ubermix now includes hardware support, tools and theming that are designed specifically for touch devices, like the excellent Acer Travelmate Spin B1.


One of the challenges for most operating systems designed for laptops - even Windows - is that they typically run in one of two User Interface (UI) modes: Standard or HiDPI. Standard UI mode is most common for displays with High Definition (HD) resolutions, which typically run 1920×1080 to 2560×1440 on modern hardware. For ultra-high resolution displays, like Apple's Retina and Dell/HP's Quad HD displays running at 3200×1800 or more, the operating system will switch to HiDPI mode, which essentially doubles the size of everything on the screen.

While this may sound like it works well, it actually doesn't, because it doesn't take into account the actual size of the screen. While Standard UI mode looks fine on a 14 inch, 1920×1080 screen, like that on the Acer Spin 7, display elements are really small on the the aforementioned Travelmate Spin B1, with its equal 1920×1080 display that is only 11.6 inches diagonally. Small elements are much harder to tap accurately with a blunt fingertip, creating a frustrating experience for the user. And switching the device to HiDPI mode (double-scale) makes everything comically large; easy to touch but severely limiting working space.

To solve this problem, ubermix 3.23 offers convenient "in-between" UI settings, which make all of the UI elements roughly 1.3 times the size of Standard UI settings, creating comfortable, not-too-small, not-too-big sizing.

In addition, touch friendly themes have been added, which provide additional spacing between UI elements, making them easier to touch without accidentally tapping on the wrong thing. For example, close, minimize, and maximize buttons are all intentionally larger and about twice as far apart. as are all of the applets at the top of the screen and Applications menu items.

Standard UI Elements

ubermix Touch UI Elements

Cinnamon 3.4, which is the UI running on ubermix, brings many notable improvements, including:

• Improved touch performance
• Support for additional Wacom devices (in particular, devices with no erasers or with only one button)
• Multi-process Settings Daemon (each plugin now runs in its own separate process)
• Faster session startup and exit
• Desktop grid options
• Separate processes for file management and desktop handling
• Simpler date formats for last-modified column in list-view
• Wildcard support in file searches
• Desktop actions in panel launcher
• Theming engine improvements for systray and margins
• Additional configuration options for the screensaver
• Better support for the configuration of mice acceleration and sensitivity

The Linux kernel provides hardware support and drivers for ubermix, and 4.10.15 is significantly newer than that which is installed as a standard on Ubuntu 16.04. Kernel 4.10.15's most notable improvements include:

• Support for a much broader range of hardware and touch devices
• Improved EMMC support and performance
• Significant increases in Intel, NVidia, and AMD graphics performance
• Better HDMI support
• Faster wireless LAN performance

Both Inkscape and Scribus have been updated to the latest upstream releases (0.92 and 1.5.3, respectively), bringing improved performance, reliability, and new options to the applications. 

• Mesh Gradients are now supported.
• Many SVG2 and CSS3 properties are now supported (e.g. paint-order, mix-blend-mode). Not all are available from the GUI.
• The new Object dialog allows to select, label, hide and lock any object in the drawing from a dialog that lists them all
• Selection sets make it possible to 'group' objects together regardless of document structure
• Guides can now be locked to avoid accidental movement
• Several new path effects have been added, among them Envelope/Perspective, Lattice Deformation, Mirror and Rotate Copies
• There are several new extensions (e.g. a seamless pattern extension) and a new filter (colorblindness simulation) included in the release, many old extensions have been updated or got new features
• Spray tool and measure tool received a set of nifty new features
• Interactive smoothing for lines created with the Pencil tool
• BSplines (and more) are available for the Pen tool
• Checkerboard background can be used to more easily see object transparencies

• The most important change isn't immediately visible, namely a completely rewritten text layout engine, which supports complex scripts like Arabic, Hindi or Thai, as well as providing access to advanced OpenType features, such as ligatures and alternate glyphs.
• Altogether, about 500 languages and/or scripts are supported. 
• Typing on the canvas and text rendering in general has become a lot faster.
• Previews for fonts are now available in font selectors.
• The "Text" tab has been removed from the Properties Palette and is now a separate UI palette.
• The performance of copying and pasting objects in/from/to files with huge color palettes has been vastly improved.
• An import filter for Krita's KRA format has been added.
• Scribus now follows the XDG standard for configuration files. 
• Color selectors display the color values as a tooltip.
• A script called "Caption" has been included, which adds a text frame to an image frame, based on the latter's proportions.
• Code improvements and countless bugs, mostly introduced with the new features in 1.5.x, have been fixed

Download the update today at http://ubermix.org/files.html , and be sure to let us know if you run into any trouble.