More thoughts on endless os

#1

Back again with another try.
This time i installed it on an acer switch alpha, wich was possible since Windows 10 did not want to reboot after an update. This one has a core i5, 8 gigs of ram (so no need for zram here) and a 256 ssd. Installation went as expected, everything kind of worked. Wifi still won’t remember the wpa-key until you manualy edit the security page in network manager. Unlike on the gnome-desktop touch gestures are not available. Outside of the chrome browser it seems to be one single touch point only. Unfortunatly you need very good eyes to do anything on the acer, for it has a 2k 3x2 ratio screen at 12" and there are no options to do any scaling. I think this has to be adressed soon. Even cheap chinese Laptops with appolo lake celerons have 2k screens right now and devices like the surface pro 4 have even higher resolutions on 12" screens. Being the strange beast that it is, endless os seems to be made for devices that i don’t own. I did not try out very much this time since looking at the screen was just too uncomfortable.
I think you should look more into 2 in 1 computers and maybe intel tablets. Especialy in emerging countrys. These devices offer a complete solution. Having touchscreens there is no need for external Monitors, nor for input devices. They also have batteries and don’t need a permanent connection to the powergrid. They can be charged at times when power is available and used when not. Quite a few of them are less than 100$ and still are much more powerfull than most arm devices.

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#2

I don’t have an answer for most of your points, but keep an eye out for Endless OS 3.2, we are including a lot more features from the GNOME desktop.

This should also work better in Endless OS 3.2.

#3

Well there still are no scaling options after updating to 3.2, everything remains tiny. None of the gnome gestures seem to work eiter. So much for that. Frankly i am still looking for improvements, no luck so far.

#4

I’ll second the need for some form of interface scaling, and it needs to be in 25% increments, not 100% increments.

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#5

I have an update here, but it’s bad news — I was using 2x scaling myself, but it stopped working shortly before the 3.2.0 release. It’s known and being worked on, but I’m not sure when it will be fixed.

In the meantime you can at least get good scaling on the Chromium browser; edit the file /etc/chromium-browser/default and change CHROMIUM_FLAGS="" to CHROMIUM_FLAGS="--force-device-scale-factor=2" (or 1.25 or whatever.)

it needs to be in 25% increments, not 100% increments.

That is being worked on by the GNOME community. See, for example, https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GNOME-Fractional-Scaling-Plans and other recent news stories. This might appear in Endless OS around April if everything goes according to plan with GNOME. (Although, as noted above, you can already do scaling with the Chromium browser outside of 100% increments.)

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#6

The knowledge that it’s being worked on is enough for me. Thanks!

#7

I believe the 2x scaling is fixed in Endless OS 3.2.5, announcement today at https://community.endlessos.com/t/release-endless-os-version-3-2-5/3982. I’m not 100% sure if everything is working, but give it a try…

#8