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THIS. Plenty of kinda nice Linux laptops out there, but with a terrible, terrible screen. For example, a MBP 13" has 2x resolution than this 15". This is a monu

THIS. Plenty of kinda nice Linux laptops out there, but with a terrible, terrible screen. For example, a MBP 13" has 2x resolution than this 15". This is a monumental deal breaker for the majority of people.

ISL 6y ago
Have a look at the Dell offerings. The Developer Edition of the XPS 13 is a linux-first example: https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-laptops-and-notebooks/new-xps-13-developer-edition/spd/xps-13-9310-laptop/ctox139w10p2c3000u https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-laptops-and-notebo... (This post made from an XPS-13 7390 with a standard-HD display. The standard display is quite pleasant to use. The keyboard is wonderful compared to my crouton Chromebook of the past. The fit, finish, and operation of the device is the nicest I've used.)
- noja 6y ago
  Any coil whine?
  - ISL 6y ago
    I haven't noticed any particular noise from the unit. I'm in my late thirties, so if it is at the higher end of human hearing, perhaps those particular cilia are gone, but I'm happy. Placing my ear on the keyboard doesn't detect anything either. It has been the better part of a decade since I've had a laptop with a fan, so that is a little bit different, but I only notice it under higher loads.
  - julianlam 6y ago
    Yes, it exists. However it is my daily driver and I've all but tuned it out months ago. It's really not as big a deal some make it out to be.
- sscarduzio 6y ago
  Oh that's funny, I have the same laptop with you! $ neofetch --off sscarduzio@nash --------------- OS: Ubuntu 20.10 x86_64 Host: XPS 13 7390 2-in-1 Kernel: 5.8.0-40-generic Uptime: 3 days, 10 hours, 34 mins Packages: 3506 (dpkg), 14 (flatpak), 27 (snap) Shell: bash 5.0.17 Resolution: 1920x1200 DE: GNOME WM: Mutter WM Theme: Yaru-dark Theme: Yaru-dark [GTK2/3] Icons: Yaru [GTK2/3] Terminal: gnome-terminal CPU: Intel i7-1065G7 (8) @ 3.900GHz GPU: Intel Iris Plus Graphics G7 Memory: 7620MiB / 15781MiB I use fractional scaling hidpi (1.3x) and no issues at all. But coming from a 2015 MBP 13" retina display, I can definitely tell the difference, and the MBP was much nicer to look at. I opted fro the FHD+ instead of the 4K screen in my Dell for two reasons: - 4K is *WAY* beyond Retina, which is already very dense for me. - I was afraid the 4K would drain the battery (especially on Linux) I really hope Dell will offer a sane ~3K display (i.e. Retina levels) in the future and remove the burden of choice for their customers (at least where it's not needed). Before you ask: no coil whine for me, but the thin rubber feet peeled off after exactly one year. This pissed me off on a £2K laptop.
Scarbutt 6y ago
Is there much difference when looking at text on an 13" screen between 1080p and 2160p ? assuming both are high quality screens.
- sscarduzio 6y ago
  Yes there is! Because in the MBP 13" at 2160p I could keep 2x scaling, which is much better than this 1.3x/1.5x fractional scaling I have to keep in the Dell XPS 13".
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  Do you like smooth or blocky text?
- derefr 6y ago
  Assuming you have good eyes, twice the DPI means you can have your text almost-but-not-quite twice as small without losing readability. Which is effectively the same as giving you almost-but-not-quite twice the screen real-estate.
Teknoman117 6y ago
I am typing this on a Dell XPS 15 w/ a 4K OLED running Gentoo . But more to your point, yes, there are few laptops with good screens that have awesome Linux compatibility. They exist, certainly, but there are not too many of them.
- randmeerkat 6y ago
  I have to ask, what compelled you to use Gentoo as your daily driver? I haven’t touched Gentoo in many years, but it was not something I would ever consider as a desktop distribution based off that experience. Has something changed?
  - Teknoman117 6y ago
    To be honest, not really. Where I work we run Gentoo on all our servers because we have many changes across the Linux stack and deal with custom, internal hardware. We have build profiles for various system configurations that are entirely reproducible on a binary level. It made sense since we have many similar or identical systems globally and need access to the latest kernel versions. I installed it on all my personal systems to force myself to learn how to use it. I ran Arch on everything previously. Then I went and did something stupid - I fell in love with Gentoo's package management system. As someone who writes a lot of code on my own time as well, I found Gentoo's package manager (portage) to be the least headache inducing of all the ones I'd used (deb, rpm, PKGBUILD). This is my own subjective opinion obviously.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
holtalanm 6y ago
> This is a monumental deal breaker for the majority of people. I highly doubt that a laptop not supporting >1080p on the monitor is considered a 'monumental deal breaker for the majority of people'. 1080p is just fine for laptops. the screen on the Serval WS is 144hz, as well, which is much higher refresh-rate than most HiDpi displays.
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  I write text documents for a living. 4k at 60hz is what I need and it works perfectly from Ubuntu Mate on a Dell laptop. I'd never go back to 1080.
  - holtalanm 6y ago
    i write code for a living, so I'm in a similar boat. all my screens are 1080p and I don't have any problems. my point was that this is actually not a deal breaker for most users. just a deal breaker for some users. I would venture to say they are even in the minority.
    - mixmastamyk 6y ago
      Right, we can do without a lot of nice features. For example, I could do without a modern editor, maybe get by with gedit or something similar. But I don't... the value I get from them is much greater than the money spent. My laptop display upgrade was maybe $200 five years ago. It has payed that back in clarity (and the amount of code I can see at once) every single day since.

