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!
Related Stories
The top google hits say that there is little or no benefit to resolution above 4k. I recently bought a 40" 4k tv which I use as a monitor (2' viewing distance). While this is right at the threshold where I'm told no benefit can be gained from additional resolution, I can still easily discern individual pixels. I'm still able to see individual pixels until I get to about a 4' viewing distance (but I am nearsighted).
I did some research and according to Wikipedia the Fovea Centralis (center of the eye) has a resolution of 31.5 arc seconds. At this resolution, a 4k monitor would need to be only 16" at a 2' viewing distance, or my 40" would need a 5' viewing distance.
Now the Fovea Centralis comprises only the size of 2 thumbnails width at arms length (2° viewing angle) and the eye's resolution drops off quickly farther from the center. But this tiny portion of the eye is processed by 50% of the visual cortex of the brain.
So I ask, are there any soylentils with perfect vision and/or a super high resolution set up, and does this match where you can no longer discern individual pixels? Do you think retina resolution needs to match the Fovea Centralis or is a lesser value acceptable?
My 40" 4k at 2' fills my entire field of view. I really like it because I have so much screen real estate for multiple windows or large spreadsheets, or I can scoot back a little bit for gaming (so I don't have to turn my head to see everything) and enjoy the higher resolution. I find 4k on high graphics looks much nicer than 1080p on Ultra. I find the upgrade is well worth the $600 I spent for the tv and a graphics card that can run it. Have you upgraded to 4k and do you think it was worth it? I would one day like to have dual 32" 8k monitors (not 3D). What is your dream setup if technology and price weren't an issue?
Written from my work 1366 x 768 monitor.
Related discussions: First "8K" Video Appears on YouTube
LG to Demo an 8K Resolution TV at the Consumer Electronics Show
What is your Video / Monitor Setup?
Microsoft and Sony's Emerging 4K Pissing Contest
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Sunday August 21 2016, @09:16PM
Debian Jessie, 2xGTX 980 , 256GB ram - 3 monitors - HP LP3065 (2560x1600) - ASUS PB287Q (3840x2160), and generic ACER (on IPMI VGA port).
KDE4 plasma desktop, with ASUS on left, HP in middle, and task bar assigned to HP. The top of the HP is aligned with top of ASUS, making full 6400x1600 desktop. Since bottom 3840x560 is sub menu, a good place to put panels of other stuff.
Best applications on desktop - kdeconnect, phone can be out of sight/room and you can still see stuff on it. Also a shout out to redshift (critical to keep monitors viewable for long times), clementine (my favourite Amarok replacement) , Pidgin OTR and Gpodder.
(Score: 2) by julian on Sunday August 21 2016, @09:57PM
256GB of RAM? Are you using a server motherboard?
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:13PM
Yes, H8DG6, over clocked a bit. Molecular modelling.
My next WS will definitely have at least 256GB of memory, it makes everything sooooooo fast ;-)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @09:20PM
For example, I run Win 7 Pro
....aaaaaand we've set the tone!
I'd like it to be compatible with some flavor of Linux or *BSD, preferably without systemd.
Sure, sure, but what's the point if you're never actually *going* to switch over to Linux/*BSD from your Win7... We would all *like* to have a hunting license but unless you go hunting, it's just a 'my dick is bigger than yours' kinda thing.
My real workstation is a 64 core/16TB RAM VPS running in a datacenter somewhere. Where exactly, I don't know and I don't care but that's where I do all of my work. I ssh into the machine so I don't need no fancy graphics card even though I don't do any gaming.
Martha, go grab me mah shotgun, someone's been tramplin' all over mah lawn!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday August 21 2016, @09:54PM
My real workstation is a 64 core/16TB RAM VPS running in a datacenter somewhere.
That's all? All my images at work add up to more than that.
Conversations with "front end web people" are always really weird, because they can keep their entire project in a tiny little laptop when they work at coffee shops or whatever.
