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Linux Distro Noob thread of Linux noobs

zoku88

Member
Agh, well as much as I don't want to, i'll have to switch back to windows then until they sort that out. Between that and the iffy trackpad it drives me nuts sometimes.
Well, you could also not use gnome.

I think pretty much every other environment uses the dpi setting in xorg.


Though, the trackpad thing sounds annoying...

EDIT: Looks like gnome-tweak-tool has some scaling options as well?
 

Massa

Member
Agh, well as much as I don't want to, i'll have to switch back to windows then until they sort that out. Between that and the iffy trackpad it drives me nuts sometimes.

You can change the dpi in GNOME but it mostly affects text, the UI doesn't scale as well as it should. I think KDE and Qt applications have that sorted out already, GTK+/GNOME won't until 3.10 or 3.12.
 

NotBacon

Member
Well, you could also not use gnome.

I think pretty much every other environment uses the dpi setting in xorg.


Though, the trackpad thing sounds annoying...

EDIT: Looks like gnome-tweak-tool has some scaling options as well?

You can change the dpi in GNOME but it mostly affects text, the UI doesn't scale as well as it should. I think KDE and Qt applications have that sorted out already, GTK+/GNOME won't until 3.10 or 3.12.

I've messed with every setting in multiple environments except for xorg. The most you can do with gnome-tweak is scale text. Does xorg scale things such as chrome tabs? Right now they're so small they look like slivers.
 

zoku88

Member
I've messed with every setting in multiple environments except for xorg. The most you can do with gnome-tweak is scale text. Does xorg scale things such as chrome tabs? Right now they're so small they look like slivers.

Depends on the application.

Chrome might pay attention to dpi settings. Firefox, I'm told, ignores them.
 

NotBacon

Member
Depends on the application.

Chrome might pay attention to dpi settings. Firefox, I'm told, ignores them.

Weird, because FF is one of the few apps that scales correctly by default for me. I just think it's too ugly so I resort back to chrome and its pygmy icons.
 

freddy

Banned
Just installed it and tried and yep :/

I guess high-res screens just aren't fully supported in linux yet, so i'll come back in a couple releases lol

Well thats not true because I've used a 1920x1080 screen since about 2007 on all sorts of Linux distros and not had your problem. My setup is a desktop though. I'll install Chromium later and see if I can replicate the problem but I'm guessing this is a DPI/Chrome/Gnome problem as well. Mine is set to 96DPI if I recall and always has been. I'll mess around some.
 

zoku88

Member
^ 96DPI is the de facto default and is usually what most applications assume. So, if that really is your DPI, then you naturally wouldn't see a problem.

Unfortunately, I lack a screen with a high DPI. But, just to be sure it's a related to your current dpi, just trying changing it on the fly.

Code:
xrandr --dpi [put number here]

And then try something like opening a terminal. The text, at least, should be different sizes. Then, find out the number that makes the terminal text size look correct.

So, it's not like high DPI isn't supported for Linux. In fact, thje statement doesn't make sense. For any OS, DPI scaling is mostly application handled (except, like, when you do scaling as an OS setting. But that's a hack, and the graphics wouldn't really look right.)
 

PandaL

Member
Just installed it and tried and yep :/

I guess high-res screens just aren't fully supported in linux yet, so i'll come back in a couple releases lol

I also use 1080p resolution and I've never found the issue that you've mentioned with Ubuntu or any other Linux distro.

Here is a screenshot (Firefox) so that you can compare.

BC5V3WD.png
 

freddy

Banned
Ok, I've tried installing Chromium and Chrome deb to Gnome Ubuntu 13.04 and can't replicate the problem at all.

Putting in this code:
Code:
xrdb -query | grep dpi

returns this:
Code:
Xft.dpi:	96
 

freddy

Banned
I'm going to add here though that my screen is 24 inches and after looking at the Zenbook Prime on some youtube videos it says the screen is 13 inches and the tabs on chrome aren't all that big to begin with. Here's a comment from a guy using Ubuntu Gnome and Chrome:

HFTpE4p.png
 

zoku88

Member
Ok, I've tried installing Chromium and Chrome deb to Gnome Ubuntu 13.04 and can't replicate the problem at all.

