#204

Just found this in a web search. Has a Linux version. Haven’t tried it yet:

#205

Thanks, but until september i can’t spend any €, i will be moving away from my current city.
All spending is forbiden, until i get settled.

#206

i tried to use samplecat, but i never really got fully convinced to put energy into cataloguing hours of sound into any of those sample libraries manager.

...

I keep track of metadata for a very small portion of my sounds in a simple librecalc spreadsheet. The rest is a mess. (In my system, files that come from portable recorders are considered “source” files, whatever they are, and stored in huge yearly folders. Names are date+id. Other files are considered derivatives and are stored in the “project” folder during which they appear. Names are vaguely descriptive and long. Files can cross-pollinate from one project to another). I can see the amount of data becoming a problem not far from now.

2 Likes
#207

Thanks for the sugestion, i’ll try that later, when i have spare time.

#209

thinkpads. pick “slim” (carbon x1 for $) or “cheap” (get a slighty older one for peanuts.) sorry. embrace the red dot

forthcoming star lite mk2 looks like a good sweet spot for an ultraportable designed around linux, under $500.

i’ve tried various netbooks with more or less luck. asus eeePC was great. asus vivobooks have been a proprietary driver nightmare.

3 Likes
#210

I’ve heard good things about System76. They have a few models to choose from, and have Linux in mind (which should mean all the hardware should work on linux out of the box, which is not an easy feat for linux laptops). They are not what I would call cheap, but they are slim and reasonably powerful.

The goto linux/bsd laptop is a thinkpad with libreboot installed.

#212

cheap: you can get a T430 for <$200 these days. still very capable quad-i5 machine. best keyboard.

not cheap: the carbon x1 v5 is impressively slim and portable. keyboard not quite so nice (they had to reduce travel) but still miles better than the new macbooks.

really not cheap: newer T-series. waterproof “milspec” build or whatever.

lenovo often has good sales on direct orders. like, currently 50-60% off.

i also have an X1 extreme, the big thing with the graphics card (which i need for work.) i wouldn’t recommend the current version (1st generation.) build feels wobbly and it has one of those horrible hybrid drives.

6 Likes
#213

IMHO never buy a new one if you’re going to run linux on it. They get so much cheaper secondhand. My main laptop for work and etc is an x250 (paid ~$200 for it) which I’m very happy with but I think if I need to replace it, I’d replace it with an x230 which has more USB ports. (Even though it’s older/slower/etc.)

2 Likes
#216

Chromebooks are another option. I like my Acer C720 i3, and it was $300 five years ago.

#217

Anyone come across a linux-ey option which has a 2x “Retina” style screen? I think the screen on my macbook pro is it’s biggest lock-in feature. Also I kind of like the keyboard (ducks)

#218

Not cheap, but would definitely recommend. I’ve been using a Galago Pro as my primary music machine for like… 6 years?

#220

There’s no real consensus distro. I’m using Ubuntu Studio with a bunch of extras from the kxstudio repositories.

3 Likes
#221

Either a 2015 macbook pro or one of the newer Thinkpads. Especially the 2018 and 2019 models have stepped up their displays. The 14" WQHD gives you 210 ppi, almost as much as the macbook pro (220 ppi) and the 14" 4K display gives you 314ppi, way more than macbook pro.
The 4K screens are also available for 15" machines like the T590 where you’ll end up with 286 ppi), it’s not a perfect machine though, but will depend on what you’re looking for.

If you don’t need high(er) core counts than stick with the machines that use 15/28W U CPU’s. Even better, pick one that doesn’t have a GPU and you can get a pretty nice machine that doesn’t throttle like crazy with a very nice display.

I don’t know which macbook pro you’ve got, but the 2015 keyboard is pretty nice/decent. IMHO a good middle ground between machine thickness and decent travel + feedback. The macbook pro 2016 keyboard is abismal imho.
The Thinkpad keyboard should be at least equal if not better than the macbook pro 2015’s keyboard.