Also makes for weird "aaS" discussions and rants about chromebooks about how can the business world survive if we can only work while SSH and HTTPS access is up... well, I've been living it for many many years now and its not that bad.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @12:01AM
Indeed ubiquitous connectivity is possible even for those web designers working at coffee shops who can tether their laptops to their phones and don't need to use the coffee shop wifi at all. In fact it's better if they don't because chances are good the public wifi is overloaded by kids watching videos. Public wifi is actually great for testing software response to poor network conditions because the kids watching videos add a random element which throttling tools fail to account for in simulated tests.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Monday August 22 2016, @05:44PM
Shouldn't 640k be enough for anyone?
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:22PM
....aaaaaand we've set the tone!
Fuck you, Bubba! I use Windows 8.1 with Bing on a 7-inch tablet PC and the Touch Keyboard covers half my screen! That's right!! I have a half-monitor setup!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @12:43AM
My real workstation is a 64 core/16TB RAM VPS running in a datacenter somewhere
Yeah we can all afford 250k worth of equipment and have a rack in the garage.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Monday August 22 2016, @01:20PM
yeah, it sounds like he has nothing at all and the bill isn't even in his name. I didn't think the lack of having anything was a valid competition entry that is supposed to describe what we had.
I suppose if he had some sort of tele-vision, remote viewing or something capability, like those view screens we see on TV---from which he could monitor what was going on out of there -- that could qualify?
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Sunday August 21 2016, @09:36PM
At work three 4:3 ratio 19 inch 1280x1024 monitors, at home three larger and nicer 4:3 1600x1200.
That's about the most I've been able to fit on a reasonable desk.
I have run five monitors (4:3) but that takes an entire corner nook not a mere desk.
I prefer 3 boxes on my desk and 3 monitors and one model M keyboard connected by KWM and three always connected trackballs. Five trackballs was a little unwieldy when I had 5 monitors. I've always set up the one in the middle as a multiple boot machine. The flanking systems are constantly something, right now at home are two freebsd desktops volunteered into server duty (long story). Historically I've had Debian boxes, Power PC mac mini like a decade ago, I have used raspberry pi as a side machine, had a Wyse 55 dumb terminal at one point (dealing with two keyboards on one desk was pretty annoying). I had androidx86 set up once, that worked pretty well for connectbot terminal and web browsing. At one point I had a full mythtv frontend as a fourth screen at my desk but it was getting crowded and I didn't watch much TV, although it was nice for music, back when the mythtv music interface didn't suck (pre-playlist era) Also sometimes I'm troubleshooting something and one of the flanking monitors is some troubleshooting thingy.
I've fooled around with multiple keyboards and single KVM switched mice/trackballs and switched VGA and always seem to come back to one keyboard vs many pointing devices vs many monitors. It just seems most productive or least time wasting.
My usual working environment is the main machine in the center is doing something with emacs or urxvt ssh'd into something, and the flanking machines are doing some combination of tail -f or otherwise monitoring what I'm working on, or running a web browser (I rarely run a browser on my main central machine), or reading .pdf format manuals or reading online help manuals or data sheets or something. I'm probably looking at the main machine 90% of the time and the secondary machines maybe 5% each.
Ergonomics are tricky. I don't think this is possible with lower res wide screen mere 1080 displays, it would just be too physically wide. Getting room lighting "just right" such that I don't have to stare into a reflected light or reflected window is no joke and worth every hour of time to get it right.
My speakers are above the monitors and otherwise spaced normally. I have a mixer and playing L-R balance games with the location of the machines just makes audio sound weird (oh the pun). Usually only one machine is generating noise at a time, I'm not into noisy animated desktops.
I'm used to doing programming and admin work on a significant fraction of a square yard of screen space. It must be weird to do "real work" on a tiny little laptop screen, like typing while wearing mittens.
I've fooled around with X2X software to connect my xwindow screens and always find it more of a PITA than an advantage WRT cut-n-paste or whatever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @10:22PM
Have you considered using synergy to replace your hardware KVM?
(Score: 1) by garrulus on Sunday August 21 2016, @09:38PM
1x Eizo 24" 1920 * 1200
will upgrade to 1x Eizo 31" 4k once it dies
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Tuesday August 23 2016, @01:33PM
I never understood the appeal of several monitors, unless for very specific tasks. Alt-tab is faster than moving my neck and refocusing.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday August 21 2016, @09:44PM
https://h-node.org/ [h-node.org]
Regarding BSD, there are 5 (vocal) guys running BSD here and I bet 3 of them do so in a VM while the other 2 do it with server hardware. So, you'd be better off asking around the FreeBSD forums for BSD related hardware recommendation.
compiling...
