Fedora 29

Six months after the upgrade to Fedora 28 it was time for the next iteration, Fedora 29. The upgrade again went smoothly following the official instructions and the system does exactly what you would expect - continue to function as before, seamlessly, just with fresh versions of the software. Nothing broke, no driver drama, no deleted files (hint, hint).

More HDMI tests on the Asus Zenbook

Last time I looked at connecting a Philips BDM3470UP 34" monitor to my Zenbook, which worked fine. Meanwhile I got my hands on a positively ginormous Philips BDM4065UC 40" monitor boasting a 3840x2160 resolution. This thing is HUGE. It also has a VA panel with seriously impressive image quality once you spend a few minutes undoing the horrible factory default tune. So obviously the laptop again had to show what it can do.

Again I was pleasantly surprised to see Gnome offering the usual options of mirroring, extending, or only using the external display. The resolution was maxed out at the monitor's native 8.3 megapixels:

The connection was again done using an Amazon Basics HMDI Type A to HDMI Type A cable. An interesting aside is that the monitor only offers a 30 Hz refresh rate, both on the Zenbook via HDMI as well as on a Lenovo Thinkpad W541 via Display Port. This could be a limitation of the Intel HD 620 graphics adapters used in both devices. For normal desktop work this is not a limitation. Editing photos in darktable on this combo is a sheer joy.

Speaking of darktable - if you are interested in digital image processing using free software, check out Keifer Hunniford's tutorials on Youtube.