Personally I’m waiting a bit till the new Intel CPUs arrive. Want to see which machines will get the 6 core 15/28W CPUs (Core i7 10710U). Hope the T490 will get it, but I’m afraid it’ll only be the X1’s.

Alternatively, if you don’t mind a slightly older CPU, you could have a look at the librem 15.

And there are of course the Dell XPS/Precision machines, but the 15" ones all come with a GPU :frowning:

2 Likes
#222

I dual boot a T430 at the office. It works without a hitch. At home, I’ve been using a Y700 for years with the latest version of Mint. Though I’m starting to itch for something smaller and lighter. I don’t know what I’d buy today. There are so many older laptops that are perfectly usable, that I doubt I’d buy anything new.

#223

I’m so used to snagging ancient machines every few years for a couple hundred bucks that I’m hesitant to pull the trigger on a new one, but the newer Thinkpads with USB-C power and high-ppi displays are really tempting. Has anyone used e.g. i3 with one of these? I’m sure making it nice is mostly a matter of tweaking font sizes.

#224

is the discrete GPU scenario really all that bad w/ linux still? It looks like pop_os at least supports it pretty well out of the box (can’t do the hybrid thing, but makes toggling easy, that said, I do worry about using a more esoteric WM ala xmonad with this).

Planning on getting a new thinkpad for work stuff and I’m very on the fence between the x1 carbon and the x1 extreme gen 2 (w/ discrete gpu et al, but also double the ram and more drive bays etc).

Choices choices…

#225

I guess it depends on if you need a GPU. If you don’t need it then I’d suggest to pick a machine without one. Best case is you don’t have any issues but you lose battery life.
I don’t need a GPU for what I use my laptop for and not having one at the very least makes life easier but most of the time also gives me significantly better battery life compared to colleagues who have the same machine with dGPU.

Also note that a lot of laptops that have a dGPU have one or more of the external display connections wired up to the dGPU meaning that the dGPU automatically turns on if you connect an external display. Again more heat being produced and power being used for no reason.

1 Like
#226

I just got a T490S with Manjaro KDE, but a friend of mine is running i3 and loving it on an X1C6.

Still have my mbp for the changeover period, but so far enjoying the Linux life, and, yes, USB C was definitely a reason for me going with a newer model. I just went with the 1920x1080 screen, so it’s a bit of a step-down, but my partner and I mostly watch tv shows and the like on an iPad, so it’s mostly being used for web surfing and work, and is more than sufficient for that.

Yes, the trackpad is also awful, but I’m trying to embrace the red dot, and will probably just get a bluetooth mouse asap :joy:

#227

Before overwriting the Windows installation that came with my T420S, I played through Deus Ex using the red dot almost exclusively. I started out hating it, but I finished greatly preferring it over the trackpad.

2 Likes
#228

It is more involved than tweaking font sizes… basically you’ve got to scale up all the other UI elements too, not just the fonts. If you’re running Gnome it’s pretty easy to set up, I’m guessing the same is for KDE.

I’m not running i3 but I am running XMonad so I expect the problems are more or less the same. As usual the Arch Linux wiki as a page on HiDPI.

The major caveats are that it’s hard to get fractional scaling working with GTK applications (I’m not so sure with QT), which can be a pain if 1x is too small and 2x is too big. It’s also difficult to get it working with multiple monitors with differing scaling factors.

I found that it was really a bit of trial and error to get it set up the way I like it, but once it was done I was happy, I ended up with:

  • Setting the X DPI to 192 (i.e. 200%)
  • Setting the following environment variable in .xinitrc / XSession:
    GDK_SCALE = "2";
GDK_DPI_SCALE = "0.5";
QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR = "1";
  • Forcing the chromium scaling factor with a command line argument to 1.75
  • Setting the console font to ter-i32b
  • Plus a myriad of smaller config tweaks…
4 Likes