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday August 22 2016, @03:36AM
On FreeBSD, it should mostly be a matter of having supported hardware. As in hardware that has some sort of decent driver support for acceleration. Since we run Xorg, the rest of it works like it would on Linux.
Personally, I've got a second monitor, but I've been too lazy to hook it up. I think that I'll likely eventually hook it up and then set up a virtual server to split it in half. Or just use it for my VMs.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday August 22 2016, @06:12PM
I am trying to get FreeBSD working on 10 year old hardware. For my 16 year old hardware, FreeBSD actually supports it better than Linux does (somebody fixed WOL for the Intel NIC).
My initial problem was while booting an encrypted ZFS image, the video hardware was not enumerated. The 10.3 release fixed that. The other day I got X working after some poking and tweaking. Just need to fine-tune stuff now.
For the most part I avoid binary drivers, so Linux does not really support newer video hardware anyway.
Back on topic:
15" LCD 1280x1024 - 60Hz
4GB RAM
Core 2 3Ghz
Linux Mint ("Test" machine, bleeding edge drivers -- was trying some proprietary games)
Currently using the on-board video since Nvidia card I have laying here was not playing nice with proxmox (black text on black).
The Drop-down menus are grey-on-grey text though :P
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday August 22 2016, @06:18PM
17" display.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday August 23 2016, @01:54PM
For the most part I avoid binary drivers, so Linux does not really support newer video hardware anyway.
Mostly true. But you can get a year old nVidia & Intel hardware that doesn't load a blob with nouveau and i915 in linux-libre. Sadly, AMDGPU mostly depends on DRM_AMDGPU unless linux-libre made some breakthrough I'm not aware of...
Regarding that Core 2\4GB box, if you can't sort out the FreeBSD graphics issues, try Trisquel. It's a deblobbed Ubuntu and should just work on old hardware if you're lucky. I think it doesn't use systemd by default either.
And if you're feeling really adventures, try GuixSD. Mind you, even if it was stable, it's a steep learning curve.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Tuesday August 23 2016, @02:23PM
FreeBSD does have some DRM support.
The documentation is being updated as we speak.
My card is a 5000 series, and appears to work.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Tuesday August 23 2016, @02:25PM
link got broken [freebsd.org]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday August 23 2016, @07:12PM
Well, so long as it works :)
compiling...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @09:47PM
My set up:
3 monitors, in order from left to right
(1) 29" 2560x1080 portrait (LG 29UM65)
(2) 29" 2560x1080 portrait (LG 29UM65)
(3) 30" 2560x1600 landscape (Dell 3007WFP)
The first two are great for web browsing, I maximize a firefox window in each one and I almost never have to scroll. It was weird for the first week or so because putting an ultra-wide monitor in portrait mode makes them ultra-tall. I also tweaked a couple of websites with the element hider in umatrix (or adbock) to make them better fit the 1080 width. But now that I'm used to it, I never want to go back.
FWIW, all 3 monitors are driven with the video built into my intel cpu. The first two are hdmi and the last is displayport with an $15 adapter to dvi because the monitor is nearly 10 years old now.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @09:52PM
3 monitors, 2 machines:
i7-4790K with GTX 660 running debian sid with XFCE desktop. this is my main workstation. 2 monitors attached.
i5-3690K with GTX 970 running win7. this is my visual studio, misc windows app and gaming pc. 1 monitor attached.
All three monitors are random 1920x1200 displays from years ago when you could buy such things.
Model M keyboard from 1986, deathadder mouse. I use synergy to share the mouse and keyboard from the linux machine onto the windows pc.
I also have hackintosh, router, and server/nas pcs running elsewhere in the house I remote into.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:07PM
OpenBSD Haswell workstation, Intel graphics.
2 x Dell U2415 monitors rotated vertically (1200x1900).
The hardware supposedly supports up to 4 4k monitors, but the wallet only supports the two 1200p monitors.
