Ask Slashdot: Good Linux Desktop Environment For Hi-Def/Retina Displays?

Volanin writes "I have been using Linux for the last 15 years both at home and at work (mostly GNOME and now Unity). Recently, I gave in to temptation and bought myself a Macbook retina 15". As you can read around, Linux still has no good support for this hardware, so I am running it inside a virtual machine. Running in scaled 1440x900 makes the Linux fonts look absolutely terrible, and running in true 2880x1800 makes them beautiful, but every UI element becomes so tiny, it's unworkable. Is there a desktop environment that handles resolution independence better? Linux has had support for SVG for a long time, but GNOME/Unity seems adamant in defining small icon sizes and UI elements without the possibility to resize them."

Comments

KDE

[Lobachevsky]

Use KDE, and the retina display will look beautiful.

Re:KDE

[gstoddart]

Bolour with a K? Silly bunt.

Re:KDE

[pecosdave]

Have to throw in my support here. Been using KDE since 1.x, I've tried other desktops but can't seem to use one of those without missing my KDE, and so much so that programs compiled to bring up GTK widgets (browsers) actively piss me off. The QT version of the file browser and so many other things are just more versatile and elegant.

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for elevating the discussion and making us all look good. I can't wait to tell my wife.

Re:KDE

[SomeKDEUser]

Yup, all the icons are in svg, and all the UI elements scale. So you'll get all the beauty at a very high resolution -- and those icons are little works of art.

Re:KDE

[Andy Prough]

Agreed - KDE. And be sure to get some good fonts and set the precisely. Go with the Droid font package - those are very high quality.

Re:KDE

[mystikkman]

Is the blurry fonts issue fixed yet?

https://trac.macports.org/ticket/36410

The applications using Qt (all KDE apps) are not rendering correctly on a MacBookPro with Retina screen. The text is blurry like if it was upsized with a very bad filter

Re:KDE

[mystikkman]

Is the Droid font package Free?

Re:KDE

[sp332]

Yup, they were made for Android and are under the Apache license.

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, you just set the DPI, and use a slider to set how big you want things to be. And everything scales to size. Widgets, fonts, icons, everything.
(Of course requires the programs to actually be KDE applications.)

But I'd rather say that Gnome is the only exception, and that this functionality is considered standard for Linux DEs by now, no?

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally agree. KDE is gorgeous and so much better than guh-nome.

Re:KDE

[noh8rz9]

since osx is the linux kernal, using a mac is already using unix. why run unix within unix? the best retinal display machine is a mac anyway.

Re:KDE

[WillKemp]

OSX isn't the Linux kernel. It's the OSX kernel - which is based on one of the BSDs, not Linux. But it's not the kernel that's important, it's the software that comes.with it - and OSX is very different to, say, Ubuntu.

Re:KDE

[Em Adespoton]

That's running Qt on OS X -- he's running Linux on a Retina Mac. Big difference. Of course, the bug may rear its head in there too, but since a completely different compositor and windowing system is being used, it's probably not.

Re:KDE

[dlenmn]

The suggestion is to run KDE on Linux -- not OS X, so that link is irrelevant to this discussion.

Re:KDE

[elfprince13]

Thankfully, the Mac Ports package manager lets me run an enormous number of Linux and BSD software packages without too much difficulty.

Re:KDE

[noh8rz8]

Yes, but OSX comes with the terminal, which gives you a cli (command line interface - what you use with unix). This is in addition to the gui (graphical user interface).

Re:KDE

[SomeKDEUser]

Not really: GTK desktops like, say XFCE don't do that. Also traditional WM weren't designed for that, and the themes were typically made by l33t hackers who were somehow convinced that minimising the number of pixels in the bitmaps they used to draw their windows was cool.

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they have to be KDE Apps or will Qt suffice?

Asking out of ignorance since I'm not a KDE user.

Re:KDE

[WillKemp]

Yeah? Is there a list of what works with it?

Re:KDE

[samkass]

Yeah? Is there a list of what works with it?

Might be easier to list what doesn't, but here are the 16075 packages that work with MacPorts out of the box: http://www.macports.org/ports.php?by=all

Seriously, MacOS X is a certified UNIX, so this stuff is easy.

Re:KDE

[elfprince13]

This might kick the crap out of your browser: but sure.

Re:KDE

[WillKemp]

Hmmm... That makes getting a Mac look a bit more attractive!

Re:KDE

[Tarlus]

since osx is the linux kernal

Oh no you di-in't!

Re:KDE

[WillKemp]

Ha ha. No, the browser handled it with out a hiccup (Chrome/Fedora 17). Thanks!

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, welcome to 2008.

Re:KDE

[pianophile]

Wow, welcome to 2008.

More like, welcome to 2003.

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

I second that, KDE scaled nicely at 2048x1024 on my desktop and 1440x960 on my laptop. Font sizes needed tweaking but other than that the UI elements scaled great.

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

since osx is the linux kernal, using a mac is already using unix. why run unix within unix? the best retinal display machine is a mac anyway.

This is one of those instances where you should have thought and done at least a little research before you commented. Maybe next time you'll remember.

Re:KDE

[MrHanky]

16075 packages that work, or 16075 packages that are available? Seriously, the last time I used a Mac with Fink, so much was broken that it just wasn't funny. From the complaints I've seen, this is still true, although probably not quite as horrid as back then.

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Opened and scrolled through that list no problem on firefox with 32 tabs open.

As for that list, isn't it kind of cheap counting ALL of the lib and language files? That's kind of like counting the hours you left your phone on the charger when you say how long your battery lasts.

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is true of Xerox, Windows 3 and everything else that came after that.

Re:KDE

[smash]

2001 actually.

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

i've been using Linux since 1997 and still wonder why people still use Gnome/Unity ?
its schizophrenic fisher-priced oversized 'eazy to use' look is in complete contradiction to the deliberate hiding of features and lack of customisability and is insulting to the users intelligence, while at the same time requiring these very same users we dont want to scare away with requiring to know actual filemanes of programs thety wish to use. Completely contradictory. Hell, Even Gnome 2 was shit, and broken with flat square 2d badly rendered UI elements on a 'wont fix' broken GTK2 toolkit.
Face it, Gnome is for people who have low standards for a desktop environment. There .. I've said it. Yes, The desktop wars are long over, and none won.

Ask yourself why do / did most power users use KDE ?

because it doesn't hide stuff from its poor dumb easily confused users & does allow logical customization above and beyond any other DE out there.
No its not perfect. Yes I'm looking at Akonadi & Nepomuc (just delete them from /us/bin) but it allows you to set your DE how ypu require, not expect YOU to work 'round ITS shortcomings.. KDE on a Retina (or any other HD display) is stunning. I dont see the point of using nice new hardware (from any vendor) and sticking insulting brain dead Gnome on it.
case closed.

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

There's about four options available to you: Fink, MacPorts, Homebrew, and just compiling from source yourself. I do a combination of MacPorts, Homebrew, and compiling from source. I never got into Fink, so unfortunately I can't tell you if it's gotten better or not. Homebrew is new to me. I just used it to easily install Wine so that I can get Steam for Windows running so I can play Windows Steam games. Worked lovely.

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Be sure to inform X11 the correct DPI for the monitor.

Re:KDE

[countach74]

Unfortunately, Mac Ports doesn't touch a Debian system as far as ease of installation and integration. A few minutes of programming on my Mac and I'm missing my Debian desktop.

Re:KDE

[tuxidriver]

I also recently purchased one of these MacBooks and am running Linux on it via VMWare Fusion. I really love the hardware (not thrilled with OS-X however). I am running Scientific Linux with the KDE Trinity desktop. Works really well although I did have to adjust the font sizes and use the larger icon sizes to make it comfortable to use.

Re:KDE

[SuricouRaven]

I have a mac. I run linux on it. Couldn't stand using OSX, I found it quite terrible for me, but I needed something with serious processing capability so got myself a dual-socket mac pro. I've also got a macbook, also running windows, purchased because it was the only laptop I could find anywhere with a decently high-resolution screen. I dislike Apple's software, and believe the company business method is quite oppressive towards their customers and potentially even a threat to free technology in general, but I still have to admit their hardware is very well built. The price tag reflects this though.

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Ease of installation?
Are you a Mac user or one of these Linux wusses! Download GCC (as part of Xcode or separately), grab the source and compile what you want from the command line. ;)

Re:KDE

[jetole]

I was going to say wasn't this pre 2003? I thought I remember hearing about OSX being Unix in 2000 and seeing as how I moved from one location to another in 2000, if I remember hearing about it at that location then I'm pretty sure it happened pre 2001 (Where's Stanley Kubrick when you need him?).

Re:KDE

[cupantae]

the themes were typically made by l33t hackers who were somehow convinced that minimising the number of pixels in the bitmaps they used to draw their windows was cool

Although I somewhat agree that there's a fashion for that kind of look, I think functionality is really the main focus in these WMs. The main principles followed are:
1. Don't get in the way
2. Don't waste resources
3. Be flexible and logical

If you were to see my i3 desktop, you'd probably accuse me of being a 1337 h4X0r too, but I really don't care about that shit. I just like an interface that leaves as much room as possible for content. Much as I like fancy effects, buttons, menus, antialiased fonts, etc., they're just not that important to me from day to day.

Re:KDE

[SomeKDEUser]

The point is that themes with 6 pixel high title bars don't scale. KDE does scale precisely because of all the attention on fancy effects. Although one may or may not care for them, they are not a waste: they force well-optimised, well thought-out architectures to support them.

One should cheer for people pushing for more usage of the gfx cards, and not complain that they eat precious resources, which, unless you are in the tiny minority which uses their cards for its CUDA powers, is just not true. And if you are, seriously dude, WTF are you doing running a graphical interface on your computing node?!

