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Comment by spamizbad | Hacker News Reader

Currently using my Framework laptop with Arch Linux. Was able to get everything working, including Bluetooth. Even got the battery life tamed. So far, my favorite laptop since the Thinkpad T42 I had back in the day (other laptops I’ve owned: 2013 MB Air, Dell XPS 15 9550, and a 2018 MBP)

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I had a 1600x1200 T42p and loved that thing to death too. My fav laptop ever though was the original 15" MacBook Retina from 2012. I pre-ordered mine the hour it came available, as I had been waiting years for a good IPS HiDPI laptop. I had never even owned a Mac before that. Mine was one of the first off the line where the display had a temporary-burn-in (very long ghosting for any pixels that are fixed for more than 30 secs or so) issue. I got that replaced no-hassles under warranty a couple of months in.

My eyes were good enough then that I was running it at native 2880x1800 resolution (no HiDPI business), and I was finally happy with the resolution I could get while mobile (I had been using a 30" 2560x1600 as my workstation monitor for a couple of years at that point, and this was an upgrade over even that!)

These days I use a 55" 4K OLED and a 32" 6K Pro Display XDR as my workstation monitors. For anyone considering this, I'd say wait for the 40" 4K OLEDs to come out (or wall mount the 55" and set your desk half a meter or so away from the wall). I sit just a little more than arm's length away from mine, and that's great for immersive flight simulator experience, but not so great for normal daily desktop use. (I'm keeping mine on my desk so I can keep using it along with powered sit-stand.)

As for why it's not so great; it's mostly a resolution issue. 4K isn't enough these days, and isn't high enough DPI for the amount of my field of view it takes up at this distance. I would also be quite happy with an 8K OLED that's, say, 55" or 65"... but only when I can also get one that drives at 120FPS, so that will be a bit of a wait.

Just a few more thoughts on setting up a high-megapixels workstation:

My ideal would probably be something similar to what Linus has set up. He uses long cables from a nearby closet, so even when the workstation fans are blasting he doesn't hear it. For now, I use 2 and 3 meter cables plugged into a mid tower sitting on the far side of my desk on the floor.

For why I'm not doing the workstation-in-another-room approach: The 4K@120fps HDR OLED relies on HDMI 2.0 cables, which are only recently available at 3 meter lengths. Linus is using a not-commercially-available prototype optical HDMI repeater to get longer cabling.

For normal use the system is near-silent and at full blast it's below the noise floor with a headset playing something at a reasonably low volume (and not distractingly loud even if I just have the headset on with nothing playing).

There are commercially available cables that do HDMI (and DisplayPort, etc) over fiber. I've seen these from PremiumCord and also some Chinese ones on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.de/s?k=premiumcord+hdmi+2.1+kabel

Thanks! It had been a while since I looked for them. Glad to see they've made it to market now.

Oh yeah, and I'm running the Pro Display XDR through a USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) cable. Plugging that into the VirtualLink port on an Nvidia RTX 20xx card is the easiest way to get the native 6K @ 60hz with 10bpc on Windows. These days you can get these cables at lengths up to 3 meters, which is nice. There's also this weird VR headset cable which works a treat if you need something longer or have a graphics card without the VirtualLink port: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001290509128.html

You need to use Brigadier to download the Boot Camp drivers to get the display brightness controls widget. Unfortunately, there isn't an option for Linux.

How’s the trackpad? How does it compare to a MacBook? I can’t find a non apple laptop that comes even close in terms of high sensitivity, yet amazing palm typing reject, and multi finger gestures that work in almost every context.

To me, Macbooks have the worst trackpad 'feel' so hopefully it's nothing like that.

You're definitely in the minority, macbook trackpads are widely accepted as the best ones currently out there.

Some good discussion on this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19485178

Widely accepted by who? Mac users? It's nothing more than what you're used to.