I run cwm as the window manager. One screen gets its own full screen xterm (xterm -fullscreen fills the left monitor instead of xterm -maximized), and the other screen gets whatever GUI thing I'm doing (most of the time a browser since that is the universal app launcher these days).
I don't like the direction laptops have taken and have a tablet for mobility now.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:23PM
> And, of course, please share any horror stories and/or triumphs, too!
I forgot this part. No horror stories or triumphs. OpenBSD works well with modern Intel graphics. The devs actually use their own operating system, unlike FreeBSD devs. Not so much success with modern AMD or nVidia because they require a blob.
Just imagine OpenBSD as a rolling-release operating system, follow -current and everything will be up to date. Don't buy the CD's; that is an antiquated method as recently discussed on the mailing lists, which doesn't bring in any profit for the project. Appropriate that money to the OpenBSD foundation instead.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:12PM
I remember a time when all the egotistical assholes needed dual monitors as a form of social signalling to show everyone that they were Very Important Assholes.
3 screens
Thank you for informing us that the required number of screens used by assholes is now three.
your rig
I see assholes still call it a "my rig" then. Some things never change.
Thanks!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:26PM
the more pixels / monitors available, the less mental context switches are required, up to the point where you have to actually move yourself/your chair to see more monitor. the sweet spot is 3 monitors.
very important persons have more monitors than are useful. 3 monitors is far from asshole social signalling. some of us like to be actually productive rather than troll all day, and in this age where monitors can be acquired for around $100 and last for over a decade, meh.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:36PM
You're bullshitting to rationalize the three monitors you need to stay in the assholes club.
I have never ever needed more than one display, because I am not an idiot, and I have the ability to hold more than one concept in my mind simultaneously without needing everything to be in front of my face the whole time.
Multiple monitors are mental crutches for morons.
(Score: 3, Touché) by ticho on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:43PM
Ah, the good old "everyone is an asshole if they do not do things the way I do, because my way is the only way". Grow up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:56PM
Everyone I've met so far who uses multiple monitors has been an asshole, thus by induction, people who use multiple monitors are assholes.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @02:32AM
Looks like we found at least one counterexample with a 1 monitor setup.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @03:28PM
So
I'm going to go ahead and make the obvious intuitive leap:
Some people are assholes!
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:43PM
I like have two monitors so I can have "top" and "bmon" running on the second one while I wait for a JS-laden browser tab to load. A serial console would work almost as well for that. Sometimes I use my laptop as a third monitor.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:46PM
I don't need a monitor at all. I'm that good, motherfucker!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @11:23PM
Braille terminals don't count as monitors. This whole "story" is biased toward the sighted.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Monday August 22 2016, @12:17AM
Punchcards, JCL, dotmatrix line printer and a connection to an IBM system/360 is the only way to do COBOL.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @05:06AM
I prefer a dominatrix printer.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 22 2016, @12:13AM
At a former employer you could have up to six monitors (2x3 organization) and I tried it and a new problem AC forgot to mention is mental context switches and mapping such that rather than looking at monitor #5 when you're focused on #2 you'll physical context switch #2 because its a lot of state to keep in mind.
I suppose life is different if you have a job like monitoring atomic reactors #1 thru #6 inclusive where the mapping is simple, vs having six generic viewports into your task.
When I had five monitors I would sometimes leave one on email and one on IRC/messaging and it mostly just increased stress and distraction, although it was sometimes useful. So stress is another interesting aspect.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:46PM
lol kys
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:46PM
Thank you for informing us that the required number of screens used by assholes is now three.
I'm pretty sure the change occurred when Scott Adams told us two was not enough.
http://dilbert.com/strip/2010-11-04 [dilbert.com]
Monkey see comic strip, monkey do what comic strip says.
(Score: 2) by cockroach on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:29PM
My current setup involves an older PC (Core 2 Duo) with a recent GPU (Radeon HD 7700), two 4:3 screens (EIZO S2133, 1600:1200) and a Thinkpad X201 (with Coreboot and Gentoo). In theory, the PC (running FreeBSD) would use both screens but at the moment the GPU is a bit too new for that -- apparently newer drivers have just been committed but the ones from FreeBSD 10 don't do dual screens with my card, thus the second screen is currently connected to the Thinkpad (via VGA, for that retro feeling).