Re:KDE

[cupantae]

The point is that themes with 6 pixel high title bars don't scale.

No, it's not. I was responding to your comment that they look like that because people think it's cool. But anyway, you can certainly change the title bar size in any tiling WM I've ever used. In i3 you just change the font size. If you're complaining about people using an interface that wouldn't be useful on a screen they don't use, then, well, I don't think any response is necessary.

One should [...] not complain that they eat precious resources

Who's complaining? I just like the interface to be snappy. I also believe that simplicity leads to greater reliability.

seriously dude, WTF are you doing running a...

Why are you getting angry at me for liking something you don't like? I'm not forcing anything down your throat. I just thought what you said was wrong.

Re:KDE

[SomeKDEUser]

I am not angry at you. I am sorry it came out this way. Too many people say dumb things like "I don't like effects because they use up resources", or "I don't like the idea of running a full-fledged RDB".

These ideas are toxic, because they assume that the performance of a system can be asserted based on tangentially related properties of said system. This is not true. If an interface is not snappy, it's not. But nothing about the fact that it is accelerated tells you it is not snappy :)

Re:KDE

[elfprince13]

Fink is like Mac Ports but less well-maintained. I'm not really sure what the point of Homebrew is.

Re:KDE

[AmiMoJo]

I've also got a macbook, also running windows, purchased because it was the only laptop I could find anywhere with a decently high-resolution screen.

Really though? There are plenty of Ultrabooks with 1920x1080 or 1650x1050 screens. The advantage of those resolutions is that you don't need to mess with the DPI settings.

Anything other than an exact 2:1 scaling won't look good for images. Even though the MacBook has a 2880x1800 resolution at 2:1 it is effectively only 1440x900. If you care more about usable screen area you are currently better off going for a lower resolution and having native 1:1 scaling.

Re:KDE

[SuricouRaven]

This was pre-Retina. It's a 1920x1200 screen. Those extra 180 vertical pixels make a big difference to me.

Re:KDE

[jscotta44]

Seriously? There is someone on /. that didn't know that OS X was a certified UNIX?

Re:KDE

[jscotta44]

"Ease of installation and integration,"? Please turn in your /. number and move on. There is no room for that or good appearances here. That shit might cost money and has no place on /.

Re:KDE

[countach74]

Hmm, I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic. In case you are being serious:

When packages integrated seamlessly into my system, as they do with Debian, I spend far less time configuring both the package and my environment to run the package, and thus more time doing what I want to do. While installing things like Lighttpd via Mac Ports is far from challenging, significantly more time is required when one must constantly reload the config file/restart the daemon. (Yes, it may seem negligible, but it all adds up.)

No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

No one cares about Linux and Retina support because Retina is Apple and no one uses Linux that cares about Retina/Apple.

Re:No one cares

[CanHasDIY]

No one cares about Linux and Retina support because Retina is Apple and no one uses Linux that cares about Retina/Apple.

A hypothesis which is proven false by virtue of the question it is a response to.

Jackass.

Re:No one cares

[epiphani]

Yes, because apple is the only company that does high-dpi displays.

(Actually, that's unfortunately pretty true right now, but I hope to start seeing better displays out of the hardware makers soon.)

Re:No one cares

[pecosdave]

Hey troll, like Apple or not they're addressing a glaring problem by bringing out the retina display. Our screen resolution has stagnated and even regressed due to HDTV and the buzz word compliance of 1080i. I can only hope throwing down the gauntlet as they have will push other hardware makers to bring out their own 4K displays.

Re:No one cares

[Andy Prough]

Samsung series 9 looks pretty nice.

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, you dont' know a thing

Re:No one cares

[_xeno_]

I think a much fairer statement would be "no one who develops Linux software gives a rats ass about Apple proprietary shit."

Don't forget, when you whine about free software not running well on your $3000 Retina MacBook, what you're really saying is "why don't those free software developers, who work on the software I use for free, who provide me the software for free, who demand nothing from me, immediately run out and spend $3000 to validate my $3000 purchase."

Until high-DPI displays are no longer only available on a vastly overpriced piece of Apple shiny, you're not going to see any serious open source support for it: there's simply no reason to run out and spend $3000 for the tiny crowd of whiners who demand that the software they don't pay for support their stupid purchasing decisions.

Or, to put it another way, if you want good "Retinal" support under Gnome, you're more than welcome to donate, say, $12,000 to get some Gnome developers some shiny but otherwise useless high-DPI displays. Otherwise, stop complaining that not everyone wasted money on their computer.

Re:No one cares

[omnichad]

you mean 1080p. Computers haven't had interlaced displays since forever ago.

Re:No one cares

[Albanach]

ey troll, like Apple or not they're addressing a glaring problem by bringing out the retina display.

That or they're creating the problem by purchasing every high resolution computer display available on the wholesale market for their own devices, making them prohibitively expensive for other manufacturers.

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think everything Linux has to be low-end shit? Some folks want higher res. and OP took one of a couple of routes to it. Sorry his choice of hardware struck such a nerve. At what price point do you say money isn't wasted or do you just not like high end hardware?

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh, Apple took the cheap/easy way out. They solved a software problem with Hardware. The effective resolution is the same as it was previously, They just double the amount of pixels used.

It'll take much longer for Linux to solve the problem, as I expect the linux devs won't be happy with the cheap/easy way, and will want to render at the real resolution, rather than the effective/actual split that Apple does.

Re:No one cares

[_xeno_]

What glaring problem? The problem they're addressing is screen DPI, which is basically a non-problem, and not screen size, which is something I'd love to see get larger and is what you really mean when you say "resolution has stagnated."

Right now I'm stuck with a 1920x1200 monitor, and I'm glad to have that because no one makes them any more. If I were to "upgrade," I'd have to replace it with a 1920x1080 monitor. What I'd like to have is an even larger monitor, like the really nice but still way too expensive 2560x1600 monitors. (Still over $1000.)

What Apple did instead was up the pixel density, which is nice, I guess, but not really useful. Those high-DPI displays are great for a cell phone or other devices you hold in your hand, but not really great for a laptop.

Really, I'd rather see a higher push for the larger sized monitors so I get more useable room out of the display rather than see the DPI pushed up. All "retinal" gives you is the same UI, just with four times the pixels. It may look "shiny" but it sure isn't any more useful.

Re:No one cares

[sp332]

ATSC HDTV (all digital broadcast TV in the USA) can by 720i or 1080i (among others). In fact 1080p is not a supported resolution.

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Linus Torvalds uses a Macbook Air...

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

... no one uses Linux that cares about Retina/Apple.

Tell that to Linus and his Mac Book Air that runs Linux.

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! Thank the gods for St Jobs and his holy quest to improve my life. Retina display has changed the way I use my computer. Why, all of my games look so much better now that I have a Mac with Retina Display.

That is, of course, they would if, you know, I could actually PLAY GAMES ON A MAC.

My god, retina display on a laptop is like go-faster stripes. WHO THE FSK CARES? No one uses a laptop for design work, there are no Mac games, what few games there are look crappy on Retina Displays and steaming television and movies look crappy no matter what you do. Holy fracking cup! THIS GUY IS AN APPLE TROLL.

Re:No one cares

[SuperKendall]

His whole purpose is just to hate what Apple does; he actually doesn't care about Linux whatsoever, nor would he understand how or why or when to run it.

He's probably just a bored teen that can't afford an iPod.

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Asus has recently released some nice products with high DPI displays. The ASUS Zenbook Prime is 1920 x 1080 with a 13.3" screen, which is close, if not better, than the Mac books. Granted, their pricing is close to Apple's. Manufacturers are finally realizing that there are still consumers who want/need high resolution portable devices. Part of this is also being driven by the tablet market.

Re:No one cares

[TheGavster]

On consumer, desktop equipment, yes. Consumer mobile equipment is starting to see ludicrous DPI even in middle of the road devices, and commercial medical displays have offered very high DPI for some time.

Re:No one cares

[johnny cashed]

Wait, is that the work of the invisible hand of the market? Or does Apple have a patent on high resolution displays?

Re:No one cares

[damnbunni]

It's simply not true that 'no one makes them any more'.

Dell makes a few very nice 1920 x 1200 monitors. NewEgg lists more than 20 models.

They're not as common as 1080p screens, and they're not as cheap, but 'they still make them'.

And while 2560 x 1600 screens are still over a grand, you can get a 2560 x 1440 pretty cheap. $399 at Microcenter.

Re:No one cares

[Cid Highwind]

"The ASUS Zenbook Prime is 1920 x 1080 with a 13.3" screen, which is close, if not better, than the Mac books."

It's really not. The 13" MBP display is 2560x1600 pixels.

Stop being an idiot, you're making yourself look bad here, not Apple.

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. That's just stupid.

I'm an embedded Linux developer and have been for years. Prior to that I was a senior Linux sysadmin. My computer of choice is a MacBook Air - and come to think of it, Linus Torvalds uses one too.

Re:No one cares

[aaaaaaargh!]

Hey troll, like Apple or not they're addressing a glaring problem

LOL... how about a non-glaring screen instead?

Re:No one cares

[omnichad]

What's your point? Computer monitors do 1080p, not 1080i and you were saying the industry was standardizing on HD buzzword compliance. Blu-Ray goes up to 1080p and works on HD TV's. Why are you bringing ATSC broadcast standards into this?

Re:No one cares

[HarrySquatter]

Asus has recently released some nice products with high DPI displays. The ASUS Zenbook Prime is 1920 x 1080 with a 13.3" screen, which is close, if not better, than the Mac books.

That's only 165 PPI. The 13" Pro is 227 PPI and the 15" is 220 PPI. Unless you use a different version of math than the rest of the world, 165 PPI is not better than either of the other numbers.