ISL 6y ago

Have a look at the Dell offerings. The Developer Edition of the XPS 13 is a linux-first example: https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-laptops-and-notebooks/new-xps-13-developer-edition/spd/xps-13-9310-laptop/ctox139w10p2c3000u https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-laptops-and-notebo... (This post made from an XPS-13 7390 with a standard-HD display. The standard display is quite pleasant to use. The keyboard is wonderful compared to my crouton Chromebook of the past. The fit, finish, and operation of the device is the nicest I've used.)

noja 6y ago
Any coil whine?
- ISL 6y ago
  I haven't noticed any particular noise from the unit. I'm in my late thirties, so if it is at the higher end of human hearing, perhaps those particular cilia are gone, but I'm happy. Placing my ear on the keyboard doesn't detect anything either. It has been the better part of a decade since I've had a laptop with a fan, so that is a little bit different, but I only notice it under higher loads.
- julianlam 6y ago
  Yes, it exists. However it is my daily driver and I've all but tuned it out months ago. It's really not as big a deal some make it out to be.
sscarduzio 6y ago
Oh that's funny, I have the same laptop with you! $ neofetch --off sscarduzio@nash --------------- OS: Ubuntu 20.10 x86_64 Host: XPS 13 7390 2-in-1 Kernel: 5.8.0-40-generic Uptime: 3 days, 10 hours, 34 mins Packages: 3506 (dpkg), 14 (flatpak), 27 (snap) Shell: bash 5.0.17 Resolution: 1920x1200 DE: GNOME WM: Mutter WM Theme: Yaru-dark Theme: Yaru-dark [GTK2/3] Icons: Yaru [GTK2/3] Terminal: gnome-terminal CPU: Intel i7-1065G7 (8) @ 3.900GHz GPU: Intel Iris Plus Graphics G7 Memory: 7620MiB / 15781MiB I use fractional scaling hidpi (1.3x) and no issues at all. But coming from a 2015 MBP 13" retina display, I can definitely tell the difference, and the MBP was much nicer to look at. I opted fro the FHD+ instead of the 4K screen in my Dell for two reasons: - 4K is *WAY* beyond Retina, which is already very dense for me. - I was afraid the 4K would drain the battery (especially on Linux) I really hope Dell will offer a sane ~3K display (i.e. Retina levels) in the future and remove the burden of choice for their customers (at least where it's not needed). Before you ask: no coil whine for me, but the thin rubber feet peeled off after exactly one year. This pissed me off on a £2K laptop.

Scarbutt 6y ago

Is there much difference when looking at text on an 13" screen between 1080p and 2160p ? assuming both are high quality screens.

sscarduzio 6y ago
Yes there is! Because in the MBP 13" at 2160p I could keep 2x scaling, which is much better than this 1.3x/1.5x fractional scaling I have to keep in the Dell XPS 13".
mixmastamyk 6y ago
Do you like smooth or blocky text?
derefr 6y ago
Assuming you have good eyes, twice the DPI means you can have your text almost-but-not-quite twice as small without losing readability. Which is effectively the same as giving you almost-but-not-quite twice the screen real-estate.

Teknoman117 6y ago

I am typing this on a Dell XPS 15 w/ a 4K OLED running Gentoo . But more to your point, yes, there are few laptops with good screens that have awesome Linux compatibility. They exist, certainly, but there are not too many of them.

randmeerkat 6y ago
I have to ask, what compelled you to use Gentoo as your daily driver? I haven’t touched Gentoo in many years, but it was not something I would ever consider as a desktop distribution based off that experience. Has something changed?
- Teknoman117 6y ago
  To be honest, not really. Where I work we run Gentoo on all our servers because we have many changes across the Linux stack and deal with custom, internal hardware. We have build profiles for various system configurations that are entirely reproducible on a binary level. It made sense since we have many similar or identical systems globally and need access to the latest kernel versions. I installed it on all my personal systems to force myself to learn how to use it. I ran Arch on everything previously. Then I went and did something stupid - I fell in love with Gentoo's package management system. As someone who writes a lot of code on my own time as well, I found Gentoo's package manager (portage) to be the least headache inducing of all the ones I'd used (deb, rpm, PKGBUILD). This is my own subjective opinion obviously.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

holtalanm 6y ago

> This is a monumental deal breaker for the majority of people. I highly doubt that a laptop not supporting >1080p on the monitor is considered a 'monumental deal breaker for the majority of people'. 1080p is just fine for laptops. the screen on the Serval WS is 144hz, as well, which is much higher refresh-rate than most HiDpi displays.

mixmastamyk 6y ago
I write text documents for a living. 4k at 60hz is what I need and it works perfectly from Ubuntu Mate on a Dell laptop. I'd never go back to 1080.
- holtalanm 6y ago
  i write code for a living, so I'm in a similar boat. all my screens are 1080p and I don't have any problems. my point was that this is actually not a deal breaker for most users. just a deal breaker for some users. I would venture to say they are even in the minority.
  - mixmastamyk 6y ago
    Right, we can do without a lot of nice features. For example, I could do without a modern editor, maybe get by with gedit or something similar. But I don't... the value I get from them is much greater than the money spent. My laptop display upgrade was maybe $200 five years ago. It has payed that back in clarity (and the amount of code I can see at once) every single day since.