I used to run Debian on everything, nowadays most of my machines are on Gentoo or one of the BSDs, none of them run systemd.
If you want to get current hardware running with multiple screens Linux is probably still the safer choice but if you're willing to give them a few months to catch up, FreeBSD is certainly an interesting alternative.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday August 22 2016, @07:47PM
I find it odd that the card would have support for accelerated graphics without supporting two displays. I suspect Xrandr confusion. The way you set up multiple displays differs from xinerama.
Xrandr: 1 frame buffer
Xinerama: independent frame buffers,
I have yet to recover my example xorg.conf files illustrating the difference between the two. (I prefer xinerama because games are not able to clobber your lay-out. But it is slower.)
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:31PM
Samsung SyncMaster 753DF - best damn 17" CRT monitor ever made. Why? Well for starters I can actually dim it enough so the vitreous floaters in my eyes don't bother me. Never seen a flat panel where that isn't a major issue. And as a bonus I can run all kinds of oddball resolutions without having everything look hideously blocky. The CRT it uses is not a trinitron so it doesn't have those two annoying thick lines across the screen, but it has just as good resolution. A few other misc reasons too.
I've been looking to pick up another one of these sometime, but it seems everyone already sent theirs to a third world landfill because "old".
(Score: 2) by VanessaE on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:39PM
AMD Phenom II X6 1055T CPU (2.8 GHz), 16GB RAM, on an M3A770DE motherboard, AMD R9 280x GPU driving three Dell 2001FP panels (total 4800x1200 @ 60Hz) via the Catalyst binary blob. Debian 8.5/Jessie for the OS, XFCE 4.12 for the DE.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by linuxrocks123 on Sunday August 21 2016, @11:02PM
At home, one 24" 1920x1080 main monitor, with a secondary smallish 1024x768 monitor off to the left. Slackware.
Now that that's out of the way, if you're into virtual desktops, you should know that most mainstream DEs and window managers don't handle multi-monitor setups sanely. Specifically, they just create huge virtual desktops that span both monitors, so when you switch from one desktop to another, both your monitors change.
To me, that's obviously stupid. I want each monitor displaying a single, different virtual desktop. So I Googled and eventually found openbox-multihead: https://github.com/BurntSushi/openbox-multihead [github.com]
It handles virtual desktops with multiple monitors the way I think they obviously should be handled, and is the only non-tiling window manager that does that. It works inside XFCE, and that's how I use it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @11:03PM
Who wants to be the trendsetting queen of the assholes who starts the trend for FOUR MONITORS?
Come on bitches. You know you want FOUR.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Sunday August 21 2016, @11:50PM
Wall Street already did it, n00b.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @12:05AM
And yet I don't see any wannabe quants on here with four monitors at home.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @03:14PM
Four is a problem. Do you have two on each side, split down the middle?, that would be hard to use. Do you have two on top and two on the bottom? Two of them are going to be too high to use easily (or too low and in hitting your legs) and you have the same middle problem. Do you stack two in the middle and have one on each side? You have the same height problem you had with two on two earlier (although otherwise it would work better). Do you have one middle, one to one side and two on the other? That kind of works, but the far monitor is going to be harder, and probably little used. It would definitely be diminishing returns (and heck why not just do five at that point?)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @03:36AM
As with razors, six is the sweet spot: two rows of three.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @11:41AM
yup, dev machine : 4 x Dell 2408, rotated 90 running from a custom thin client running an nvidia quadro NVS450. VDIs into main server (8 core Dell r410, 32G ram), XenServer with several VMs.
Games machine : connected to Epson TW6010 3D projector (1920x1080), and just recently added an HTC Vive. Swap to ancillary 32" sony tv as the monitor when I'm in VR as I'm usually stood inbetween the projector and screen.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday August 22 2016, @06:45PM
I do, kinda.
My primary work tower has a 40" 4K Vizio screen. All other engineers around me use a couple 20" to 24" 1080P, so I've got 4 monitors, by comparison (they used to laugh, now they're in the queue to get 4K too).