Re:No one cares

[jedidiah]

No but Apple and Apple users like to make a big stink about it.

It's probably less effective on Macs then on a Linux box running KDE apps (apparently).

Re:No one cares

[elfprince13]

Wish I had modpoints. The -1 on this comment is a sign of some serious denialism on today's batch of mods.

Re:No one cares

[HarrySquatter]

On consumer, desktop equipment, yes.

The average consumer desktop comes with a 1080p display with a DPI usually in the sub 125 PPI range (17" or higher).

Re:No one cares

[Guy Harris]

Meh, Apple took the cheap/easy way out. They solved a software problem with Hardware. The effective resolution is the same as it was previously, They just double the amount of pixels used.

...and use the extra pixels to show stuff at higher resolution except for some applications.

"Low resolution" is a hardware problem - you want higher-res, you need smaller pixels and more of them, and the only software that would affect that would be the software in the machines used in the design and manufacturing process for the displays.

Re:No one cares

[LWATCDR]

I think you misuderstood what he said. If you kept reading you would read,"Consumer mobile equipment is starting to see ludicrous DPI even in middle of the road devices".
Mobile devices like the iPhone, iPad, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Samsung S3, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, Kindle Fire HD, and so on all are providing very high DPI displays. It is a real shame that HDTVs have made 1080p displays so cheap that it is now the standard for most desktops.

Re:No one cares

[markhahn]

especially because "retina" is just assinine Apple marketing jingo. almost every LCD panel produced is purely off-the-shelf and available to any customer who wants it. in particular, there are lots of devices that have pixel densities as high or higher than the particular models Apple selected from the catalog...

Re:No one cares

[jbolden]

There were several major projects started about a month after Retina laptops came out. Retina for Firefox. Retina for OpenOffice (Libre Office had support day 1). Retina Ubuntu... So now you are just dead wrong. Everyone in the Linux community knows that Apple hardware is a pretty good guide to features they are going to need to support down the road for Linux. Moreover a huge percentage of Linux developers use Apple hardware.

As for the rest about "wasted money" and "shiny" I'll leave that to whomever wants to point out that the 15" retina was and still is a rather good deal compared to x86 laptops with similar features.

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because apple is the only company that does high-dpi displays.

LG, Sharp, Japan Display and Samsung do high-DPi displays.

Apple contracts Quanta to put them in laptops.

Re:No one cares

[jbolden]

Medical monitors are high-dpi displays. But Apple is the only company aiming them at mainstream users.

Re:No one cares

[HarrySquatter]

Yes, I read that. So what? I only chose to respond to the incorrect part.

Re:No one cares

[Hatta]

Consumer mobile equipment is starting to see ludicrous DPI even in middle of the road devices

Doesn't do anyone any good when you can't do real work on a phone. I'm still running a 2048x1536 CRT at home, and will be for the forseeable future.

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahaha oh god. Gotta love hating misplaced, myopic nerdrage. This kind of stuff is why I don't bother keeping many people who purport to be smart as friends. Geeks really could use a cultural revolution pushing away from exactly the kind of arrogance which is part of what keeps them socially isolated. Anyways, to the point - a fun fact I noticed the other day: Linus Torvalds uses a macbook air. Proof: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/19/an-interview-with-millenium-technology-prize-finalist-linus-torvalds/ -- Not that apple has any more support from me after letting 6 adapters bust apart on me without it being covered under warranty until that class-action went through and they started being all apologetic.

Re:No one cares

[NatasRevol]

Care to identify one laptop that is off-the-shelf and runs at 2560-by-1600 on a 13.3" display? Other than a MacBook Pro.

I'll wait.

Re:No one cares

[thrillseeker]

I have one and it is pretty nice. I self upgraded it to 16G/256G.

I'm hoping they get their ass in gear and release their supposed higher-res 15" model soon.

Re:No one cares

[micheas]

If you pay for your own electricity upgrading to a similar LCD might pay for itself over one to two years, and you get a huge amount of desk space back. (the cat will complain about no longer being able to sleep on the monitor however.)

Re:No one cares

[dbIII]

They don't make any, but they are buying just about all of the available displays of that type. It's like when the iPad came out and every other large electronics company wanted to make one as well, but found apple had bought all available production with some components.
The same thing has happened with eink where one Russian company bought the full run of LGs flexible screen and it's going to be a year or so (if ever) before oynx are selling the one they had announced and a couple of years before Kindle or Kobo have a screen that isn't made of glass.

Re:No one cares

[bill_mcgonigle]

the really nice but still way too expensive 2560x1600 monitors. (Still over $1000.)

If you don't have a business case to justify $1000 for a monitor that you'll probably use for 5+ years, then you don't really need it.

I'm eyeing the Eizo 22" - about $850 and has a bit higher DPI, along with the high resolution. The 2560x1600 screens are in the 30" range - the DPI isn't very good. That's fine for people with vision loss, but two screens at 1900x1200 are going to be better for most uses.

This kind of screen is a marvel of technology and quality. I paid $739 in 1993 for a 17" flat CRT (1024x768), and that was the employee discount at a major retailer on an $899 display, and those were 1993 dollars - worth $1500 or more in 2012 dollars. It's true that poor-quality displays are now being manufactured at very low prices, but the price of 'cheap crap' shouldn't influence ROI calculations on important business tools.

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

> Wish I had modpoints.

But then you would be moderating... (see below)

> The -1 on this comment is a sign of some serious denialism on today's batch of mods.

The -1 on this comment is a sign of some serious incompetence on today's batch of mods.

FTFY.

What's karma for, again?

Re:No one cares

[loufoque]

The man has many flaws and is stupid about many things.

Re:No one cares

[Darinbob]

It's not just about high dpi displays either. You can have a high resolution on a large screen while still wanting very large fonts and UI elements. It helps you see it better when your eyesight is not very good, if you have partial blindness, etc. So you can help both those with degenerative vision and those with amazing mutant vision at the same time.

Re:No one cares

[Darinbob]

I don't know. Screen resolutions have been getting very large. Ie, I've got 1920x1200 at work and a few years ago I would have considered that something only available for several thousand dollars at least. What Apple is really doing is providing higher DPI; high resolution but on very tiny screens. They're sort of solving the problem of people wanting to see more things on a laptop but without having larger laptops.

The drawback is that I think most people really can't make use of that high DPI. So at work I tend to see young employees with the retinal displays using the laptop screen directly but with their faces relatively close to the screen (many hunched over); whereas middle and older employees have external monitors instead with much more resolution than the laptops provide and they sit farther back from the screen as well.

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Not useful?

Fuck, if you have eyes buddy the retina is a tyhing of beauty. So much easier to read on.

But once again, someone who hasn't used and doesn't know thinks they are an expert. (i.e. YOU)

Re:No one cares

[Darinbob]

Apple is just like Microsoft. They get to decide what the users will get and the users have to accept it. If Apple decides you need a screen with glare then just bow and say thank you.

Re:No one cares

[MakyoDetector]

Oh, the humanity! HOWEVER did our ancestors COPE with 8 pixel fonts?! Imagine being able to see individual PIXELS on screen - it's horrible, just horrible!

If 1200 lines is okay then you should be fine with 1080p, after all resolution is a non-issue. I use a cheap 42" LCD TV as monitor and wouldn't go back to anything smaller.

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears Samsung is now producing some decent resolution LCDs. They're doing 2560x1440 on a 27" display. Not as good as the Trinitron 2304x1440 on 24", but at least getting into a similar ballpark. I just hope they do decent color.

Re:No one cares

[Vegemeister]

I assure you, you don't have a 2048x1536 CRT. What you actually have is a 1600x1200 CRT, being overdriven so as to be so blurry it's useless.

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny, because Torvalds uses a MacBook Air 11" as his laptop.

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh, yet another poster getting DPI mixed up with resolution.

Apple has made a display with smaller pixels, nothing more. THE RESOLUTION IS THE SAME AS A NORMAL LAPTOP.

Apple might claim 2560x1600 'resolution' but it's a false claim. What they mean is you get the same 1280x800 display as on any other low-end laptop, just the pixels are the same size as required IF the display were 2560x1600. If you see a Mac user with a retina macbook pro, take a look in the monitors control panel, and you won't see 2560x1600 as an available resolution.

Because the laptop PHYSICALLY DOESN'T HAVE THAT MANY PIXELS.

1280x800 is it, and my $399 acer has been able to do that for four years.

I'll admit the smaller pixels do allow Apple to make display elements look clearer on-screen because it uses this faux-resolution trick to simulate one aspect of a 2560x1600 display, but making GUI elements look shinier and crisper it nothing but glitz.

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you use fonts? Y/N
Are those fonts stored as vector graphics? Y/N
If you answered yes to both of those questions, you benefit immensely from a higher-DPI output device. No one in their right mind would print a book at ~90dpi. Why screen-read at ~90dpi?

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you can't be arsed to read the thread, let me help:

Yes, because apple is the only company that does high-dpi displays.

(Actually, that's unfortunately pretty true right now, but I hope to start seeing better displays out of the hardware makers soon.)

On consumer, desktop equipment, yes.

The average consumer desktop comes with a 1080p display with a DPI usually in the sub 125 PPI range (17" or higher).

See where you're "correcting" someone who already agrees with you? Might be because you're a dumb fucking cunt.

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

There are those. There are also real 2048x1536 CRTs, though they're somewhat scarcer..

How are you in a position to assure random people which hardware they have?

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Given this topic, I was rubbing my hands with glee hoping for slashdot to vomit forth more stupid and crazy and uninformed like it always does. You didn't disappoint, "_xeno_"!

What glaring problem? The problem they're addressing is screen DPI, which is basically a non-problem,

DPI is a non-problem? Really? Dumb opinion #1 in the books!

and not screen size, which is something I'd love to see get larger and is what you really mean when you say "resolution has stagnated."

