Linux at Work - First Week on the Huawei Matebook 13
3,819Welcome to this short video series on how I use Linux at work. This is an experiment that I wanted to conduct for a long time, Let’s see how this goes.
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First of all, my day job is as a product owner: I write specifications, attend meetings, create presentations, demo our work, and generally create any needed material for promoting our platform. This implies using a wide range of applications, from email and productivity apps, to video editors, web browsers, prototyping and even graphics design apps.
I was using a 2018 Macbook Air for that work, which my boss provided me with, but it wasn’t cutting it with its measly 1.6 ghz dual core processor. This was the occasion I needed to swith to a Linux powered laptop, namely my brand new Huawei Matebook 13.
This computer is propped up on a laptop stand, and plugged in to an external 23 inches, 1080p monitor. I use a bluetooth keyboard, and a USB mouse, as well as headphones.
Since the Matebook 13 doesn’t have full size USB ports, I use an adapter to plug everything in. This is actually the dongle taht I got with the macbook air, and it works well with the matebook as well.
I’ll be running elementary OS here, since it’s my favorite distro, and I’ll try to create a workflow that works for me to complete my day to day tasks.
The first week went well. I managed to plug everything in, set everything up with ease. I had to transfer the various documents I use, through a usb key, and setup my work email and calendar.
This was more complicated than I’d have wished. We use a zimbra based solution, and while syncing the email account with the default app was a breeze, the calendar was more annoying. On the default elementary OS calendar, not all appointments showed up, weirdly. Some recurring events didn’t appear after syncing the calendar with CalDAV.
Using Evolution solved the issue, but it’s a far less enjoyable program to use, with a design that doesn’t look great on elementary OS.
In terms of applications, since I already used GIMP, Firefox, and LibreOffice, I didn’t come accross any specific issues. I did have some iWork documents, like Pages text files, and keynote presentations, that I couldn’t open, but I’ll open them on the online version of the suite.
Here is the workflow I used: I had my web browser opened on the external display. It handles our wiki, our gitlab board, and Asana. On that same monitor, on a second workspace, I have slack, which is our internal communication tool.
On the laptop, I have a few windows opened, notably email, which I receive few, my calendar with evolution, and a second web browser window. This works pretty well, and with the keyboard shortcuts to switch workspaces, I can be pretty efficient.
The first problem I bumped into is the huge difference in pixel density in the screens. The matebook screen is 1440p for 13', and the external monitor is 1080p for 23'. This means that it’s way bigger than the laptop’s screen, and if I decide to scale the laptop’s interface, everything will be huge on the external display. I settled for the default 1x scaling, which means most of what I do is on the main display, and the laptop is used for accessory apps, or web browsing zoomed at 150%.
Second issue is the Magic Mouse I used previously on the macbook air: this one does not work well with Linux: the scrolling is not supported. Not a big issue, since this mouse is pretty horrible ergonomically anyway, being too flat and small, so I replaced it with a USB mouse for now, and I’ll try to find a decent bluetooth one soon.
In terms of battery life, the laptop spends most of its time plugged in, except when I’m in meetings. There, I found it could handle a charge pretty well: with bluetooth and wifi still enabled, and screen brightness set to half, without keyboard backlight (not needed in a brightly lit meeting room), I only lost 14% of my battery in an hour.
This was while taking meeting notes in Notes Up, and having all my regular windows opened in the background.
In a more thorough battery test, unplugging the laptop at 10:30AM with 100% battery left, I ended up at 12:30 with 66% of battery left. This is with wifi enabled and used actively, a bluetooth keyboard connected, a USB mouse plugged in, and the external 1080p display connected at all times, with brightness set at half level on the laptop’s screen.
This puts the laptop’s battery life around 6h for browser-based usage, with slack running in the background, and a bit of emailing and writing as well. It’s not fantastic, but not terrible either, and I expect the laptop would fare a lot better without the external display and the peripherals attached.