Full Circle Magazine FR

For a person whose livelihood is based on computers, the choice of a laptop is quite a serious affair. Having a good rapport with your keyboard can reduce wear and tear, increase productivity when writing, and feeling comfortable with your device is a must when doing presentations in front of an exigent audience - e.g. a classful of adolescent students. Since my computing equipment has aged over the years, it was time to go looking for a new machine. I had been waiting for Apple’s most recent offerings but, once the new Macbook Pro came out this year, like many other power users, I confess to having been rather underwhelmed by their specifications. So this time ‘round, I went for another brand, an HP Spectre two-in-one laptop with the 13-inch tactile screen that folds around, a decent keyboard, and a Core i7 processor. Perhaps the first thing to report is that installing GNU/LInux went beautifully. The Live CD versions of Ubuntu and Kubuntu 16.10 worked perfectly, as did Linux Mint 18. All hardware was detected, and the appropriate drivers activated. This includes WiFi, sound, and the touch screen – which is in marked contrast to several el cheapo laptops I had been using over the recent years. On those, issues such as the WiFi card not working well, or a graphics driver causing grief, were fairly common.

Pour une personne dont le moyen existence dépend des ordinateurs, le choix d'un portable est extrêmement sérieux. Avoir de bons rapports avec votre clavier peut réduire votre fatigue et augmenter votre productivité quand vous écrivez ; être à l'aise avec votre dispositif est capital quand vous faites des présentations devant au auditoire exigeant, c-à-d une salle de classe replie d'adolescents. Puisque mon équipement informatique est devenu de plus en plus vieux, le moment était venu de chercher une nouvelle machine. J'attendais les dernières offres d'Apple, mais une fois que le nouveau Macbook Pro est sorti cette année, comme beaucoup d'autres utilisateurs avancés, j'avoue que ses spécifications ne m'ont pas du tout impressionné. Ce qui fait que cette fois-ci, j'ai choisi une autre marque, un portable deux-en-un Spectre HP avec un écran tactile qui se replie, un bon clavier et un processeur Core i7.

Tout d'abord, il convient sans doute de vous dire que l'installation de GNU/Linux s'est passée magnifiquement bien. Les versions Live CD d'Ubuntu et de Kubuntu 16.10 ont fonctionné parfaitement, tout comme celle de Linux Mint 18. Tout le matériel fut détecté et les pilotes appropriés activés. Ceci comprend le WiFi, le son et l'écran tactile - ce qui contrastait vivement avec plusieurs portables bon marché que j'utilisais depuis plusieurs années. Sur ceux-là, des problèmes, comme la carte WiFi qui ne fonctionnait pas comme il aurait fallu, ou un pilote graphique nase, n'étaient pas rares.

All of this confirms my impression that Linux support for hardware is rather better for higher-end devices than for the cheap stuff. This makes sense, since building drivers for new hardware is quite a lot of work, and it is more rewarding for developers to work on the latest and greatest. So, if I had to give advice on purchasing a computer to use with any distribution of GNU/Linux and aiming for the least probability of hardware incompatibility, it would be to get the best hardware you can afford (or feel comfortable paying for), and putting in a recent version of your favorite distribution. In fact, this would be about the same advice I would give on the topic of getting a new computer with any other operating system. One issue that did crop up with all of the distributions tested was screen resolution. This particular computer comes with a 1920 x 1080 pixel screen on a panoramic display that is 13 inches large. Needless to say, the icons and other desktop elements are very small when booting from the Live CD environment, due to the high pixel density. This feature of modern screens is known as HDPI (High Dots-Per-Inch) or simply “High Density”, and was originally marketed by Apple with their Retina line of screens for computers and devices. Anything over about 180 DPI counts as HDPI.

Tout cela conforte mon impression que la prise en charge par Linux du matériel est meilleure pour les dispositifs plutôt haut de gamme que pour les trucs bon marché. C'est logique, puisque le développement de pilotes pour du matériel nouveau nécessite beaucoup de travail et que c'est plus gratifiant pour les développeurs de travailler sur les configurations les plus récentes. Ainsi, si je devais donner des conseils sur l'achat d'un ordinateur à utiliser avec n'importe quelle distribution de GNU/Linux, an ciblant la moindre probabilité d'une incompatibilité du material, ce serait mieux de choisir le meilleur matériel que vous pouvez vous permettre d'acheter (tout en se sentant à l'aise avec la dépense) et d'y installer une version récente de votre distribution préférée. En fait, ce serait à peu près le même conseil que je donnerait au sujet de l'acquisition d'un nouvel ordinateur avec n'importe quel autre système d'exploitation.