No, I'm pretty sure that when he said "resolution" he meant "resolution". Because, you see, the word "resolution" means the number of dots independent of screen size. There is no way to sanely re-interpret "resolution" as "screen size". Here, you're filtering someone else's statement through your dumb opinions and coming up with dumb, so we'll count it as dumb opinion #2!

Right now I'm stuck with a 1920x1200 monitor, and I'm glad to have that because no one makes them any more. If I were to "upgrade," I'd have to replace it with a 1920x1080 monitor.

Just-Plain-Wrong #1 in the books! 1920x1200 monitors are alive and well. It takes about 5 seconds to google some up.

What I'd like to have is an even larger monitor, like the really nice but still way too expensive 2560x1600 monitors. (Still over $1000.)

You meant 30" monitors, right? Because, you know, resolution is not actually the same thing as size. If that's what you actually meant, we can conclude that your real problem is you're too cheap to pay for a large screen, not that screen size has stagnated.

Also, if resolution didn't matter and only size did, you'd put your money where your mouth is and go buy a 1920x1080 30+ inch TV to use as a monitor.

What Apple did instead was up the pixel density, which is nice, I guess, but not really useful. Those high-DPI displays are great for a cell phone or other devices you hold in your hand, but not really great for a laptop.

Monumental levels of dumb! My brain is overloading!

Holy shit dude I can't even believe you can say this stuff with a straight face. What color is the sky in your world anyways? Have you even bothered to go look at one of the Retina MacBook Pros? (Warning: once you see one you will want that display. Because, you see, high DPI looks awesome, especially with apps updated for it.)

Really, I'd rather see a higher push for the larger sized monitors so I get more useable room out of the display rather than see the DPI pushed up. All "retinal" gives you is the same UI, just with four times the pixels. It may look "shiny" but it sure isn't any more useful.

A nice dollop of ignorance to round things out! If you go play with the screen settings on those retina MacBookPros you'll find they support setting it for more display area. On the 15" retina MBP the native res is 2880x1800 which gives you UI layout equivalent to 1440x900, but if you want you can choose a UI layout equivalent to 1680x1050 or 1920x1200 instead. Behind the scenes, the OS is really rasterizing everything to a 3360x2100 or 3840x2400 buffer, which is then scaled down to 2880x1800 for display.

The cool thing? It still looks amazingly sharp. Why? Because, well, you know that whole thing where you believe high DPI is useless? It kinda isn't. When the individual pixels are that small, you can't really see the problems you'd usually associate with downsampling like that. It just looks ever so slightly blurrier than the 'native' 2880x1800 mode. That's just one of the great things high DPI brings.

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

My Nexus 10 DPI has spoiled me. I'm not going back to shit resolutions, ever. Sorry.

Re:No one cares

[Tough Love]

Well, Linus Torvalds uses a Macbook Air...

With OSX replaced by Linux.

Re:No one cares

[ChunderDownunder]

Can someone from a graphics background please explain in layman's terms the following w.r.t. HiDPI, resolution independence etc.

In a normal display, say 1280x800 DPI=PPI = The number of dots on the screen at say a pixel depth of 96?

So in a normal laptop there are 1280x800 pixels.

The OP is claiming a standard cheap screen at 1280x800 is using tricks to render (2x2)=4 times the number of dots?

is that 4 pixels per dot or 4 dots per pixel? :)

On a high-end genuine 2560x1600 screen it switches to 1280x800 for compatibility thus inverting the ratio?

I'm just curious to whether this 'Retina' display is a genuine advancement in display tech or FUD on the part of the OP?

Confusing to us non graphics nerds...

Re:No one cares

[Dahan]

0/10, fail troll is fail.

Re:No one cares

[vlueboy]

"The ASUS Zenbook Prime is 1920 x 1080 with a 13.3" screen, which is close, if not better, than the Mac books."

It's really not. The 13" MBP display is 2560x1600 pixels.

Stop being an idiot, you're making yourself look bad here, not Apple.

Well, he gave a good lead for what may become the new defacto laptop resolution. Think of it as the DOCTYPE transitional 4.01 HTML tag but for the moving between today's 1200x800 and the drool-worthy high DPI targets that Macs provide. And give it 24 months while old stuff gets phased out.

Somewhere along the line, I hope this will cause the 4K standard for TVs to also be re-visited... even my laptop's HDMI resolution is too much for my HDTV... 720p may be "nice" for cable but it's horrible for laptops. It's just sad to see a screen several times larger than my laptop's go to waste like that. Why not add some special 1080p mode just for non-broadcast purposes? It's 37" versus 15"! Then again, the laptop won't do HD either because of reasons that have been discussed here ad nauseum.

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple retina is simply a 2880x1800 display with the dpi setting appropriate for the resolution and screen size.

Since everything on a mac is drawn as vectors (including the pixels of an image, you can't even get access to the frame buffer as a programmer), everything is simply drawn at appropriate size of the screen.

The doubling of pixels doesn't really happen, what happens is that some programs draw their user interface through images, but since they don't have access to the frame buffer they make an image with the size of the window. Since the size of the window is reported as dots (the typographic term) instead of pixels they make an image that is quarter the number of pixels than the number of pixels of the window. So when the image is drawn on top of the whole window, it has to draw the pixels as a 2 by 2 block.

So nothing really magic going on, just that OS X never supported direct frame buffer access and always used vector graphics for everything even for drawing images.

Re:No one cares

[fnj]

Yes, the retina display is a genuine advancement in display tech, period. The number of pixels is greater, and they are real pixels. The AC you are replying to is a bloody idiot. FUD city.

Re:No one cares

[joss]

google catleap on ebay: affordable 27" 2560x1440, they rock

Re:No one cares

[bemymonkey]

Actually, the models you're speaking of are likely to all be old stock. I'd bet many of them even still have CCFL backlighting...

Re:No one cares

[Bert64]

You can buy high-dpi displays from IBM and various others, they have been around for quite a long time and are no more proprietary than any other screen, they are just very expensive (far more expensive than apple)...
Take a read of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors for instance

Re:No one cares

[jones_supa]

Exactly. I don't understand how people can pay the price of a Mac and put up with that glossy crap.

Re:No one cares

[damnbunni]

All of them? I find that hard to believe. Let's take a look.

Going down NewEgg's list:

Dell U2410 - in production. Note this uses CCFL backlighting, despite being an in-production display.

Asus PA246Q - appears to be in production as far as I can tell. Also CCFL.

Dell U2412 - in production. LED backlight.

Asus PA248Q - probably in production, though Asus doesn't say. Lots of stores have it in stock, though.

HP ZR2440W - Lots of stores have it in stock, and it apparently only came out in March 2012, so probably still in production. LED backlight.

Samsung S24A450BW-1 - appears to be in production. Good supply all over, looks like it came out in late 2011. LED backlit.

Okay, that's just starting at the top of the list. None of these appear to be old stock, and I know for a fact the Dells are in production. (Both models. The 2410 is an older model but has a lot more inputs than the 2412, which is why they make both.)

So like I said, you can still get a 1920 x 1200 display. You just have to pay more for it.

Re:No one cares

[jones_supa]

Try playing with this tool for a while.

http://members.ping.de/~sven/dpi.html

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

When people started writing gui programs they took all kinds of shortcuts.

One of them was using 'pixel' as a length unit (because at the time all the screens available had more or less the same physical pixel size)

However the pixels of that time are much too big to display text with any reasonable accuracy (just like you'll never be more accurate using duplo bricks instead of lego bricks). You can add all kinds of distortion or blurring tricks to try to compensate, but the result is still god-awful (especially at small letter sizes). Such a screen has typically about 96 pixels per inch (the screens of that time were supposed to be 100 pixels per inch, but Microsoft standardized on 96 to take into account all the products that were cheating). To make a comparison, the first laser printers made a revolution in text quality by using 300 dots per inch for printing, and nowadays 1200/2400 dpi printing is common. On a computer screen dot = physical pixel (not taking awful subpixel tricks that introduce color fringing into account).

That is why using a tv to display computer text is usually terrible – computer screen 96 dpi is bad, but tv screens have often even lower pixel density: 80 dpi, sometimes as low as 50. You compensate by viewing the result from as long a distance as possible, to 'shrink' the pixels and make rendering artifacts too small to matter.

Today is is possible to manufacture screens with much smaller pixels, Apple bought such screens and is selling the result under the 'retina display' brand. 'Retina' only means that screen pixels are finally small enough text and other content where details matter display fine even when you're near to the screen, and your eye is supposed to be unable to distinguish rendering artifacts.

However when your software took the shortcuts I wrote about before, you can *not* use it on a high-density screen. Every single gui element that was measured in pixels is suddenly much too small, and the result is useless.

Resolution-independant software does not measure element in pixels, so when you shrink the pixels, the result stays at the same physical size, except that text and vector graphics can use the higher pixel density to display sharper and with more details.

However making legacy software resolution independent is a lot of work so some projects have been postponing it as long as possible. To display them on a high-density screen you need to fake big pixels by pretending the screen resolution is less, and using several physical pixels to create a fake bigger pixel (and the result is as god-awful as it would be on a bad screen). If you have enough computer power, you can try to guess (interpolate) what the pixels values would have been if the software had been written for smaller pixels, but the result while better is blurry.

Note that OSX is not really resolution-independent today. It just fakes areas with large pixels for legacy software, and tries to use the actual hardware pixel density for areas software flagged as being hi-density-compatible (sometimes via scaling which is not quite as good as rendering for the real density directly). This is a hack to give software time to adjust. KDE4 is supposed o be resolution-independent (so the actual pixel density is use everywhere without cheating).