I suppose one can certainly adapt to mostly any sort of input device given enough time, but that does not mean that they're done well. Most people that have used trackpads in windows/linux land prior to the last 8 years or so could easily tell you how horrendous they were (and some still are). A lot of this comes down to software, of course. Microsoft's precision touchpad drivers were a game changer for Windows devices and made them at least comparable to the mac. Mac's trackpads are well thought out with its sensitivity and acceleration curves and the more recent 2015+ trackpads have been large and very pleasant to use without need to adjust. In contrast, the acceleration curves and scroll speeds in linux and windows require quit a bit of tweaking. Again, subjective, but the reason why most people that try a mac trackpad (with MacOS) find it to be a better experience is because they really nailed the default settings to be comfortable for most.

You're speaking for an awful lot of people. Maybe HN skews towards Apple fans and therefore might just possibly have a few extra upvotes for Apples defaults?

There's not been a study on it as far as I know (maybe there's some polls online, though?), if that's what you're hoping for. Obviously it's going to be largely anecdotal but it's not exactly just Apple bias. It's notable because the remarks about the trackpad often come from non-mac users who painfully concede that the trackpad experience on MacOS is better. One example I can think of is Linus from Linus Tech Tips always using a mac trackpad as the gold standard to compare against in his laptop reviews.

Yes, its anecdotal. That's my point.

There's also this dude who has spent 2 years trying to get a mac touchpad experience on linux

https://bill.harding.blog/2020/04/26/linux-touchpad-like-a-m...

https://bill.harding.blog/2019/03/25/linux-touchpad-like-a-m...

Every, and I mean every, review I have watched has rated the trackpad as the best in the business.

I don't know if this is what GP meant, but I've tried a few co-workers' macbooks, and it's nothing driver related: The touchpad itself has this staticky feel that makes me never want to touch it again. Haven't felt that on any other touchpad before or since.

I have experienced this as well. I think this has to do with it being plugged in but NOT grounded. If you use the extender cable that has a 3 prong on it that goes away. Or just try it on battery. I also do not love that feeling, but love the trackpad.

I imagine the part you don't like must be the acceleration curve, which is generally adjustable on Linux

The acceleration curve and default scroll speed are pretty horrendous in linux in my experience. The advantage of course is I can just add a command to my init file to adjust it but the scrolling speed isn't exposed in the settings apps of any of the major DEs as far as I know.

Yeah. NixOS has facilities for adjusting those acceleration curves and scroll speed in a universal/pre-DE way, as well.

My preference is to disable acceleration in favor of very high sensitivity for physical mice, to disable small touchpads (like on old Windows laptops) and retain a substantial but smooth acceleration curve for large touchpads (like on a Mac).

I think the DEs often let you adjust how many lines a single scroll increment scrolls by, but not the size of movement that triggers a scroll increment on the touchpad. I think depending on your touchpad driver (evdev is usually more flexible than, say, synaptics) and maybe your choice of display server (Wayland vs. Xorg), you can adjust the other aspect of touchpad scrolling.

Wow! That's actually the first time I've ever heard this opinion

Yeah, not a lot of marketing money behind not liking Apple things, or anyone's things, for that matter.

Just accept that others have a different opinion to you. No need to come up with some conspiracy about why we're not a homogenous blob.

How does pointing out how marketing works warrant being dismissive with 'conspiracy' labels?

Marketing teams actively distort are public opinion.

Your comment is remarkably dismissive IMO.

> Your comment is remarkably dismissive IMO.

You'll survive

I believe my point is precisely that we aren't homogeneous and that perhaps your perspective isn't quite as ubiquitous as you think.

Are you sure that's your point? It's a bit strange how you "believe" that it is your point. Surely you should know it for sure?

What's the secret on battery life?

The archwiki has a ton of interesting content on optimizing battery life on linux-

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/TLP https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management

Even if you're not running arch, the archwiki is an amazing source of information

Yep, those are the guides I loosely followed.

One thing that helps a lot is mimicking macOS' suspend-then-hibernate behavior

What are your thoughts on the 9550? Personally I think it is the worst laptop I have ever used. The battery life was abyssmal, the graphics card constantly had issues. At one point plugging anything into the USB-C port caused sparking..

The worst bit was how loud the fan used to run.. if it had spun any faster you'd think it would start hovering.

My experience mirrors yours. Its current duty is playing videos and music for my exercise bike but boy was I happy to rid myself of it as a daily driver. Too bad, because Linux worked great on it for me.

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