Slashdot Mirror
Linus Torvalds Advocates For 2560x1600 Standard Laptop Displays
beeudoublez points out a Google+ post by Linus Torvalds arguing that today's standard laptop display resolution is unreasonably low. He said, "...with even a $399 tablet doing 2560x1600 pixel displays, can we please just make that the new standard laptop resolution? Even at 11"? Please. Stop with the 'retina' crap, just call it 'reasonable resolution.' The fact that laptops stagnated ten years ago (and even regressed, in many cases) at around half that in both directions is just sad. I still don't want big luggable laptops, but that 1366x768 is so last century."
My 7 year old laptop had a 1920x1200 resolution and when I bought a new one a few months ago I had to look all over just to find one that had a 1920x1080 resolution.
Go Linus!
How about 4K standard desktop resolution for 22" monitors? All this DPI fighting needs to leak over into desktops eventually.
Along with higher resolution.
^^^ Score -1, completely fucking wrong.
I realize that this is a lost cause and all; but why would you endorse a 16:10(at least it's not bloody 16:9...) rather than a 4:3 for a laptop? For a tablet, sure, where you can change the orientation and turn your sprawling rectangle into a nice, readable, page-width reading surface; but a laptop, where the keyboard keeps you from doing that?
If virtually all laptop displays are going to be laid out as though they are used for nothing but watching movies it would be nice if they at least threw in some additional pixels; but do we have to give up the shape that is better for dealing with text in a reasonably sized package? Absurdly wide desktop screens are fine, because you can just make them larger, and treat them as multiple page-sized screens when needed; but laptops have space constraints to deal with...
Apple doesnt have retina displays.
Samsung, LG, and Sharp do.
Apple packages/resells retina displays, developed by others.
These are already available in cheap Chinese tablets, in the new android tablet, Linus has a good point.
It was years before LCDs even had something available in a store approaching the higher-res CRT monitors, much less at a reasonable price.
Yet they phased all the CRTs out well before they had reached that point.
Who makes decisions like this, and the re: the laptop resolutions? How can we make them ~rue~ those choices?
Actually, 2560x1920 would be better. But apparently more people use their laptops to watch videos than to do work.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Apple don't make display's, So no they have NOT produced displays better than anyone elses, they have simply rebadged displays made by the big manufacturers. There are only 3 or 4 large display manufacturers in the world that supply everyone.
Wasn't its 1024x768 and 1280x1024 that were popular in the late 90's?
1366x768 is the bastardised "720p HD Ready" TV panel. Its cheap and everyone produces them.
I don't think its a coincidence that Samsung stopped producing high res panels for Apple just before a new range of high res Android devices were announced.
Samsung and LG seem to be the only ones with the capability/capacity to do it in volume right now. Low res panels are cheap because everyone can do it.
Jesus, split those hairs a little more. Did Samsung, LG, and Sharp bother producing these displays before Apple dumped cash into their laps? No.
The problem with laptop and desktop LCDs, is that they adhere to the 1080p TV display spec, probably to shave cents of some controller somewhere, or to share a production line. Apparently it's vital that the hundreds of millions of computer displays made each year have everything in common with the non-existent 15" TV market, or whatever the fuck.
Luckily, there's a lot of progress on making 4K resolution the new standard for video, which means that it should trickle "down" to computer displays. Despite the name, the new standard will have 3840 x 2160 resolution, but that is still notably higher than what Linus is asking for, providing 183 dpi even on a 24" display!
If you can't wait, there's going to be affordable 4K TVs appearing soon with HDMI input. Just replace the monitor on you desk with a TV mounted on the wall behind your desk. You'll probably need a new video card, but the good thing is that most OS-es now hardware accelerate desktop composition, so the result should be silky smooth. You might even be able to get 120Hz going, but don't hold your breath: display connectors haven't caught up with the required bandwidth. Your 3D card might be able to generate a 48-bit 8.3 megapixel image at 120Hz, but that's almost 50 Gbps, and there is no PC video standard that will carry that.
Next, the operating system vendors need to get their heads out of their asses and finish implementing proper multi-resolution support instead of the half-assed job they've been getting away with for decades because of the persistent assumption that higher-resolution = bigger-surface-area!