GNOME3 is stuck in the duplo past. It's promoters convinced themselves 96 dpi was a natural limit, so it is not prepared to render on high-dpi screens and resorts to massive scaling of pre-rendered bitmap content everywhere. That shortcut results in text blurring, (quite evident in overview mode) and inability to select font sizes with the units used everywhere else.

PPI is sometimes used to measure pixel density instead of PPI. The main difference is that PPI users often count the pixels that occur on a 1 inch × 1 inch square diagonal instead of counting the pixels on a 1 inch horizontal or vertical line, so they can claim bigger numbers on the same screen.

Re:No one cares

[jo_ham]

No one cares about Linux and Retina support because Retina is Apple and no one uses Linux that cares about Retina/Apple.

I care about Linux and high dpi/retina resolutions.

Are you saying I don't exist?

Re:No one cares

[jo_ham]

Well, Linus Torvalds uses a Macbook Air...

With OSX replaced by Linux.

Yes, that's the point. He's replying to the original troll who said that no one involved in Linux software development cared about high resolutions or Apple hardware.

I'm pretty sure Linus Torvalds had something to do with Linux software development ;)

Re:No one cares

[jo_ham]

especially because "retina" is just assinine Apple marketing jingo. almost every LCD panel produced is purely off-the-shelf and available to any customer who wants it. in particular, there are lots of devices that have pixel densities as high or higher than the particular models Apple selected from the catalog...

"Retina" has a specific meaning, defined by a mathematical formula that accounts for the DPI of the display and the distance it is viewed from. No one is under any illusion that they are somehow "special" Apple panels, or that other manufacturers don't also have access to them.

For some reason, people seem to take umbrage with just Apple's marketing terms, while accepting other terms that allow for quick and accurate descriptions of a particular technology just fine.

Re:No one cares

[Hatta]

I assure you, my NEC FP2141SB is incredibly crisp at 2048x1536. I can read scans of magazines, two whole pages side by side, with no problem whatsoever.

Re:No one cares

[Hatta]

What LCD would you recommend that can display more than 1536 lines of horizontal resolution with 120 DPI or better? The only one I'm aware of is the IBM 221, which is at least as old as my CRT and will put me out at least $700.

Re:No one cares

[micheas]

And should save you about $40.00 a month in electricity.

I am currently looking for a new monitor and not real happy with what I am finding, but CRTs are very expensive to use.

Re:No one cares

[toddestan]

The T221 was discontinued in 2005 (sadly) and as far as I know, IBM is out of the monitor business. Lenovo makes some monitors, but they are no different in terms of DPI than everyone else.

Re:No one cares

[toddestan]

The better equivalent monitor would be the IBM T210 which was a 21" 2048x1536 monitor. But long discontinued and much rarer on the secondhand market than its 22" cousin.

My thought would be to hold onto the CRT for a bit longer, and wait and see if monitors improve in the next year or two. With any luck, someone will start releasing high DPI desktop displays, and hopefully it will also be someone other than Apple so that the monitor will come with a reasonable set of inputs. Either that or hope that 4K catches on in the TV world, and isn't regulated to huge 50+ inch screens either.

Re:No one cares

[PayPaI]

Wrong.

Re:No one cares

[Hatta]

$40/month? The FP2141sb is specced to run at 120W. If I run it 24/7, that's 87.6KWh. At $0.15/KWh, that's $13 per month. In reality, I run it 4-6 hours per day so I'm out less than $5 per month. $40/year is a much better estimate than $40/month. And it's well worth that.

Re:No one cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Get three 1080p monitors at 18.5'. Use them vertically (at 1080x1920), side by side. That will give you a 3240x1920 display at 120 DPI (actually 119.08, but that's close enough for me)

Re:No one cares

[Vegemeister]

>20" Viewable
>0.24mm aperture grille

No.

KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never tried it in really high resolutions, but everything I've found online says KDE supports resolution independence.
And it's just so much better and usable in so many ways than those other environments you've been using.

Live with it

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, Linux sucks.

But it has the advantage that if you don't like it you're free to write your own graphics drivers and make it look as nice as you want, and then you can give it away for free and get a nice warm feeling.

--man, I think I'd better check that "anonymous coward" box here...

Re:Live with it

[Billly Gates]

Basically, Linux sucks.

But it has the advantage that if you don't like it you're free to write your own graphics drivers and make it look as nice as you want, and then you can give it away for free and get a nice warm feeling.

--man, I think I'd better check that "anonymous coward" box here...

It is so pleasing to know that Windows and Mac apps do not have problems retina too. It must be that hippie OS

Re:Live with it

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it pleasing to know that you're a retard? By the way, you're a retard.

Re:Live with it

[markhahn]

you know you're both wrong and trolling, so why did you press the "submit" button at all?

Linux does fine with high density displays. actually, the place it does worse is on extremely low-density displays. I have some 42" 1366x768 displays that take some painful tweaking to setup, since environments like KDE try to be smart about the ruler-size of fonts, not noticing that these screens really do have pixels big enough to throw a rubber chicken through...

Compiz?

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE is too cluttered and bloaty. I've never used a retina display but since you can use Compiz/Emerald sans any pixmaps this should be moot.

Re:Compiz?

[Andy Prough]

KDE is too cluttered and bloaty. I've never used a retina display but since you can use Compiz/Emerald sans any pixmaps this should be moot.

So? Unclutter and un-bloat it. Whats the problem?

Re:Compiz?

[Nerdfest]

I did this recently. After avoiding KDE because it didn't look nice, I tried it again after the Gnome devs "pulled an Apple" and said that we shouldn't be able to theme or add extensions to our desktop. It takes a bit more setup to make it exactly as you like, ... but you can make it *exactly* as you like. You also only need to do it once. It'd well worth the minimal effort it requires.

Tiling WM

[elusive_one]

Use a tiling window manage and just get rid of all those annoying UI elements. Serious suggestion.

Re:Tiling WM

[Anonymous Coward]

Use a tiling window manage and just get rid of all those annoying UI elements. Serious suggestion.

I can't believe that got modded funny. I run Awesome for my day to day work and it "just works". So long as the graphics driver gets the DPI calculation correct (I'm pointing my finger at your crappy DPI support, Nvidia) the fonts render correctly.

There are no pesky UI elements - no icons on the desktop, menus, etc to get in my way and it's beautiful.

Re:Tiling WM

[AmiMoJo]

Are you saying install Windows 8?

KDE looks great

[TheSimkin]

I use kde in VirtualBox looks great.

xmonad

[Robert Bowles]

I'm currently using xmonad as a desktop environment (almost exclusively), as it plays quite nicely on VHRDs (very high resolution displays). At most, you'll have to tweak the borderWidth elements.

Optionally, if you're looking for a bit more eye candy, try twm and its derivatives. Most the the UI elements scale dynamically. (too flashy for my tastes however)

Re:xmonad

[sticks_us]

I'm also a full xmonad convert. I don't know how I ever got along without it, really.

Now you have me wondering how different life would be on a VHRD? Maybe it's time for a better monitor...

Tiling window manager

[Anonymous Coward]

Use a tiling window manager and do most of your stuff in console. i3 is my current personal favourite.

good luck

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple/NeXT has been working on this for 25+ years, dating back to their decision to use Display PostScript for rendering on screen.

Enlightenment

[Anonymous Coward]

You can choose the magnification ratio in the initial configuration wizzard. This affects everything, not just the fonts. It's the real deal.

Just don't do it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep your shit-stain Linsux off of Apple hardware. That's like putting spinners on a Bentley.

Re:Just don't do it.

[Zimluura]

Car analogy, huh?

Bentley... Expensive, Heavy, Thirsty, Status symbol.

I think you're entirely correct.

Re:Just don't do it.

[Anonymous Coward]

He's almost right except for the whole shit-stained part, wrong side of the argument, linux is great because of the community that supports it and the options it has. Your best option would probably be to throw away your shitty proprietary mac in the garbage where it belongs and get or build a PC that actually supports other options if you so choose to pursue them.

Re:Just don't do it.

[Andy Prough]

No - it's more like dropping a small block Chevy 383 stroker engine into a 2-door fiat. You can squeeze one in there, but you might want to use a restrictor plate to limit its power.

Re:Just don't do it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Big ass engine in a Fiat spider body, that would be pretty sweet. Probably a lot like running Linux on a Macbook Air.

Linus? Is that you?

Vmware Fusion

[Anonymous Coward]

HiDPI on Linux is a work-in-progress .. and even when it *does* work, battery life goes down the crapper. Also, thunderbolt hot-plug hasn't been figured out, but it will work as long as your Ethernet dongle is plugged in ahead of power-on. Wifi requires bw-fwcutter, etc.
 
It's the same as Linux on any other bleeding-edge hardware (and from a very Linux-unfriendly company) .. so the entire thing has to be reverse-engineered from scratch.
 
Want it done faster? .. buy rMBPs for the developers actually working on the drivers.
 
Like all things Linux, they'll get it figured out eventually. Until then, the best way about it is just run VMware Fusion and run Linux inside of that .. solves all the above issues and really isn't that big of a performance hit. Probably not the "purist" answer you were after but it's the easiest way to get it done in the meantime.

Re:Vmware Fusion

[jez9999]

HiDPI on Linux is a work-in-progress .. and even when it *does* work, battery life goes down the crapper.

What battery?

Re:Vmware Fusion

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFS

...because of SVG.

[gentryx]

KDE got a lot of flak for the early 4.x versions, because they felt terrible. But what they did (replacing many internals, reworking the architecture) did yield us now a very flexible UI. Plasma (KDE's UI) is fully based on SVG and looks good on pretty much any screen, be it a notebook, workstation, or even tablets. And its not such a CPU/memory hog as the people generally claim.

