Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 21st Aug 2008 19:24 UTC
Last week, we reviewed the Aspire One, Acer's entry into the netbook market. The small but powerful device comes preloaded with either Linux or Windows XP, and we reviewed the Linux version. Even though most people will never need to go beyond the default Linpus Linux offering on the One, more advanced users will quickly hit the wall Acer set up: it has more or less completely locked down the Xfce 4.2.2 installation on the One. This bothered me - this is a powerful machine, so I want a powerful operating system. I went for Ubuntu 8.04.1 - read on for a few thoughts on how well GNOME's user interface fares on a small-screen device such as the One.
Thread beginning with comment 327586
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
RE: Gnome is wasteful of screen real estate
by zlynx on Thu 21st Aug 2008 22:39
in reply to "Gnome is wasteful of screen real estate"
Member since:2005-07-20
That is how a high-DPI screen is supposed to look. If the font is set to 72pt size, the character cell should be exactly one physical inch. Not more, not less.
If you want 6pt fonts, then set the font to 6 or 4 or 2 or whatever you like.
And yes, I do go around telling old people that they are doing it wrong when they set Vista to 640x480 on their 20" monitor.
RE[2]: Gnome is wasteful of screen real estate
by iain.dalton on Fri 22nd Aug 2008 02:35
in reply to "RE: Gnome is wasteful of screen real estate"
Member since:2006-02-28
RE[2]: Gnome is wasteful of screen real estate
by siride on Fri 22nd Aug 2008 03:06
in reply to "RE: Gnome is wasteful of screen real estate"
Member since:2006-01-02
It's not the fonts...I can deal with that. It's the layout of everything else. It's just so big and you can't do anything about. I didn't get a high resolution screen so that I can look at the moral equivalent of 800x600. Other environments let you adjust font sizes and the like so that, if you so choose, you can make it look like 800x600, but Gnome basically decides for you that clearly you want to have terrible use of screen real estate and the only option is to hack the themes yourself. And that still doesn't fix the problem of apps that waste empty space.
RE: Gnome is wasteful of screen real estate
by asgard on Fri 22nd Aug 2008 12:09
in reply to "Gnome is wasteful of screen real estate"
Member since:2008-06-07
Here is what I use on my Ubuntu laptop just right now (screen resolution is 1280x800):
1. Clearlooks Compact theme for GNOME (google it).
2. Fonts "Sans" (or "Monospace") of size of 7.5 points with "best contrast" rendering.
3. Toolbar buttons - "Icons only" setting.
The result is more compact than Windows.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/25/13 0:45 UTC
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 23:59 UTC
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 22:33 UTC
Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Linked by Howard Fosdick on 05/24/13 21:41 UTC
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 14:44 UTC
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 23:22 UTC
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 22:04 UTC
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 22:01 UTC
"In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 17:52 UTC
"The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 22:23 UTC
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.More News »
Sponsored Links
Member since:
2006-01-02
I find that Gnome does a good job of converting high resolution monitors into 800x600 mid-90s monstrosities. KDE 4 is moving in this direction too and I don't like it. I don't understand why we have to waste so much screen real estate with crappy widgets. And here's a case where it actually does matter. I'm glad you managed to make it work, but I'm honestly surprised, because in the past, I've had trouble making GTK stuff fit on a small screen (my first Linux experience was on 800x600 in late 2004 [old monitor] and half the dialogs wouldn't fit on the screen).