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Comment by KingMachiavelli | Hacker News Reader

Many of the issues and personal choices made where due to the jump between a non-linux OS to a Linux OS.

Even though the 'default' desktop environment is light weight, a tiling WM just as i3 or dwm would run perfectly on the Pi. Light weight application alternatives such as qutebrowser (instead of Chrome) and Spacemacs (instead of VSCode) would also make using a Pi a lot easier.

The lack of 4k@60Hz is pretty annoying altough it actually might not be noticable with a tiling WM due to the lack of animations.

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The RPi4 is actually fully capable of 4k @ 60Hz, as long as there is no 2nd monitor. If there's a second monitor, then two 4k displays at 30Hz each.

A 10" google search can yield https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/hdmi..., where it is all explained.

On a general note, the RPi4 is in my opinion the most exciting computing piece of news there was in 2019, plus the recent arrival of RPi4 8Gb gives the option for even more RAM. This is a sub-100€ quad-core RISC device that can surpass desktop class machines from a few years back in many ways.

The last 64-bit RISC device with a normal desktop I could sit in front of and work, was a Sun Ultra 10 back in 2000. I think the RPi4 comes pretty sweet close to being a normal desktop class machine.

>The RPi4 is actually fully capable of 4k @ 60Hz

It depends. It doesn't like 4k even at 30hz if you are watching a movie. Not unless it is compressed to blockniess.

Dependent on the software you're using, encoding of the video, throughput of the network/storage device, etc. but the Pi 4 has hardware decoding support for H.265 up to 4Kp60.

I've had no issues playing back 4K @ 30Hz using LibreELEC on a Pi 4.

It seems to not be so much of a 4k@60Hz problem as a "this should just work" problem.

> The first thing I did—which took almost 30 minutes—was try to figure out how to get 4K (at 30 Hz—the Pi can't output 60 Hz over its HDMI connection) working with a consistent font size across all the applications and system controls.

> The settings in the Appearance preferences seemed to apply to some window chrome and buttons, but not internally in applications. So, for example, the File Manager's main window had readable text after I increased the font size at 4K resolution, but in order to make filenames and other listings readable, I had to go into the File Manager's settings and increase the font size there.

> Same for Terminal. And Chromium. And... you get the idea.

What a heck of a thing to have to worry about in 2020.

The stupid thing is that I think this might actually have regressed in Gnome/GTK+ over the years due to them being more focused on Wayland and semi-intentionally breaking the old X11 DPI code.

Given that Macs (at least the good old trashcan) also can't do 4k@60Hz over HDMI, that was the one comparison that struck me as somewhat unfair.

>Macs (at least the good old trashcan) also can't do 4k@60Hz over HDMI

I cannot speak for the old trashcan ones (assuming this is a reference to the desktop Mac Pro), but this has not been true for at least the last few generations of Macbook Pro laptops. You just gotta make sure your cable supports HDMI2 and that you aren't using one of those multi-port dongles.

Finding a cable/adapter that allows 4k@60hz on macbooks might be tricky though (as evidenced by a lot of threads on the topic I found on reddit and Apple forums). I lucked out, and the first cable I bought (direct USB-C to HDMI, not a dongle) ended up working swimmingly with no issues.

Do you have the manufacturer’s name and the model number for that cable, or an Amazon link? I’ve been having some trouble with my MacBook Air and a new monitor that I recently bought, and I suspect that the cheap dongle I am using is partly to blame.

In particular, when my MacBook Air goes to sleep, and I then later wake it up, the new external monitor does not turn back on.

And to make matters worse, the monitor does not even respond to the on/off button on the monitor in this state. So I then have to physically unplug the monitor power cable, which is damn annoying, because the outlet is hard to get to.

Weirdly however, my old monitor had no such problem.

I did notice, however, that even though the dongle is for USB-C to HDMI, the MacBook Air thinks that it is connected via DisplayPort. Since I’d already put the old monitor away I didn’t check to see if that used to be the case there as well, but I am thinking that conceivably this could have some connection with the inability of the new monitor to wake up.

Right now I am not at home, and haven’t been for a while, but as far as I remember, I ended up telling the MacBook Air to never turn off the monitors. However, that is not a good workaround.

The MacBook Air is a 2018 model. The monitor is a Svive 34" Curved Pyx 34C801, with 3440x1440 resolution and up to 144 Hz refresh rate. I also connect my desktop computer to this monitor, which is why I bought a monitor with such high refresh rate since my desktop computer is able to deliver video at such high refresh rate even at full resolution. When only the desktop computer is connected, the monitor wakes as it should when I turn on the desktop computer. But when the MacBook Air is connected, whether alone or alongside the desktop, the MacBook Air can not wake the monitor again after the monitor has been put to sleep by the MacBook Air.

So i would like to order a cable like the one you are using and see if that will help me avoid this problem.

Not sure why you're being downvoted - the 2013 Mac Pro has an HDMI 1.4 port: https://support.apple.com/kb/SP697?locale=en_US

Which is only good for a 30Hz refresh rate at UHD 3840x2160 resolutions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Version_1.4

You could use adapters on the Thunderbolt ports to get 4k60 support on that hardware.

Yep. And I'm using those Tunderbolt ports for my daily work, but . (And, you know, it's nice that you can drive a large amount of screens with the ports, but I was specifically referring to the HDMI implementation)

And digging into the specs of the RBpi4, it seems the HDMI port actually does support 4kp60, which makes this whole thing even funnier :)

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