Re:...because of SVG.

[Andy Prough]

The KDE gang was wise enough to tell everyone not to use the early 4.x series until it was more mature. Not that many people listened.

Re:...because of SVG.

[Anonymous Coward]

But they were not wise enough to save major version number until their software gets more mature.

Re:...because of SVG.

[distilate]

But they were not wise enough to save major version number until their software gets more mature.

What so you would have them put major changes in the previous version as minor versions... ? there is only so much testing you can get on a branch

Re:...because of SVG.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does "alpha" and "beta" mean anything other than greek letters to you?
How about "developer preview"?

Re:...because of SVG.

[turbidostato]

"Does "alpha" and "beta" mean anything other than greek letters to you?"

But KDE base software was *not* beta at all. While certainly quite a lot has changed since, i.e. kdelibs is basically what it was.

When you deal with a whole distribution, how would you say "Hey, the basic internals are good enough, but now all the applications running on top of this foundations will have to be reviewed". Hint: this has happened before, just look out Qt versioning to understand.

After the fact it is obvious KDE guys failed at marketing their position. But it is equally true that they clearly explained what the software state was for those that wanted to hear (and with this I mean "the foundations are settled, time to work on the applications" was basically on their front page and was a clear statement on all their public channels. What some Linux distributions and/or bloggers wanted to "sell" is absolutly a different issue, but just to make a point, look at KDE on Debian Stable -and wheezy, which is to be published "quite soon now": you will see what a difference makes understanding what it is said versus wanting to hear what it is not said).

Re:...because of SVG.

[Anonymous Coward]

"But KDE base software was *not* beta at all."

But as you point out, KDE consists of base software AND bundled applications. These applications are not developed independently, they are part of KDE and if they were in beta state - so was the entire KDE. In fact, releasing stable API so that developers may test and fix their apps is exactly what "developer preview" describes.

But regardless of wether we feel one name more correct that the other. It was certainly predictible, that when you'll mark your release as 4.0 - people will take it for granted that it's a stable, completely usable version. If your goal is to tell the people that it's not yet stable, using major release number is clearly a mistake. Commenting on blogs and web page simply doesn't work because most people don't bother to check - and rightly so, that's what their package repositories are for, to free them from burden of checking the website for new release. At the same time, which was also predictible, KDE managed to get through with their message about new release, so people hearing of it actually wanted the software they WERE in their rights to believe it's stable. So nope, distros and package maintainers are also not to blame for following popular demand.

The simple solution would be to release 4.0 as developer preview and it's KDE devs blame that they didn't.

Re:...because of SVG.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit... but keep repeating it if it makes you feel better.

Change the DPI setting

[erroneus]

The DPI setting will scale your fonts and other items to look good on your screen.

Usually, I am reducing the DPI on high-definition screens so I can get smaller fonts and icons, but the opposite should also work.

Re:Change the DPI setting

[Jthon]

Your comment shows a lack of understanding as to what DPI is supposed to be used for since DPI shouldn't control scaling.

DPI stands for dots per inch, and you should configure that setting to match the actual number of dots per inch of your display. Then the SW environment should support some sort of sliding scale to let you change the size of any UI elements.

Sadly most desktop platforms don't do this correctly and bind the DPI to the size of UI elements. I will admit that resolution independence isn't easy, Microsoft didn't really start down that path until Windows 7, and Apple didn't start to get close until Mountain Lion.

Having used a retina display Mac it irritates me that they don't just have a slider to set UI scale, but instead you can select from several pre-set resolutions. I suspect this is because many applications still try to plot stuff pixel by pixel and so can't scale arbitrarily. It's not easy for most SW to be truly resolution independent and it seems most developers seem to skip handling that sanely on all platforms.

Re:Change the DPI setting

[erroneus]

Yes. It is true. UI elements should be scaleable with the intent that they should be scaleable. But failing that functionality, the best alternative hack would be...? Yeah, playing with the DPI settings.

I do understand what it's supposed to be used for. Do you understand that if you have a means of getting the results you want regardless of the label used to identify its function that in the absense of better options, you should use it?

There's ideal and then there's practical. One [your] option says "do it right and proper or not at all" and other people just care about results. In other news, I have been known to put data on recordable "audio" storage devices such as cassette tape and CDs. I have also been known to put audio on data CDs. I'm ... just... that ... twisted!

TRANSLATION OF POST

[Anonymous Coward]

"I have been using Linux for the last 15 years both at home and at work (mostly GNOME and now Unity).

I have a PC that I installed something called Linux on and I sort of look at it once in a while, 'cause, you know, Linux.

Recently, I gave in to temptation and bought myself a Macbook retina 15".

I work for Apple and We at the fruit factory thought you should know about this 'problem' with Linux

As you can read around,

If you Google 'Retina display' and 'Linux' like I did,

Linux still has no good support for this hardware

Linux wasn't written by St. Jobs the First

so I am running it inside a virtual machine. Running in scaled 1440x900 makes the Linux fonts look absolutely terrible, and running in true 2880x1800 makes them beautiful, but every UI element becomes so tiny, it's unworkable.

Although I can use Google for some searches, I apparently can't be bothered to look for actual solutions, and that's not the point of my post anyway. The point is that APPLE IS THE BESTEST COMPANY EVERS!!!!!!!

Is there a desktop environment that handles resolution independence better? Linux has had support for SVG for a long time, but GNOME/Unity seems adamant in defining small icon sizes and UI elements without the possibility to resize them."

I guess I'd better ask a question so here's some stuff I came up with in my Google search, minus the obviouse KDE solution I stumbled across in the third response.

Macbook Pro Retina $1699, not $3k

[SuperKendall]

I think a much fairer statement would be "no one who develops Linux software gives a rats ass about Apple proprietary shit."

Fairer still would be to say "Apple Haters would self-mutilate if it put Apple in a bad light".

immediately run out and spend $3000 to validate my $3000 purchase.

You may not be aware, but Slashdot is just chock full of technical users who can use the web.

When they do so they would find the MacBook Pro Retina to be $1699, not your absurdly inflated figure.

They also, being technical users, would be asking themselves "could not a developer wanting to test resolution independence simply buy a high DPI desktop monitor and test that way also?"

Why yes. Yes they could. Too bad that you, a non-technical Apple Hater Troll, will be unable to even comprehend that question or think of similar cases before you post in the future and beclown yourself yet again.

You are kind of like the court jester who comes in and spills grape juice on your shirt on purpose. Every. Single. Day. Did you not notice the people stopped laughing long ago? And that the looks you get know are all ones of pity and horror?

Re:Macbook Pro Retina $1699, not $3k

[_xeno_]

When they do so they would find the MacBook Pro Retina to be $1699, not your absurdly inflated figure.

Oh, right, Apple released a 13" model. I forgot about that. Too bad to spec that 13" model up so that it's comparable to a $1000 Windows Ultrabook, you'll be paying $2500.

The $3000 figure is accurate for the 15" model with acceptable specs.

They also, being technical users, would be asking themselves "could not a developer wanting to test resolution independence simply buy a high DPI desktop monitor and test that way also?"

And again, we're back to "buy shit to support the shit I bought." I have a better idea, if you're willing to blow money on overpriced hardware, you fix it. It's open source, after all.

Re:Macbook Pro Retina $1699, not $3k

[Microlith]

Fairer still would be to say "Apple Haters would self-mutilate if it put Apple in a bad light".

So not rushing out to spend $1800-$2700 on a laptop is "self-mutilation" now is it?

When they do so they would find the MacBook Pro Retina to be $1699, not your absurdly inflated figure.

Only for the 13" model, which by all reports has the Intel HD4000 struggling to keep up. And at $1699 (for the base model, mind you) you can get yourself a rather nice non-Apple machine. Not quite a retina display, but still very nice.

You are kind of like the court jester who comes in and spills grape juice on your shirt on purpose. Every. Single. Day.

And you are the knight, clad in shining armor, who comes to defend Apple's honor every time it is sullied by someone.

The point still stands. So long as the hardware is only available in a rather pricy niche it's unlikely to get attention from the greater Linux community. This is why I want these panels in something I can attach to a hefty GPU installed in my desktop. Much more likely to work acceptably and if I can get one, so can lots more people.

Re:Macbook Pro Retina $1699, not $3k

[HarrySquatter]

Oh, right, Apple released a 13" model. I forgot about that. Too bad to spec that 13" model up so that it's comparable to a $1000 Windows Ultrabook, you'll be paying $2500.

Bullshit. The 13.3" Asus ZenBook UX31A-DH51 is $1050 on Newegg and has half the RAM, a slower i5 processor as the 13" MacBook Pro.

Re:Macbook Pro Retina $1699, not $3k

[Vegemeister]

Only for the 13" model, which by all reports has the Intel HD4000 struggling to keep up

What reports? The integrated GPU in my Core 2 Duo handles my 3520x1200 frame buffer reasonably well on Linux. I find it hard to believe that 5 generations later Intel hasn't improved at all.

Re:Macbook Pro Retina $1699, not $3k

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, right, Apple released a 13" model. I forgot about that. Too bad to spec that 13" model up so that it's comparable to a $1000 Windows Ultrabook, you'll be paying $2500.

Bullshit. The 13.3" Asus ZenBook UX31A-DH51 is $1050 on Newegg and has half the RAM, a slower i5 processor as the 13" MacBook Pro.

Not to mention a 1920x1080 display. (The 13" Retina MBP display is 2560x1600.)

Re:Macbook Pro Retina $1699, not $3k

[_xeno_]

I really, really wish people would stop pretending the "retina" displays are high resolution. They're not. They're software-locked to be effectively half on each side, so that "2560x1600" display is exactly the same as a 1280x800 display. Unless you run Linux on it, I guess, then you can actually use the higher resolution to display more applications.