Putting in this code:
Code:
xrdb -query | grep dpi

returns this:
Code:
Xft.dpi:	96

Uhm, that's because 96dpi is probably the correct (or close to correct) dpi for you.

Like, 1920x1080 on 24" isn't all that high dpi. I don't know what the dpi is off the top of my head, but it's probably close to 96.

If you want to test, you would want to change the dpi to something crazy like 120 and then open applications afterward and see if the applications's appearance changes.
 

zoku88

Member
To illustrate.

This is what happens when I set my DPI to 96 (1920x1200 screen, 24")



And this is my image on 130 dpi




Looks like for chromium, the text on the interace scales. Text on the webpage does not.
 

freddy

Banned
Yea, sorry. I did try your xrandr input with a dpi of 144 and it only changed text size for me. Should have mentioned that in my post.

A quick search on DuckDuckGo:
Code:
zen prime notebook dpi
shows a lot of discussion about apps that don't behave well with DPI scaling if the guy wants to do some more digging.
 

freddy

Banned
I also tried out Olivia with Cinnamon briefly and it looks like Mint has been putting some of that search and donation money towards improving the UI even more. One of my first stops when installing a Distro is to try to change the mirrors to my Unmetered(old habits die hard) ISP and before with Mint it was always a struggle and I had to mix up my ISPs Ubuntu repositories and pull Mint from their main server. Anyway here's how Software Sources looks now:

Jlpg35V.jpg


One gripe. Still no option for a side panel and Mate gets slightly confused when you ask it to stand vertical.
 
I've always stuck with 96 dpi, even at high res (and I've almost exclusively used linux at high res on laptop size screens).

The fonts scale really well, and they're easy to change at the system level + application level for the stragglers. Browser zoom handles the rest.

tbh, how well Linux handled scaling is one of the reasons I abandoned Windows for good 5 years ago.
 
Q

qizah

Unconfirmed Member
What's the best browser to use in Ubuntu 13.04?

I've noticed that Chromium has become a bit slower lately and is increasingly eating up more memory. Any recommendations besides FireFox?
 
I'm curious to use Linux and people say I should start out with Mint.
How does it compare to Windows 7/8?

Finally, I'm unbanned! Apparently, bringing up old threads, necro bump, is bannable. I won't be making that mistake again.
 
I haven't used Mint yet (although I plan to install it soon), but using Linux in general is quite user friendly as long as you don't need any Windows only software. Using LibreOffice and GIMP instead of Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop is for instance a huge downgrade. If you mainly use it for browsing the internet then Linux is fine.
 

jvm

Gamasutra.
I haven't used Mint yet (although I plan to install it soon), but using Linux in general is quite user friendly as long as you don't need any Windows only software. Using LibreOffice and GIMP instead of Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop is for instance a huge downgrade. If you mainly use it for browsing the internet then Linux is fine.
Disagree on the LibreOffice count. I've been using it for work and home for about a decade (back when it was StarOffice still, I suppose).

Don't expect everything to be perfect or as rich, but for my purposes, I find LibreOffice to suffice just fine. I can think of only a few little things that I'd love to have. (The main one is the ability to mark up charts freehand drawing objects without moving to a Drawing first.)
 
I haven't used Mint yet (although I plan to install it soon), but using Linux in general is quite user friendly as long as you don't need any Windows only software. Using LibreOffice and GIMP instead of Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop is for instance a huge downgrade. If you mainly use it for browsing the internet then Linux is fine.
There is a Microsoft Office clone for Linux but it's closed-source and made by a Chinese team.
 

b0b

Neo Member
I disagree on the MS Office <=> LibreOffice and GIMP <=> Photoshop part. It's (in most cases) not a downgrade, just different.

the only real problem with LibreOffice is it's *.doc/docx support. Thats it. MS Office has it's problems and it's not perfect in any way. For normal users LibreOffice/OpenOffice is just fine. I accept *real MS Office pros* complaining about the FLOSS Suites - but I've only seen like 10 of them so far. The average user at the places I work have only basic MS Office skills. The only complain about Libre/OpenOffice is, that they *look somehow different*.