It's not hipsterish, it's just annoying when you can only read a tiny amount of vertical lines for one file and there's tons of wasted space to the right unless you have two files side by side. Even then most setups I've seen have had multiple displays so the need to shove everything into one screen isn't necessary.
You know what drives changes like this. People showing they will pay a premium to have it.
By a 2880x1800 or 2560x1600 Retina Macbook, when they sell in numbers, competitors will follow.
You know why there is a 2560x1600 Tablet. Because Apple sold shipping containers full of Retina iPads (2048x1536) and Google took notice and decided to one up them.
Putting your money where your mouth is, trumps whining on a blog every time.
The problem is that they are not indeed "full" keyboards. Some have the 10-key on the side, but they still move around things like the directional arrows and other special keys (or remove them entirely).
The problem has been that the PC market was so commoditized that the amount of money made is so little. Everyone cries for the sub-$500 laptop, so manufacturers comply, leading to cutting of corners everywhere - LCDs are expensive (especially high-res ones), GPUs, etc. CPUs, RAM and hard drives are cheap, so you can get ones with the best gigas for marketing.
The only reaosn we have manufacturers going for higher quality displays is because of well, Apple. Since Apple refuses to participate in the low end ("Macs are overpriced!") it means Apple hsa to constantly refine their PCs to make it worth the money.
E.g., use of full metal bodies, high res displays, SSDs, etc. They do this to separate themselves from the rest of the pack.
Heck, once you promise better margins to manufacturers, they start spending that money on R&D - see the ultrabook line. They all cost around the price of a Macbook Air, or easily double or triple what the low end laptops sell for. As a result, we get them with all sorts of different screen resolutions.
Basically in the race to produce the cheapest laptop, they've left the premium market to Apple, who appeals to those who like a laptop with clean lines, "exotic" materials and other things.
Oh, and Apple invested a lot of money making high-res displays - it's not as easy to build a 15" 2880x1800 screen as it is a 15" 1366x768 screen. First off, more pixels mean more transistors and greater chance of dead pixels, lowering yield. Second, being able to address those transistors and ensure the pixels are all good is a lot harder with the smaller pixel size. So Apple's pretty much owning all the R&D on that (especially with Sharp in financial trouble).
I'll let you know next time I want to do a three-way code merge. Don't hold your breath.
Call me old-fashioned, but I still use a laptop for word processing. I've already moved my task bar/dock (depending on OS) to the left side, and I've been trying to get used to putting my button bars and such over there too, but these cinemascope-shaped displays still leave big white margins on either side, and just a couple paragraphs of text letterboxed in the middle. Web browsing produces the same wasted space on most sites. And don't get me started about trying to use a tablet for drawing... it's like working on miniature legal-format paper. This has nothing to do with being "hipsterish" (I'm old enough that I can't even do hipster fashion ironically), but simple practicality for lots of standard computer uses. I just thank the legacy of Jobs that at least the iPad is still 4:3.
I'd be quite happy with 1920x1440 in a small laptop, or 2560x2048 on a larger one, instead of this silly 1440x900.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Yeah, just use your laptop sideways. Kids these days, you have to tell them everything.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Praising what Apple done ... do you mean the "building really nice hardware part" or the "doing all they can to destroy the notion of open personal computing part". It is nice hardware, but funding one also funds the other, unfortunately.
They are not widescreen, they are reduced height. When you look at them in this way you understand the complaints.
Linus is talking about laptops. You know, the topic of this discussion.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
By a 2880x1800 or 2560x1600 Retina Macbook, when they sell in numbers, competitors will follow.
So you're suggesting that Mr Linux buy a laptop on which .... Linux barely runs, and has no idea how to handle the display resolution? And cannot switch between the integrated and discrete graphics? And which needs a binary blob to even use the b43 wifi?
How would that make him more productive?
Keypads on laptops are barbaric. The typing space should be centered with the display, buddhammit!
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Apple now offers you two laptops with that res and higher. Yet instead of praising what apple has done, he says "stop with the retina crap".
He's praising the hardware and condemning the marketing term Apple applies to it.
(emphasis mine).
If Linus Torvalds can't get together the necessary people to get Linux to run decently on the rMBP, there is something very wrong with the world.
