I totally binged Alan Wake 1 in like 2 days. Then spent a while enveloped by Alan Wake 2! Part 2 really got the AAA treatment. It was funny, spooky, actiony. Lots of stuff to explore, the characters play differently.

I also didn’t realize Control was part of the story, so now I gotta go play that!

when the doom music kicks in

Curious, what didn’t you like about Matrix specifically? I’m in the process of evaluating it for my friends. With the Element client, so far it seems pretty dang similar? Space = server, room = channel, there are also access controls. Seems like there’s voice and video chats too.

https://matrix.org/try-matrix/ With the Element client, it’s a pretty close experience to Slack/Discord.

Physical books! I want to fully own my books not have them be locked by some asshole company. It’s also just nicer to read paper instead of a screen. It’s also easier to carry around a small book instead of a bigger tablet and having to deal with charging yet another device.

I mean, I’m pretty happy with mine! 10/10 would recommend!

The known issue with HiDPI displays, like the one Framework chose, is that apps are blurry. Other laptops, like Thinkpad or XPS, offer low DPI displays which avoid this issue altogether. The irony is that a HiDPI display is supposed to look better than a low DPI display, but the scaling issues actually make it look worse.

In addition, the experimental flags required to “fix” the scaling issues with apps can also break these apps.

Discord window decorations missing: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/o24560/spotify_and_discord_missing_window/

1Password not launching: https://1password.community/discussion/141663/i-cant-start-wayland-native-version-of-1password

Spotify window decorations wrong: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/16xhm21/spotify_window_decorations_on_wayland/

In summary, HiDPI displays have a long history of making your display look worse and limiting the apps you can use. Thinkpad or XPS with low DPI don’t require you to only use Ubuntu or Fedora or only KDE. Linux support on the Framework is held back by the poor choice of display.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk. 🙏

Exactly! All I want is a nice display in 2024—and Framework chooses a garbage display with known issues.

Framework’s fault for poorly choosing a display with known issues.

The irony is that my old “low res” laptop looks sharp and crisp while “high res” looks blurry. My old laptop doesn’t require me to give up my distro of choice (Arch btw), doesn’t require me to give up apps I like, and doesn’t require me to spend days applying workarounds that ultimately don’t even completely solve the problem.

It has everything to do with the hardware. This specific piece of hardware is not as compatible as a regular DPI display.

These problems only exist because of this poor hardware choice on Framework’s part.

Let me guess… You’re running an X.Org based WM/DE?

Na, using Wayland with Gnome 45. 1.25x scale actually looks less blurry than 2x. (Putting aside that 2x is ridiculously large.)

The best way to combat this?

Is to buy a laptop with a regular DPI display and avoid this class of bugs altogether. This way I can keep using Discord and 1Password.

Either set the scaling to 1 or 2 if you want it to look sharp

I just switched the scale to 2x on the Framework and it also looks blurry. Actually, I wanna say the Framework display at 2x is worse than at 1.25x… I can see more of the fuzz around the fonts now. Framework at 2x on the left, Dell XPS 13 with the font size increased on the right.

It’s better to increase font and icon sizes if they are too small.

I haven’t tried this, but seems logical.

Coming from a Dell XPS 13 where everything Just Works ™ , I’m bummed Framework’s choice for display isn’t Linux compatible. I might just end up returning the Framework, the blurry fonts are messing with my eyes…

I’ve been using Arch in 1 desktop and 1 laptop for like 7 years now as a daily driver. I use pacman and AUR to install stuff. I haven’t had a breakage yet. In fact, I’ve had hardware get better supported over time due to access to the latest kernel updates.

Most impressively, I had my desktop shutoff for like 8 months one time. When I turned it on and updated the system packages… Everything just worked and I was immediately up to date.

I bought a Framework once. The build quality was better than System76, but not great. However, Framework is not a Linux laptop. They designed it for Windows and only afterwards they were surprised to find that people wanted it for Linux.

A lot of Linux laptops don’t have HiDPI displays because they’re not really compatible.

Example Framework: https://community.frame.work/t/tracking-state-of-hidpi-on-linux/8301

For years people have been trying to work around Framework’s poor display choice. And they’re still trying.

If you have a regular DPI display, you get to avoid a whole class of bugs and issues.

If you wanna have a good time with Linux, you need some mechanical sympathy.

Btw, tbh, brb, I’ve had good success with the Dell XPS 13 and the Lenovo X1 Carbon. System76 build quality was meh.

Arch, btw. With GNOME.

Lol. That’s what I was thinking. I feel like this meme should be reversed…

Most people should use ext4. Only use something else if you want to tinker and don’t need long term data storage.

The right answer is use a password manager to generate and store a long password. Then it doesn’t matter.

If you want access to some underlying knobs and buttons, but without running your own email server, then Migadu might be interesting.