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posted by janrinok on Sunday August 21 2016, @09:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the over-to-you dept.

It's been a while since we ran a story about some facet of people's home computer systems and I got to wondering what kind of monitor setup other Soylentils have at home. (If you have multiple systems, feel free to enumerate each setup.)

For example, I run Win 7 Pro on a Dell laptop which has a Mobile Intel Core 2 P8700 Duo processor and which sports NVIDIA Quadro NVS 160M graphics. Instead of using the built-in laptop display, I have a several-year-old Gateway monitor with 1920x1200 resolution @ 59Hz and 32-bit color. I do not do any gaming, so I don't need the latest graphic card/monitor.

Some time down the road, though, I'd like to get a new computer and am thinking about a multi-monitor setup. I'd like at least 1920x1200 across 3 screens, though I'd not mind it if I could afford 3 x 4K screens. I'd like it to be compatible with some flavor of Linux or *BSD, preferably without systemd. Does anyone here have experience with that kind of setup? What OS do you use? What graphics card? What monitors and resolutions do you run?

I know there are some gamers on the site, as well. Here's a chance to brag a bit about your rig!

And, of course, please share any horror stories and/or triumphs, too!


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  • (Score: 2) by Rich on Monday August 22 2016, @01:47AM

    by Rich (945) on Monday August 22 2016, @01:47AM (#391394) Journal

    No one else so far getting along with just a laptop?

    I mostly work on the 1440x900 builtin screen of an old 15" C2D Macbook Pro. Though this message is typed on 2880x1800 (same 15" size, but 4x res) of a newer Retina model which I mostly use for casual surfing. I prefer the trusty ole Snow Leopard over flashy new hardware (with related OS) to get grunt work done.

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  • (Score: 2) by termigator on Monday August 22 2016, @04:47AM

    by termigator (4271) on Monday August 22 2016, @04:47AM (#391463)

    > No one else so far getting along with just a laptop?

    For my work system, I do. I keep it separate from my personal systems (I telecommute) since it is a company-owned asset. It's a Win7 box, but I mostly use Cygwin since I am more productive with a *nix-like environment. I do wish the laptop display was higher res since 1600x900 can be limiting when required to open ugly Office files or view a shared screen in teleconferences. Fortunately I can use Thunderbird for work email and avoid Outlook.

    For my personal laptop, I have it hooked to an external 42" TV mounted on the wall. Mostly for personal use and independent contract work (which is not very much now since I am W2 currently). I have used the setup as a standing-up work environment. Definitely helped with my RSI and upperback problems.

    My desktop/servers systems are hooked to a monitor switch where I have an old Princeton 1280x1024 LCD monitor. Only one of the systems has a GUI desktop, mainly when I want to due more secure stuff (like logging into my bank and paying bills). All these systems run some flavor of Linux and are usually connected thru via SSH than using the console directly.

    I have experimented with dual monitor setups in the past, but I never got any productivity gains from it and was more of a distraction. Since I predominately use the command-line and keyboard shortcuts to move between terminals and applications, having a single decent monitor is all I need.

    • (Score: 1) by shipofgold on Monday August 22 2016, @11:51AM

      by shipofgold (4696) on Monday August 22 2016, @11:51AM (#391573)

      You just tickled a pet grip of mine...most monitors/laptops are now 16:9 aspect ratio which is fine for movies and youtube, but sucks for office documents or programming where I prefer more vertical.

      I also telecommute and work mostly from a company provided laptop. I made a stink when they tried to give me a "refresh" with a 14" 16:9 screen. I ended up with a 15.6" 16:9 screen which is about the minimum usable.

      My desktop personal system consists of 3 linux boxes connected to three 4:3 19" monitors and I use x2x to have a single keyboard/mouse look like a triple screen setup. I am in the process of switching over from Fedora to Devuan (no SystemD and no Gnome3). I actually liked Gnome3, but it has so many memory leaks I need to restart it once or twice a day when it causes the system to go into heavy swapping.

      On one of my boxes I run Asterisk, Iptables/router for the home network, DHCP for IPv4, radvd for IPv6, DNS so that all the NAT'ed boxes have a name, Etherape so that I can see traffic on my home network (all Internet traffic to/from the home network goes through the router box...this allows my kids to see who is sucking up the internet). On another box I run a WWW server for home automation talking to Heyu for X10 control and an Rpi and an Odroid C2 which do custom relay control, Mythbackend to record OTA TV for my Kodi boxes and serve up my DVD collection, OctoPrint, Slic3r, OpenSCAD for my 3Dprinter. The third Linux box is a small miniPC I got from China a month ago...destined to take over the work of the Asterisk/router box. Eventually I hope to setup a permanent OpenVPN connection on the router box.

      When I am doing heavy programming or debugging, I VPN one of the linux systems into the company servers so that I can ssh in from multiple screens.