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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."
Use KDE, and the retina display will look beautiful.
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.
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.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Use a tiling window manage and just get rid of all those annoying UI elements. Serious suggestion.
I use kde in VirtualBox looks great.
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)
/* MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
MADMEN ONLY */
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.)
.
Use a tiling window manager and do most of your stuff in console. i3 is my current personal favourite.
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?
Apple/NeXT has been working on this for 25+ years, dating back to their decision to use Display PostScript for rendering on screen.
You can choose the magnification ratio in the initial configuration wizzard. This affects everything, not just the fonts. It's the real deal.
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.
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Samsung series 9 looks pretty nice.
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.
.. so the entire thing has to be reverse-engineered from scratch.
.. buy rMBPs for the developers actually working on the drivers.
.. 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.
It's the same as Linux on any other bleeding-edge hardware (and from a very Linux-unfriendly company)
Want it done faster?
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
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.
Computer simulation made easy -- LibGeoDecomp
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.
you mean 1080p. Computers haven't had interlaced displays since forever ago.
Car analogy, huh?
Bentley... Expensive, Heavy, Thirsty, Status symbol.
I think you're entirely correct.
"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.
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.
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?
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.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
ATSC HDTV (all digital broadcast TV in the USA) can by 720i or 1080i (among others). In fact 1080p is not a supported resolution.
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?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well, Linus Torvalds uses a Macbook Air...
--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.
... no one uses Linux that cares about Retina/Apple.
Tell that to Linus and his Mac Book Air that runs Linux.
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.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Wait, is that the work of the invisible hand of the market? Or does Apple have a patent on high resolution displays?
and Unity looks great.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
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.
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.
"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.
0 1 - just my two bits
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.
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.
Hey troll, like Apple or not they're addressing a glaring problem
LOL... how about a non-glaring screen instead?
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?
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.
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).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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).
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.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
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.
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.
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?
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
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.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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...
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...
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.
Medical monitors are high-dpi displays. But Apple is the only company aiming them at mainstream users.
Yes, I read that. So what? I only chose to respond to the incorrect part.
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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
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.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I'm hoping they get their ass in gear and release their supposed higher-res 15" model soon.
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.
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.)
Work bio at MMWD
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.
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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.
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 $1500 or more in 2012 dollars. It's true that poor-quality displays are now being manufactured at very low prices, but the price of 'cheap crap' shouldn't influence ROI calculations on important business tools.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
which would you prefer to use? Your Series 9 or a MacBook Air? Purely from a hardware perspective.
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.
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.
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.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
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.
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.
Just this infinitely recurring zero floats into view.
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.
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.
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.
but that's probably not the answer you were looking for.
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.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
...but I blame GMail for that.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
Well, Linus Torvalds uses a Macbook Air...
With OSX replaced by Linux.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
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...
0/10, fail troll is fail.
"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.
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.
google catleap on ebay: affordable 27" 2560x1440, they rock
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
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...
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.
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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...
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
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Exactly. I don't understand how people can pay the price of a Mac and put up with that glossy crap.
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.
Try playing with this tool for a while.
http://members.ping.de/~sven/dpi.html
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?
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 ;)
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I am currently looking for a new monitor and not real happy with what I am finding, but CRTs are very expensive to use.
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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.
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.
Wrong.
$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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
>20" Viewable
>0.24mm aperture grille
No.