I have tried one of those "retina" MacBooks in a store, you know. You can't change the resolution, the slider has been flat-out removed from the settings app.

Re:Macbook Pro Retina $1699, not $3k

[Anonymous Coward]

Amusing, I'm actually typing this on a macbook 15" retina running windows 8 through boot camp. (The display is awesome.)

And yes, you can adjust the DPI scaling in OSX on the fly if you're using the retina display.

You really couldn't be much more full of shit... I suggest you stick to ad-hominum arguments.

Re:Macbook Pro Retina $1699, not $3k

[Anonymous Coward]

Fairer still would be to say "Apple Haters would self-mutilate if it put Apple in a bad light".

The mutilated computing environments are actually enough to put Apple in a bad light.

Re:Macbook Pro Retina $1699, not $3k

[jo_ham]

I really, really wish people would stop pretending the "retina" displays are high resolution. They're not. They're software-locked to be effectively half on each side, so that "2560x1600" display is exactly the same as a 1280x800 display. Unless you run Linux on it, I guess, then you can actually use the higher resolution to display more applications.

I have tried one of those "retina" MacBooks in a store, you know. You can't change the resolution, the slider has been flat-out removed from the settings app.

My goodness, you're just so full of misinformation! It's hilarious.

Were you running the polls for the GOP prior to the election too?

Changing the resolution to the full native source of the screen is trivially easy. They don't have it on the slider in the Preferences (it's been set to slide between more sensible ranges), but there's no "software lock" that prevents you from running at native res. If you do, the UI is absurdly tiny on a 15" (or 13") screen, but you can do it if you need to.

Re:Macbook Pro Retina $1699, not $3k

[Anonymous Coward]

I still think that the ProRetina is one thousand too expensive for what you get.

You get a free bsd operating system onto which Apple provided some applications.
If you get the equivalent monitor from Samsung, HP, or an OEM version, you will have the same quality output with any Linux

postscript display.

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution is a vector 2d graphics based display. Forget 3d.

man xrandr (grandr for gnome)

[Anonymous Coward]

  --dpi dpi
                            This also sets the reported physical size values of the screen,
                            it uses the specified DPI value to compute an appropriate physi
                            cal size using whatever pixel size will be set.

Or maybe :
--scale xxy
                            Changes the dimensions of the output picture. Values superior to
                            1 will lead to a compressed screen (screen dimension bigger than
                            the dimension of the output mode), and values below 1 leads to a
                            zoom in on the output. This option is actually a shortcut ver
                            sion of the --transform option.

I'm sitting here with a 2560x1440 display

[stox]

and Unity looks great.

Re:I'm sitting here with a 2560x1440 display

[Anonymous Coward]

On a 27" monitor, right?

Doesn't GNOME already support SVG?

[steevithak]

Didn't the GNOME desktop switch to scalable SVG rendering way back in 2004 or so (starting from Raph Levien's work on Gill back in 1999)? There were all kinds of articles back then about how awesome SVG was and how all GNU/Linux desktops would be using it soon. I thought Nautilus was designed with SVG support in mind? What happened to all that work and when did GNOME switch back to pre-historic bitmapped stuff? That's kind of sad.

Re:Doesn't GNOME already support SVG?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually working. The situation is messy, but workable. (As usal for Linux)

-- X.org people found out that automatic DPI detection is mostly useless because there too many monitors out there who report incorrect information. X supports a DPI override switch which would be a nice place to manually adjust this but...

-- The GNOME people decided to ignore what X reports and hard coded a 96 DPI definition.

-- On top of their hard coded DPI, GNOME has a "text scaling factor" property (default 1.0). Increasing it causes compliant applications to render fonts and other UI elements in larger formats. The main motivation for this was to improve accessibility for visually impaired people, but it also serves for people with high DPI screens. This value can be changed via the accessibility options or by installing the gnome-tweak-tool (or editing gconf).
Only GTK/Gnome applications will honor this and even then, compliance isn't perfect as some still use bitmaps for icons. But it's good.

So, for people with high DPI screens:
- Force the X DPI setting to a proper value. This will help with some applications (including most Qt/KDE ones, I think).
- Change the GNOME text-scaling-factor to something that matches the value above. Ie, if you set your X DPI to 200, then set your text-scaling-factor to 2.08 (200/96).
- For Firefox or Chromium, you'll need to manually adjust the zoom level.

Re:Doesn't GNOME already support SVG?

[AdamWill]

mod parent up as 'informative', it is correct in all particulars. I've been running GNOME on high-res displays for years, it can handle it fine.

Re:Doesn't GNOME already support SVG?

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME people decided long ago to clamp the display resolution to 96 dpi since 'windows does it' and 'no manufacturer is going to release hi-dpi ever'

So the situation went from bad in gnome 2 to awful in gnome 3 (they don't even let you unclamp the dpi in the gui anymore)

It was painfully obvious they were going to hit a wall in a few years, but guess how they responded to problem reports a the time

(yes I kow fixing guis for hi dpi is hard. Pretending it does not need to be done does not make the problem go away)

Re:Doesn't GNOME already support SVG?

[Anonymous Coward]

The text scaling factor is no good since instead of rendering fonts for the actual screen resolution (doing grid-fitting and all the other font magic that make them look good) it renders them for an irrelevant resolution and then scales the result

Fix it yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is a problem with support for retina display why not fix it yourself? That is the beauty of open source, if you don't like it, then change it.

Re:Fix it yourself

[Phasma Felis]

Lulz. "If your head gasket is warped, instead of whining to a mechanic, why don't you forge yourself a new engine block?" Yeah, you can, and I'm glad the option is there, but coding your own drivers is absurdly impractical for the great majority of users.

Re:Fix it yourself

[Arker]

The problem he is describing isnt a problem with support for the retina display. It is a problem in the design of the software itself, a design limitation that makes it difficult or impossible to 'fix.' If you have a piece of software that does half of what you need and is well designed, and one that doesnt 90% but is poorly designed, adding 50% of the necessary function to the first may be easier and more rewarding than struggling to somehow tack on the last 10% in the second case.

Re:Fix it yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's why open sores is a fail and that's why you're a faggot douche. But it's ok. I'll be writing to you again soon. Keep loving eating shit out of the assholes of other men. That's your station in life. Dick.
 
FUCKING LOVE SHIT IN YOUR MOUTH!!!!!!

You can buy 2560x1440 for cheap

[cbhacking]

I just picked up a "WQHD" (Widescreen Quad-"HD" for values of HD meaning 1280x720, so a total of 2560x1440) 27" IPS LCD monitor online for $300 US. It's very bare-bones (DVI input only, no webcam or USB hub or anything, etc.) but considering a 1920x1080 monitor at 27" is hard to come by for $200, it's an excellent price for the much less common resolution.

They make them in Korea and ship them out under a handful of brand names. A search on "wqhd monitor" will find you several places you can buy them from. Make sure your video card has the correct output.

Re:You can buy 2560x1440 for cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

So, it's the same resolution as the 13" MacBook Pro.

Which will then look a lot better with MUCH higher DPI.

Re:You can buy 2560x1440 for cheap

[jones_supa]

I just picked up a "WQHD" (Widescreen Quad-"HD" for values of HD meaning 1280x720, so a total of 2560x1440) 27" IPS LCD monitor online for $300 US.

Those large displays just have the problem that they can cause neck pain, being so tall.

Re:You can buy 2560x1440 for cheap

[cbhacking]

I'm quite tall myself, so my current problem is actually the opposite; my monitor doesn't go high enough. My housemate has just a tiny bit of height on me, but his 27" (1920x1080) display is an excellent size for us to game on (Civ5 hotseat, etc.). Getting the same size screen but at a higher res should be a nice step up.

Re:You can buy 2560x1440 for cheap

[jones_supa]

If you are tall, then it should be no problem indeed.

XFCE Or WindowMaker+Thunar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Both should have good support for UI element scaling (maybe need some gtk-chooser work for gtk-based UI elements), and in the case of WindowMaker, it's already a NeXT derived interface (sans filemanager). Additionally, unlike some of the alternatives, it's relatively fast, has everything build in you'd need for dealing with a broken DE (F12 is the menu, including 'run' and by default 1+ terminal emulators), and has truetype font support, as well as various other options in the WMConfig settings program.

Added benefit for WindowMaker: Except for Thunar (for the file manager support), WindowMaker/WMConfig don't use GTK widgets, limiting various quirks of GTK from affecting your basic desktop experience.

Any PC laptops announced with similar screens?

[starseeker]

I'd really, REALLY like to get my hands on a powerful Linux laptop with such a high resolution screen... if I could afford it I might even settle for the virtual machine solution on the Mac, but a full-up Linux laptop with such a screen would be ideal.

During certain kinds of software development, it isn't uncommon to accumulate a dozen or more terminals and application windows displaying relevant content. Given good eyesight, there simply is no substitute for a high PPI screen when doing such work. Ditto for studying high resolution photos or working with computer aided design. If I could find an affordable IBM T221 monitor with the right adapters for modern graphics hardware, it would STILL be superior to anything I could buy at consumer PC monitor retail. (Unfortunately, the adapters and setup are apparently a tricky proposition even if you can find the monitor.)

I've looked now and then, but I still haven't been able to find any indication of when PCs will begin offering high PPI displays, or even whether the rest of the computer industry is *trying* to catch up with Apple in this respect. Has anyone seen any hints?

Re:Any PC laptops announced with similar screens?

[thrillseeker]

Supposedly the next 15" Samsung Series 9 will be retina-type reslution - present version I have is 1600x900 and it's pretty nice, though I think the vertical screen angle could use improvement.

Re:Any PC laptops announced with similar screens?