The departments at my work got rid of VBA-extensions and -scripts (these were horrible anyway) - so there isn't anything thats really *needs* MS Office...
Besides of the doc and xls formats. Don't blame the FLOSS developers here - these formats are (undocumented) crap anyway.

As an closed-source alternative for MS Office I would also consider Softmaker Office. It's faster and handles MS-Office documents better than LibreOffice


As for Photoshop:
Yes, it is much more advanced than GIMP. I wouldn't get the designer gyus at my office to switch to GIMP. But hey, these gyus are pros and they use Photoshop professionally. RAW-support etc. There are many things GIMP can't handle - so it's not really an alternative to Photoshop in pro-level

But the normal users? They all want Photoshop because they heard it's the best available - get it (mostly cracked with a trojan-installing key-generator) and use it like MS Paint...

As for the technical aspect: GIMP is much better than Photoshop - it's faster, not bloated as hell, needs much (!) less space on harddrive and in memory. Oh - and Adobes Updater just sucks (especially for OSX). Out of 10 updates 1 fails...


Are there any Linux SysAdmins out there that use CentOS or Ubuntu, because I got questions...

it depends on that you want to know. I never used CentOS but Ubuntu and Debian.
 

NotBacon

Member
Still getting used to neogaf, had no idea there were so many replies!

Yeah i've just come to accept that things will be pretty small on a 13" high-res screen, I don't know what I was expecting. Text scaling and browser zooming should suffice for me.
Btw, I don't think xrandr --dpi [] did anything for me?
 

NotBacon

Member
MATE vs Cinnamon?

Cinnamon! More customization I think and based on the awesome gnome 3.

I've been using Mint 15 for about a week now and I can say with confidence it's the best linux distro I've used. It has polished every imperfection I found in Mint 14, it's very aesthetically pleasing, and super stable for me. It's so good i'd recommend Mint to beginners and experts alike.
 
MATE vs Cinnamon?
Cinnamon unless your computer is old.

Cinnamon! More customization I think and based on the awesome gnome 3.

I've been using Mint 15 for about a week now and I can say with confidence it's the best linux distro I've used. It has polished every imperfection I found in Mint 14, it's very aesthetically pleasing, and super stable for me. It's so good i'd recommend Mint to beginners and experts alike.
I agree with everything you said.
 

benjipwns

Banned
Getting a new laptop whenever Amazon ships it. My old one has a monitor issue where, well, it doesn't turn on half the time anymore. (Four years old.)

I had been using Ubuntu on it since I had just installed it years back out of curiosity and just upgraded it until I did a fresh install last year after it started getting junked up.

New laptop has Windows 8 I think, but I intend to install a Linux like my old one. (Keeping a small Windows partition for games.)

So rather than just install Ubuntu again and since I can't ever decide what to install (which is how I wound up with Ubuntu in the first place) I thought I'd let you guys argue for whatever your latest distro fetish is to see if there's any kind of consensus.

I've used all the *ubuntu variations, CentOS, Mint, Fedora, etc. in the past. But I haven't really kept up on what's cool and new lately. Worst comes to worst I can always wipe and run back to 12.04.

Mainly use laptop for web, videos, podcasts, some Steam games as they come out since I have a regular desktop. i5, Intel HD 4000. So it'll pretty much be okay to just install and go.

Feel free to just direct me to some site as well. I'm probably going to wind up dicking around in VMs if it takes more than a few days for the laptop to ship anyway.
 

benjipwns

Banned
No, I'm just laughing at Linux users having a consensus on which distro to use. :p
Yeah, I was being sarcastic lol, I just wanted to check and see if the regulars had actually migrated to anything for more than six months lately. I hadn't checked in for a while.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
I wish they would rough up the edges. And by that I mean, ditch the awful rounded corners.
 