It's not a troll, it's the fundamental concept of Internet Libertarianism: any time the free market has decided that your preferences aren't widespread enough to be worth catering to, it was actually a secret cabal of statists.
Never mind that CRT monitors take up eight times the store shelf space of LCDs, or that the overwhelming majority of consumers genuinely prefer an LCD flat panel over a CRT, regardless if the CRT has better picture quality, or that every laptop manufacturer other than Apple has been on a cost-cutting race to the bottom for a decade now and that naturally includes the cheapest screens that will fit the size envelope. Oh, no, it's the environmentalists' fault that you can't buy CRT monitors at WalMart anymore, with their dastardly voluntary EnergyStar conspiracy.
I see what you've done there. You've taken the word "consumer" and inserted the word "sheep", inventing your own brand new word "consheepmer", in order to suggest that most people who buy things make their decisions based on the decisions of others, rather than carrying out their own in-depth research into all the options available. Well done, you should be proud of yourself.
2560x1600 isn't even "movie" widescreen, which is 16:9, it's 16:10. I like 16:10 a lot more than 16:9, and I wish it had become the standard for computer monitor instead of 16:9. So it could be worse...
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
Recommending an annoyingly-to-uselessly narrow display is not an improvement over using an annoyingly-to-uselessly short display.
In even the simplest non-power-user case of playing Facebook games, many of them don't even fit onscreen vertically on a 1366x768 laptop. Just the bog-standard stock layout of Windows taskbar on the bottom of the screen, and default maximised browser layout does not leave enough room for many games' meager display assumption, and sometimes fullscreening the browser (a rarely used hidden feature) doesn't even get it all.
Plus, laptop displays have been actively shrinking in the vertical dimension. The "standard" laptop res nowadays is a widescreen version of the circa 1990 1024x768, but the prior low/mid-range standard res at least used to be 800 pixels tall, with 1280x800. And yes, those 40 or so rows matter when you're highly constrained in that dimension.
Of course, the ThinkPad had a 2048x1536 15" option, but that's really not fair as it's a pretty exclusive upgrade. But it shows that the tech for decent-resolution portable displays has been around forever.
Do you do anything other than watch movies or play games?
A 4:3 monitor gives a height/width ratio of ~1.3:1
A 16:9 ratio is ~1.7:1
A sheet of A4 paper has a ratio of ~1.4:1.
The 4:3 monitor - used in portrait mode - shows a clean, full-sized sheet of A4 - just nice for DTP, layout, etc. Some of us still do work that results in A4-sized hard copy. Works for A3, A5, and A6, too.
A 16:10 display is two A4 pages side by side. 2560x1600 is 16:10, not 16:9
Also for those of us who work on spreadsheets and diagrams, 16:10 allows us to do A4 and A3 diagrams in landscape mode.
For writing documents, if you want to write one page at a time 16:10 is good as half the page takes up the whole screen, but then again in almost all office packages you have borders of whitespace around the page.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Linus is talking about laptops. You know, the topic of this discussion.
And he's not bitching about screen real estate, he's bitching about pixel density, as per TFGPP:
Widescreen movies in a theater are actually 2.35:1. A proper DVD conversion will show black bars even on a 16:9 "widescreen" HDTV.
I second the desire for 16:10 monitors; that little bit of extra vertical space really makes all the difference!
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Yes! This!
I bought a laptop a couple years ago (2010) and didn't even think to look at screen resolution. It's a fairly high-spec Dell otherwise - i7 (when i7 was brand new), 8G, etc etc, so I assumed it would be comparable to my old one at least, maybe better. Spent $1200.
It's this shit 1366x768. I've been mad since I got it and realized how low res it is.
My prior laptop, also a Dell, had a "WUXGA" resolution. 1920 x 1200. I bought it in 2005. Spent $2200.
I don't have the money to blow on another laptop. I have, however, done some window-shopping, and it's darn frustrating. It's not even a search option on most sites, and there don't seem to be many laptops that have higher than 1366x768 anyhow. It was expensive in 2005, but it was an option at least. You can barely even buy it today, because of the commoditization of these screens.
