5 ms·

Was it hard to move off Retina and reasonable touchpad? I am considering similar route, but these are the two things that keep me on Apple.

by glogla 9y ago

xiaomai 9y ago
High DPI displays are common on PC laptops now, they generally work well in Linux (not so much for legacy apps but you're unlikely to use those). I like the touchpad on my X1 Carbon, but I never used a mac long enough to really adapt my workflow to all the touchpad gestures (I think on Linux you'll be happy with general usage/scrolling/etc, but stuff like pinch to zoom is still not widely supported).
- danieldk 9y ago
  High DPI displays are common on PC laptops now, they generally work well in Linux (not so much for legacy apps but you're unlikely to use those). Surprisingly, some Tk applications that I use irregularly actually work with HiDPI with Tk 8.6 (as in, they are scaled up with an integer scaling factor, and are sharp). Multiple displays with different DPIs also work with Wayland (I have one 4k screen and a LoDPI display 90 degrees rotated). Though, there are some bugs with GNOME 2.26 on Wayland with HiDPI displays that are switched off and on again (e.g. some applications such as GNOME Terminal become blurry, they seem to be rendered at lower DPI and scaled up). I have reported some bugs and the gnome-shell/mutter developers are quite responsive.
s_kilk 9y ago
The recent thinkpads have hi-dpi displays, and they're perfectly fine for anything other than intensive colour work. The touchpads are fine too. I regularly bounce between a macbook and a T460, and I don't have any problems operating the latter.
seba_dos1 9y ago
My Yoga 2 Pro has hidpi display and better touchpad than MBP's. Yoga 900's touchpad is way worse though, so if you really care, always check if you can try it first.
kevincox 9y ago
You can get higher resolution displays on other laptops. As for the trackpad most are pretty good now days, although apple is probably still in first place.
Joeri 9y ago
reasonable touchpad? You want to look for windows precision touchpad support. Turns out the problem with windows touchpads was not the hardware, but the crappy drivers touchpad vendors make. Microsoft made their own drivers and if you can get hardware compatible with those you'll have a much nicer experience.
pimeys 9y ago
If you choose a ThinkPad, the trackpoint, three mouse buttons and the perfect keyboard together are such a nice combination I actually disabled the touchpad from bios.
chrissnell 9y ago
I got used to the touchpad with time and the touchpad drivers have improved, too. It's really not a big deal at all after a few weeks. HiDPI is generally pretty decent although it's slightly annoying that different layers of the graphics stack (Xorg, GTK2, GTK3, etc.) have different mechanisms for tweaking the scaling but with a few evenings of work, I have everything dialed. A small price to pay for years of use to come. The Arch Linux wiki is super helpful for this.

Was it hard to move off Retina and reasonable touchpad? I am considering similar route, but these are the two things that keep me on Apple.

by glogla 9y ago

Was it hard to move off Retina and reasonable touchpad? I am considering similar route, but these are the two things that keep me on Apple.

xiaomai 9y ago

High DPI displays are common on PC laptops now, they generally work well in Linux (not so much for legacy apps but you're unlikely to use those). I like the touchpad on my X1 Carbon, but I never used a mac long enough to really adapt my workflow to all the touchpad gestures (I think on Linux you'll be happy with general usage/scrolling/etc, but stuff like pinch to zoom is still not widely supported).

danieldk 9y ago
High DPI displays are common on PC laptops now, they generally work well in Linux (not so much for legacy apps but you're unlikely to use those). Surprisingly, some Tk applications that I use irregularly actually work with HiDPI with Tk 8.6 (as in, they are scaled up with an integer scaling factor, and are sharp). Multiple displays with different DPIs also work with Wayland (I have one 4k screen and a LoDPI display 90 degrees rotated). Though, there are some bugs with GNOME 2.26 on Wayland with HiDPI displays that are switched off and on again (e.g. some applications such as GNOME Terminal become blurry, they seem to be rendered at lower DPI and scaled up). I have reported some bugs and the gnome-shell/mutter developers are quite responsive.

s_kilk 9y ago

The recent thinkpads have hi-dpi displays, and they're perfectly fine for anything other than intensive colour work. The touchpads are fine too. I regularly bounce between a macbook and a T460, and I don't have any problems operating the latter.

seba_dos1 9y ago

My Yoga 2 Pro has hidpi display and better touchpad than MBP's. Yoga 900's touchpad is way worse though, so if you really care, always check if you can try it first.

kevincox 9y ago

You can get higher resolution displays on other laptops. As for the trackpad most are pretty good now days, although apple is probably still in first place.

Joeri 9y ago

reasonable touchpad? You want to look for windows precision touchpad support. Turns out the problem with windows touchpads was not the hardware, but the crappy drivers touchpad vendors make. Microsoft made their own drivers and if you can get hardware compatible with those you'll have a much nicer experience.

pimeys 9y ago

If you choose a ThinkPad, the trackpoint, three mouse buttons and the perfect keyboard together are such a nice combination I actually disabled the touchpad from bios.

chrissnell 9y ago

I got used to the touchpad with time and the touchpad drivers have improved, too. It's really not a big deal at all after a few weeks. HiDPI is generally pretty decent although it's slightly annoying that different layers of the graphics stack (Xorg, GTK2, GTK3, etc.) have different mechanisms for tweaking the scaling but with a few evenings of work, I have everything dialed. A small price to pay for years of use to come. The Arch Linux wiki is super helpful for this.