EmiPrime

Member
Is Ubuntu any good now on ARM Chromebooks? Last I checked the trackpad was flakey and speakers were blowing up so I didn't want to risk mine.
 

PandaL

Member
Getting a new laptop whenever Amazon ships it. My old one has a monitor issue where, well, it doesn't turn on half the time anymore. (Four years old.)

I had been using Ubuntu on it since I had just installed it years back out of curiosity and just upgraded it until I did a fresh install last year after it started getting junked up.

New laptop has Windows 8 I think, but I intend to install a Linux like my old one. (Keeping a small Windows partition for games.)

So rather than just install Ubuntu again and since I can't ever decide what to install (which is how I wound up with Ubuntu in the first place) I thought I'd let you guys argue for whatever your latest distro fetish is to see if there's any kind of consensus.

I've used all the *ubuntu variations, CentOS, Mint, Fedora, etc. in the past. But I haven't really kept up on what's cool and new lately. Worst comes to worst I can always wipe and run back to 12.04.

Mainly use laptop for web, videos, podcasts, some Steam games as they come out since I have a regular desktop. i5, Intel HD 4000. So it'll pretty much be okay to just install and go.

Feel free to just direct me to some site as well. I'm probably going to wind up dicking around in VMs if it takes more than a few days for the laptop to ship anyway.

Xubuntu
Manjaro Linux Xfce
 
I'm surprised that only 1.7/8.0 GB of RAM is used up with 15 tabs of Google Chrome and a Video Player open. Usually on Windows 7 it's at least 6GB; I remember having on always having Skype, Malwarebytes, Windows Defender on.
 
Q

qizah

Unconfirmed Member
Not really Linux related but I'm wondering if I should update the RAM on my laptop. I have 4GB of RAM right now on a Lenovo x120e running Ubuntu 13.04 with Windows 7 on the other partition.

Thing is it's not super slow, but it can be very sluggish at times depending on what I'm doing - i.e. using GIMP, or having multiple tabs open, with Clementine running, Skype open and working on some documents.

I'm wondering if it's even worth upgrading to 8GB of RAM, when I'm primarily not doing a lot of extensive stuff. I'm usually just using Chromium.
 

zoku88

Member
Not really Linux related but I'm wondering if I should update the RAM on my laptop. I have 4GB of RAM right now on a Lenovo x120e running Ubuntu 13.04 with Windows 7 on the other partition.

Thing is it's not super slow, but it can be very sluggish at times depending on what I'm doing - i.e. using GIMP, or having multiple tabs open, with Clementine running, Skype open and working on some documents.

I'm wondering if it's even worth upgrading to 8GB of RAM, when I'm primarily not doing a lot of extensive stuff. I'm usually just using Chromium.

Are you swapping a lot?

If you are, you need more RAM. If you aren't, then there's not really any point.
 
Q

qizah

Unconfirmed Member
Are you swapping a lot?

If you are, you need more RAM. If you aren't, then there's not really any point.

No, not really.

It's not really slow to the point where it gets in the way of my day to day routine, just sluggish at times and causing some annoyances.
 

zoku88

Member
No, not really.

It's not really slow to the point where it gets in the way of my day to day routine, just sluggish at times and causing some annoyances.

Well, I mean. If it's not swapping, then it's slow for another reason.

No reason for the amount of RAM to be slowing you down unless you're using all of it and then swapping.
 

PandaL

Member
Not really Linux related but I'm wondering if I should update the RAM on my laptop. I have 4GB of RAM right now on a Lenovo x120e running Ubuntu 13.04 with Windows 7 on the other partition.

Thing is it's not super slow, but it can be very sluggish at times depending on what I'm doing - i.e. using GIMP, or having multiple tabs open, with Clementine running, Skype open and working on some documents.

I'm wondering if it's even worth upgrading to 8GB of RAM, when I'm primarily not doing a lot of extensive stuff. I'm usually just using Chromium.

Yes, Ubuntu usually get slow over time.

Try bleachbit, its like CCleaner. :)
 
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