Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop
On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 09:33:03PM -0007, Cameron Norman wrote:
> >With respect to your question re HiDPI displays and Xfce, I'm using
> >Xfce4 from Debian Testing on a Lenovo T540p with 3k screen, and
> >setting things up was fairly straight forward. I got most of what I
> >needed by setting Custom DPI Setting in Settings -> Appearance ->
> >Fonts -> DPI.
>
> Did you have to edit anything else as well? I wonder if there could be some
> installer hook that detects DPI and adjusts these settings automatically...
As far as screen resolution was concerned, that was pretty much about it.
As near as I can tell, My Thinkpad doesn't actually export any EDID or
DDC information from which you could get the DPI information. So
unless you wanted to use a database of common laptop signatures, cross
check that with the screen resolution (the T540p has different DPI's
depending whether you upgrade LCD panel, and to what resolution), it's
not clear to me how practical it would be to automate this, due to the
problems with the "detect the DPI" step.
Assuming you can detect the DPI (and life gets entertaining the user
has an external monitor hooked up --- so you need to decide between
using the DPI of the LCD panel or the external monitor), using the
command-line toole xfconf-query to actually adject the setting is
pretty simple.
> >So that's my experience with Xfce and HiDPI displays; at least for
> >this hacker, it was orders of magnitude less painful than dealing with
> >GNOME. :-)
>
> I would appreciate if you went into a little detail on what pain you had
> with GNOME for comparison purposes.
It's the usual frustrations, that have been aired a million times
before[1]. Struggling with the GNOME equivalent of the Windows Registry,
wanting to use a 2D workspace, struggling as random GNOME extensions
break when GNOME releases a new version, etc., etc., etc.
[1] http://felipec.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/the-problem-with-gnome-3/
Basically, I can be effective and efficient with Xfce. I can't say
the same about GNOME, as a power user. Which is OK, since I'm clearly
not the target audience for the GNOME project. Oh, well....
Cheers,
- Ted
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