layouts, etc. https://github.com/sdegutis/mjolnir https://github.com/sdegutis/mjolnir
- criddell 9y agoWindows is getting better at high DPI even for non-DPI aware applications. It's weird though. Windows seems to do different things depending on the scaling factor and how you set the factor. 125% might look terrible but 150% is tack sharp. Setting 125% as a custom scale factor does something different than choosing 125% as a standard scale factor. Usually, you have to log out and log back in after changing the scale, but not always. When you are working over remote desktop, it tries very hard to stop you from changing the scale factor. I'm not even sure if you can anymore.
- erikbye 9y agoYes, I've definitely seen blurry fonts on 125% in some apps. Creators Update and Fall Creators Update both have a lot of scaling fixes and those might help for some of the apps. Have you updated?
- criddell 9y agoYeah, I'm entirely up to date. I think we are in agreement - Windows 10 does a pretty good job, it just isn't clear to me exactly what it is doing and how the different settings affect the display.
- user5994461 9y agoI attribute that to a simple limitation of physics. Scaling a pixel to one pixel and a bit of another pixel is not physically possible, there is a hard physical unit[1]. They are some zoom ratios that will smooth well to the screen and some that won't. I think it's mostly noticed on text, the eye is incredibly good at noticing minimal variations. [1] Actually, font rendering on windows is already on a subpixel level. A pixel square is made of 3 rectangular colored sub pixels.
- qwerty654 9y agoSwing apps (Tibco BW and DBVisualizer I think) all suffered on my latest XPS. There is a workaround though (adding some XML Windows guff to do with scaling next to the offending binary and/or java/javaw.exe.
- lmm 9y ago> Ubuntu doesn't much like the 4k screens in our 13" XPSen so there's a lot of tweaking involved > stuff just works I can't reconcile these two statements.
- criddell 9y agoStuff just works, as long as you pick the right stuff.
- bitexploder 9y agoThis harkens back to the classic Unix statement, "Unix is user friendly, it is just picky about its friends." I must agree that the support of high DPI displays is not optimal just yet. However, it is not that bad. At a corporate level one person can do the tweaking and create a great user experience for an entire organization. Given the amount of tweaking and "management" goo organizations foist upon the average OSX installation blasting out a few lines of DPI tweak commands is almost nothing. So it just works in the sense that you can do sane configuration activity and it behaves as you might expect. Also, Unity out of the box is still pretty good on a scale like this: very bad, bad, tolerable, pretty good, good, great. It does "just work" for the most part :)
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago> "Unix is user friendly, it is just picky about its friends." Specifically, all of its friends are masochists.
- gargravarr 9y agoYes, poorly phrased :) There's no actual issues with the hi-DPI aspect, it does work, but it's obviously very difficult to read without tweaking. All the other applications we use just work out of the box. As noted elsewhere, hi-DPI problems aren't exclusive to Ubuntu.
- jgalt212 9y agoI agree,and I've found it very frustrating to work with. To the extant that new machines we have order, were not of the hi DPI variety.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- drchaos 9y ago> Ubuntu doesn't much like the 4k screens This is not really Ubuntu's fault, but mainly a problem with GTK2. Everything based on GTK3 scales quite well nowadays, the same is true for QT. Unfortunately, the Gimp and Inkscape are two notable applications which have not yet been ported to GTK3. Other than that, it's only the console which is not usable out-of-the-box.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago> the Gimp ... [has] not yet been ported to GTK3. Which is ironic, considering GTK is the GIMP ToolKit.