So don't say "buy it if you want it" because you almost can't.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
. . . because they deliver technology that has been possible, but unavailable from other vendors. Duh. ;)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Actually, the reason I bought a glossy display instead of matte is that I enjoy chewing cud, and have a fuzzy coat. The guy was just being literal. Deal with it.
(And may I say that you humans really ought to think about those of us of the cloven-hoofed persuasion when designing keyboards? Do you have any _idea_ how hard it is to type on these things without articulable fingers?)
Buy a Nexus 10, install Ubuntu on it, and use an external keyboard. Bonus: you can use it in portrait mode for hacking code, and landscape mode for watching movies. Now if only they'd release the Nexus 13...
You totally missed the point.
The Retina display macbook was delivered with an updated OSX which could take advantage of the added resolution, without making everything unusably small. Coordinating those things to offer a desktop OS with a USABLE high resolution screen is, in fact, something to commended.
I have a 30" cinema display. It looks great under Windows where I can adjust the DPI. However, when you do adjust the DPI, there are an assortment of compatibility problems. Even big ticket apps, like Adobe Photoshop/Dreamweaver don't work right. You'll have dialog boxes pop up with missing controls. There are some "compatibility options" which can fix it, but then you're left with blurry applications. Or you leave the DPI alone and deal with uncomfortably tiny text and icons.
try 78, so you can email it.
If you're routinely writing ridiculously long lines of code, you should be dragged out back and monkey-stomped until you promise never to do it again. There's VERY little reason for any long line to not be broken up across multiple lines at logical breakpoints. Of course, this is why "larger vertical space" is useful - you see more of the context for the line without having to constantly jigger up and down to see what was happening around the code you're working on.
Very wide text is fundamentally unreadable - there are numerous readability studies that have concluded the "optimum" line length for readability is around 75 characters. Go too much wider than that, and you make your code MUCH harder to read.
This is why I love my Dell 2408WFP - it's getting on a bit now, and the color management isn't as good as it should be (but I have a Huey for that), but it's 16:10 with a resolution of 1920x1200 - absolutely wonderful. I never maximise anything, and mostly have several cascaded portrait shaped windows displayed across it.
Back to topic. I think what Linus actually means is that he wants a higher resolution so that there are no jaggies on fonts, and scrollbars and widgets look sharper. The actual perceived font size (in inches etc.) would be the same - so all these comments about tiny fonts, and 8 way code diffs, are completely missing the point.
Think of it this way, you watch the same movie on a 720p screen, and then on a 1080p screen - do you see more of the movie picture on the latter? No. It's just _sharper_.
-Jar
Together, We Can Make Slashdot Better. I Do NOT Mod ACs. - Check Me Out
The real solution to this is to go back to 80x25 screens, and better short-term memory. You think I'm joking, but I'm not.
I've been developing my own OS from scratch and right now I'm limiting myself to the 80x25 or 80x50ish modes for the primordial in-OS development environment. I agree that 25 lines is about all I need to see at a time. I could do with a bit more horizontal area, but horizontal scrolling makes up for the lack of columns nicely.
The language I've created to build the OS with runs as either compiled or interpreted code, making it easy to create, test, and add new modules in real-time. To this end I use the upper 25 rows for program output / display, and the lower rows for the debugger and "immediate" mode code editor. It's sort of like a limited tiling WM, or GNU screen-ish interface. I used to develop code in DOS based applications decades ago, and initially thought that modern graphical environments were far better suited to development. Naturally, I thought I'd be really cramped for space but it actually has worked out to be more comfortable in comparison. I've got noticeably less eyestrain than when I do my "day job" work in a modern IDE. It seems that what you say is true: 80x25 rows or so is all one really needs with a scrolling display. However, I supplement my short term memory with the additional pane.
Now reconsidering my stance against using console based editors in favor of IDEs for development on "proper" OSs as well...
Everyone in this thread, but you. You know, it's the topic of the thread (and of the story, BTW).
Yeah, sure. I'll carry an extra monitor around with me, sure.
At home, I've got a monitor that is large enough that I can display two A4 pages side by side in 1:1 size, so a widescreen makes sense. For my laptop that would be too large to carry around. A laptop screen is always a compromise between portability and usability. And the 4:3 screen is simply the best compromise unless you use it primarily to watch movies.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.