La résolution de l'écran était le seul problème qui s'est présenté avec toutes les distributions testées. Cet ordinateur-ci a un écran de 1920 x 1080 pixels pour un affichage panoramique d'une largeur de 13 pouces. Cela va sans dire que, à cause de la grande densité des pixels, les icônes et autres éléments du bureau sont très petits quand vous démarrer sur un Live CD. Cette caractéristique des écrans modernes s'appelle HDPI (High Dots-Per-Inch) ou simplement « High Density » ; à l'origine, ce fut vendu par Apple avec leur gamme Retina d'écrans pour les ordinateurs et dispositifs. N'importe quoi au-dessus d'environ 180 DPI est considéré comme de l'HDPI.

Some desktop managers are better at handling high density screens than others, and the same can be said for handling tactile screens. Among the desktop environments tested, Cinnamon does not seem to care for HDPI, nor did Kubuntu’s Plasma give me much help. Gnome offers some adjustment for screen scaling in the Tweak tool, though I had some difficulties choosing non-integer values of scaling: i.e. I could leave the desktop elements at their usual small size on screen (scaling factor 1), or double their size (factor 2). What I really wanted was a factor of about 1.5, which I finally found the settings for in Ubuntu’s unity, which can be found in the main Unity Control Center’s section for screen settings. The Gnome desktop environment has gained adepts for tactile displays, perhaps because its general disposition rather suits using your fingers. Mint’s Cinnamon, on the other hand, is a very desktop-oriented environment with rather small visual elements such as window buttons and the tool bar. It works very well with a mouse, but rather less with a tactile screen when your large fingers need to aim quite precisely to hit their target. This is, naturally, a very personal and subjective assessment, so by all means go and try it out for yourself. Once more, what worked best in my opinion was Unity. The general screen disposition with the launcher on the left worked well with a tactile screen, since the left hand can be called into play to launch applications and close windows, while the right hand handles window placement and sizing, as well as general screen input. This was especially clear when using the computer in tablet mode, and, to my mind, shows the work accomplished by the Ubuntu project on their mission towards convergence between desktop and tablet display environments.

Also in tablet mode, at some times it can be useful to access a virtual keyboard on screen, instead of needing to fold back the laptop to get to the physical keyboard that rests underneath. The Gnome project’s onboard package came in useful. I left it always visible in the upper indicator zone, where it can be easily activated on need. Having a higher screen resolution than that found in most tablets is a significant help, since the virtual keyboard remains usable even when occupying a smaller proportion of screen real estate: between a third and a fourth of the screen is sufficient, while on a 10-inch tablet the keyboard really would need up to half of the screen area. All in all, changing from a normal laptop to a tactile screen 2-in-1 computer has been a bit of an eye-opener. From the hardware point of view, I have long been a doubter of tablets. I do find them useful for some specific tasks, for instance to read documents, or to browse the Web. But their lack of a keyboard does restrict their usefulness. My other favorite gripe is against the ARM processors which, even in their new 64-bit editions, are rather limited when heavy duty lifting is needed. Trying to edit some video on a tablet would be an exercise in futility, all the moreso since there is next to no software available to do so.

This brings me to the software side of the equation. I like to use the very same software, regardless of the actual platform on which it is being executed. There are a few reasons for this, one of which is habit. Another is that I tend not to trust overmuch the publishers of applications for mobile devices. There are surely some of them that must be honest; however, the general experience is that software developed both for iOS and Android tends to be closed code and developed by groups who are not very well known in general terms. Visibility is important to generate trust, to my mind, and I very much prefer to use the classical navigators and office packages available for GNU/Linux than any less known ersatz from the tablet world. This is why I, among many others, have been very attentive to Ubuntu’s efforts towards convergence. Having LibreOffice or Gimp available on a tablet is a time saver if we want to consider tablets as a viable option to get some work done, so Ubuntu Touch on the one hand and larger (and more powerful) tablets seem to be going in the right direction. Meanwhile, a regular laptop that can be transformed at will into a slightly weighty tablet (about 1.35 kg or 3 lbs) with a full-blown operating system on board, suits my computing needs very nicely. That the best choice for the system should be Ubuntu 16.10 with Unity came out as a bit of a surprise, since recently my personal inclination went more towards Linux Mint 18 (and now 18.1) and I had more or less abandoned Unity for the last three years (since 12.10). Unity took some beating from the community for its quirks at one point, but from what we can see from the current version, it does seem to be getting there. Good show!