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by kayoone 4540 days ago
does Ubuntu use some kind of DPI scaling on this or is it just native FHD ? That could be pretty small for some people. How does it handle setting to lower resolutions ?

Also 6hours of battery life seem a bit on the short side, though he had quite a few programs running. Id like to know how it would do in Windows8 though.

Id also be interested in how well it handles sleep/awake scenarios with an external display attached etc.
3 comments
ch4s3 4540 days ago
Yeah, for $1500 after tax, I'll stick with the 11 hours a MBPr gets and install a VM if I want to use Linux.
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wazoox 4540 days ago
No DPI scaling, but it's OK for me. I always loved small fonts in term windows anyway :) 6 hours is a minimum for quite a heavy use; I myself found that mine easily does 8-9 hours when programming (Flash is a terrible battery and CPU hog).
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ch4s3 4540 days ago
how does it do with video playback?
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wazoox 4540 days ago
Video playback is fine. And Ubuntu manages perfectly hot-plugging external monitors, TVs, projectors, etc.
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computer 4540 days ago
Many desktop environments can do scaling well enough, in my experience. Not sure about Unity, the Ubuntu default.

Edit: for non-retina screens (i.e. it's fine on my 14" 1920x1080 laptop.) For retina (not this laptop), it might not be ideal yet. I took a screenshot (XFCE4) with very high DPI, and you can see some GUI elements don't scale: http://i.imgur.com/2GpqyND.png

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Touche 4540 days ago
AFAIK no linux environments handle HiDPI well at the moment. Gnome 3 added support in a recent support but it's still not great. Also many apps that don't use native APIs look bad, Chrome for example is almost unusable.
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computer 4540 days ago
I haven't used any retina screens, but I use scaling in XFCE for my 27" 2560x1440 monitor and for a 14" 1920x1080 laptop screen, and it works without any issues on both of those.

What are the native issues with retina (in Gnome 3, for example)? Are there GUI elements that don't scale along?

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Touche 4540 days ago
Many GUI elements do not scale. For example apps like Chrome and Skype render very small, almost unusable. I'm guessing these apps are not going through X to render. Others like Firefox render ok, but the icons are a bit on the small side. Even Gnome 3 itself doesn't do a great job, when you are in the Workspaces view the taskbar on the left is a bit small. The Settings/Sound menu in the top right doesn't correctly guess how much horizontal space it has and renders narrowly. Many Gnome apps, like the Settings app, renders a bit small.

I might try and install Mate and see if it is any better. I have no interest in using Unity or XFCE so I can't comment on those.

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computer 4540 days ago
Ah yes, I see. I just tried it out, here's GIMP with a 256 DPI:

http://i.imgur.com/2GpqyND.png

The title-bar size is configured in pixels, so that could be fixed easily by the user, but icons, both in the GIMP and in the native window don't resize well. It seems the DPI scaling is only applied to text, and only text-containing elements are scaled accordingly.

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Touche 4540 days ago
Arch Wiki is a good resource for this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI

And apparently there is an update today! Can't wait to try this out.

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