[KevCo]

You realize you can run linux natively on a macbook, right? You don't need to use a VM. Macs all use intel chips now. So the answer to you question is yes there is a PC with the exact same screen. It's called a macbook pro.

Re:Any PC laptops announced with similar screens?

[toddestan]

You do realize the whole point of this Ask Slashdot is that Linux doesn't work yet all that well on the Retina MBP, right? At least try and RTFS.

fluxbox with a dozen terminals

[scourfish]

A high def screen with 12 instances of xterm, all visible at once without having to switch context is the pinnacle of the Linux graphical user experience.

LOL Apple Haters CAN NOT AFFORD!

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted from by $4k Retina Macbook Pro (16GB RAM, 728GB SSD, 2.7GHz quad core I7). (And yeah, it's the same thickness as my 13" Macbook Air is at it's thickets point...)

Yeah, your jealous you fucking losers. Get a real job then you won't have to use bargain bin shit.

Re:LOL Apple Haters CAN NOT AFFORD!

[Anonymous Coward]

lol at 16GB and just one measly ssd, get a thinkpad like me and enjoy twice your ram and twice your ssds, pleb.

Gnome? Which version?

[bornagainpenguin]

As a fan of Gnome 2.xx I find myself wondering if the problem raised is still an issue with that version or if they are regressions due to Gnome Shell?

Fans of Gnome Shell, please don't mod me down without at least first answering the question for me as I genuinely want to know the answer.

YOU HAVE FULL BLOWN AIDS, FAGGOT

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess even rich obnoxious assholes aren't immune from getting pounded by a throbbing, aids infected cock.

8==M=A=C=F=A=G=S==C=A=R=R=Y==A=I=D=S==D ~~-_

Burn in hell, faggot.

Re:LOL Apple Lovers - only suckers pay retail

[Anonymous Coward]

posted from my 32G RAM, 128GB SSD, 3T HD, I7-3770, GTX660 beige box I only paid $1100, the machine I use 90% of the time. My laptop I use 10% of the time is a 3 year old, $600 at the time, 3.5lbs Vostro V13.

If real jobs had anything to do with how much money you make and your IQ, obviously you wouold be a contradiction. So let me get this straight, you are bragging that you were THE sucker that was born the minute you were born. Good for you, corrent economies need more people like you. Please come back in 6 months after Apple convinces you to buy another gadget, and brag how much money you invested in the flavor of half-a-year toy.

KDE made their position well known.

[Andy Prough]

SUSE and openSUSE went with KDE 3.x as the default until 4.x was well baked. The fact that many users and distros (and even SUSE users) failed to heed the warnings does not mean the KDE group failed.

So at this point

[Andy Prough]

which would you prefer to use? Your Series 9 or a MacBook Air? Purely from a hardware perspective.

Re:So at this point

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the 15" Series 9. It's an awesome machine and runs KDE like a dream. My main disappointment is with the shallow keyboard, which is unfortunately a problem with all ultrabook style machines, including the MacBook Air.
However, beautiful as its display is, at 1600x900 (IIRC), it isn't quite a retina display.

Re:LOL Apple Lovers - only suckers pay retail

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL @ comparing your desktop to my rMBP.

It is true that I typically upgrade my MBP every year. Usually this costs me about $500 or so a year to have the latest and greatest, since the resale value on MBPs is good. My girlfriend just sold her 2.75 year old 17" MBP for C$1K. Not too shabby. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to sell this rMBP for quite what I paid for it, since getting the top of the line model was very expensive - this was for the SSD & slightly faster CPU. Oh well. I can afford.

Truthfully, I fully enjoy upgrading my MBP annually and it's some of the most enjoyable money I spend in a year (on material items, anyway). If spending my money how I want makes me a sucker, well, then.... Uh, whatever. I'm not losing any sleep over it.

Oh, and in case you didn't notice... Apple is giving the US economy a big boost right now. Isn't that a good thing? I guess you're one of those guys that would rather have your money go to Korea (i.e. Samsung)?

I do have a recently upgraded HTPC running Win7 that I haven't turned on in about 5 months. It was top of the line about 8 months ago, from my chosen components... I just have little interest in that shit anymore. Especially with the awesomeness that is Airplay, I don't have much use for a HTPC.

Enlightenment / Bodhi Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Enlightenment has a scaling control (ie screen dpi) and great eye candy. Bodhi linux (based on Ubuntu) has a really nice Enligfhtenment setup. It looks great in a VM on my 1920x1200 Macbook Pro, and the icons seem to scale well.

TRANSLATION OF TRANSLATION OF POST

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a childish Linux zealot who goes nuts just because someone asks for help with a thing Linux cannot do well yet. It is irrelevant that the question-asker did not in any way imply "Linsux drools, Apple rools" and seemed to be asking an honest question. He is guilty of lese-majeste for even mentioning something which Linux has problems with and Apple OS X doesn't. Burn, heretic! Praise be unto Stallman! GNU GNU GNU!

Gnome 2 & Compiz

[Anonymous Coward]

I did that long before retina displays with my 1280x800 @ 5.5" screen ultra portable. Gnome bar, icons and all other GUI element sizes can be tweaked via settings to the desired size. Compiz stuff like Scale or Expose work out of the box. Nowadays I guess you can use Mate instead of Gnome2.

Re:Gnome? Which version?

[AdamWill]

Neither. Both GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 can handle high DPI pretty well, I just think the questioner failed in finding out how to do it.

Xmonad

[Lawrence_Bird]

but that's probably not the answer you were looking for.

Well...

[EGSonikku]

Considering Safari on my iPad opened the link fine I assume no one here will have a problem with that link on pretty much any browser/device.

Not really...

[EGSonikku]

...but I blame GMail for that.

E17

[Anonymous Coward]

E17 (Enlightenment) has a scaling option in the preferences to upscale components of the GUI to make it look perfect on Retina displays as well as DPI on fonts...

DPI

[Bert64]

Check that X11 has worked out the correct DPI of the display, not all displays pass this information through correctly and i'm not sure if virtual machines do...
You can see the current dpi by using xdpyinfo.

X11 itself is pretty good at resolution independence, but individual apps using bitmapped graphics all over the place are not.

nvidia / x.org.conf / DPI

[Anonymous Coward]

i had the problem of my samsung HDMI 1080p not reporting the EDID correctly,
so in x.org my TV (that is like 32" diagonal) was 5"!
this had the effect that all fonts where .. wrong.
after manually setting the DPI (dots per inch) to something reasonable (88dpi) everything was fine. before, DPI was like in the tripple digits.
so maybe if u have nvidia grafic card and can alter x.org.conf, play around with the DPI settings there?

XNU

[unixisc]

Actually, the OS-X kernel - XNU is successor to NEXTSTEP's kernel. Mach 2.5 got replaced by Mach 3.0, the BSD parts of it were replaced by FreeBSD userland, and the driver kit by a C++ API called I/O kit (Wonder why they didn't use Objective C here too?)

But I agree w/ the GP, though not for the reasons he states. OS-X is a far better system and has nothing that Linux doesn't, unless one considers Quartz to be a disadvantage compared to running X11. So what the OP is doing - running Linux in a VM - is the right way to do it, if that's such an issue.

Why use a Mac?

[unixisc]

If all of the above is true, why did you go for a Mac in the first place? Get a top of the line Dell or Lenovo that gives you the firepower you need, install your favorite Linux distro, and you should be off to the races. The only reason to buy a Mac is if you want to run OS-X (and even then, some people use solutions like Hackintosh) But buying a Mac, and then replacing OS-X w/ Linux or Windows is like taking a few thousand $$$ in one hand, a lighter in the other, and lighting it up - particularly given that the extra money that would normally pay for Apple's quality support wouldn't be applicable if the box is running Windows or Linux.

Re:Why use a Mac?

[SuricouRaven]

The mac pro, because I insisted on dual-socket quad-cores and the capability to one day cram a ton of memory in when prices fell. When confined to checking professional workstations, the offerings from HP and such were similarily-priced. Consumer gear does not come with two sockets. There were no single-socket eight-core processors around at the time.

And the macbook was purely for the screen. Nothing else. There were no other options at WUXGA+ at the time. At all. I tried. I even looked at the crazy-spec gaming laptops - but Alienware's best still had crappy screens. I looked at mobile workstations, the same. I found that Dell had offered one, but had discontinued that feature at the time - they still sold the model, but without the option of a WUXGA+ screen. I tried buying that refurbished (I can't remember the model, but it had two hard drive bays, which much liked the idea of). The refurbished laptop I got had a fault though, a flakey graphics chip, so in the end I ended up giving in and getting the macbook. Which, once purged of OSX, is very nicely built hardware-wise. I understand there are a few more options for WUXGA+ laptops around now, but at the time it had to be Apple.

The mac pro needed a little hackery to boot linux - it still has OSX on, just to install rEFIt. Given how much harder Apple is making it to install unsupported operating systems now though (I've heard about the trouble that is getting linux on a retina macbook) I doubt I'll be buying any more Apple computers.

OS-X Unix certification

[unixisc]

OS-X did not become certified as Unix until 2003. If you notice, you will notice that there is nothing from Apple that was registered either under Unix 98 nor Unix 95 nor Unix 93. So not only was OS-X not certified as Unix before Snow Leopard, but even NEXTSTEP was never certified as Unix (or else one would have seen it under Unix 93 or 95)

Re:OS-X Unix certification

[God of Lemmings]

Close, it was certified Unix 03 in Leopard 10.5, which was the previous release.... Opengroup

Thank God

[Tuipveus]

Thank God I don't have any Apple products, so I don't have their problems, like this one.

Translation

[Hognoxious]

You're gay, but you don't know what to do with your arse?

the answer is quite simple:

[Anonymous Coward]

you have lost your fucking mind