Secondary work machine is a 4K 15" laptop (needed the 4K capable HDMI)
Home is a 37" 1080p (10 year old), with secondary 20" that I rarely turn on, and the living room is a 40" 1080p NUC-as-HTPC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @11:23PM
Livingroom Game rig... Shuttle SH67H3 Win10Pro w/GeForce GTX 750Ti feeding a 19" LCD and a 40" HDTV.
Bedroom/Office... Lenovo M53 Tiny Win10Pro/Ubuntu 16.04 & Shuttle SH67H3 Win10Pro/Ubuntu 16.04 w/GeForce GTX 750Ti feeding a 19" LCD and a 28" HDTV via KVM switch.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Sunday August 21 2016, @11:27PM
Nothing to brag about here. I've tried running dual monitors before but in general it doesn't seem to be any better than having two computers with one monitor each. Having to reach back and forth between two keyboards is not fun, but that usually doesn't happen. Usually the point of having the second screen on is just being able to refer to something without having to juggle windows on the first screen.
Sometimes my ass hurts and I don't feel like sitting at a desk, in which case I take a laptop to bed. Kind of tough to deal with multiple monitors in bed, unless maybe I had some elaborate multi-jointed telescoping wall/ceiling mount. Thankfully this hasn't been a problem for the past couple years.
So I have a low-power system which is on all the time, right next to a higher-spec system. They both have 16" CRT monitors. I was running 1152x864@70hz, but one of them started making an annoying noise so I bumped it up to 1280x960@70hz and the noise went away (or became inaudible at least). It's not a very high resolution compared to what is available now, but it's good enough. I run old software that wasn't designed for high res, so going beyond 100dpi it becomes difficult to see WTF is going on. (and then there are the fixed-width web pages that were designed for 800- or 1024- wide screens...)
I don't watch TV/movies much, so that isn't a concern. But I thought it might be nice to have a larger, higher-res screen for looking at photos. Unfortunately it seems that 2048x1536 displays are not too common (did you know that NEC offered a laptop with this resolution back in 2003?). So I ended up buying a surplus 20" 1600x1200 LCD. It looks good via DVI (rubbish over VGA) but the plastic stand that came with it is a piece of crap and because of that I have not been sufficiently motivated to swap it in for the venerable CRT.
16:9 aspect ratios are banned at my house and DRM-encumbered tech (ie. HDMI) is also not looked upon kindly.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Monday August 22 2016, @12:13AM
My path to multi-monitor was sort of unintentional: when I first moved from CRTs to LCDs, I wasn't sure I'd like the widescreen (16:10) display so I used it alongside the 4:3 CRT. Loved it and ended up gradually accumulating more displays over the years, limited primarily by desk space and convenience to set up.
Right now the primary display is a 23.5" 1920x1080 IPS display, with a 1680x1050 display as my secondary one, and a 1440x900 pen display (one of those non-Wacom Cintiq-workalikes). I've used this setup for years, then ended up getting a free 1280x1024 LCD that was going to get thrown away, so now I'm up to four.
System's old, specs aren't worth mentioning for most part. Main thing to consider is that if you want to put a lot of displays in, you either need a GPU with that many ports, or multiple GPUs. Pay attention to what you buy in that regard. For example, my Nvidia GPU has four: 2 DVI, 1 HDMI, and 1 DisplayPort. I was able to put them all to use simultaneously. AMD has sold cards that have even more than that.
In my experience, multiple displays across multiple GPUs is less well supported, but still workable. If you end up doing that, try to stick with same vendor (and even same generation) of GPU to help avoid trouble. Multiple displays driven off a single GPU are very well supported in both Windows and Linux, with some caveats:
* Windows 7 support is spartan, but it mostly works. Taskbar can only appear on a single monitor, no display-specific wallpaper. Third party tools required to do anything else. Completely spartan, kind of annoying after getting used to having flexibility.
* Windows 10 is better than 7 for multiple displays in basically every way. Taskbars on each monitor if desired, per-monitor pinning, and i think per-monitor wallpapers as well. If you don't mind W10, it's a better choice than 7 with regard to multi-monitor setups. Shame about the rest of the OS.
* Linux is the most flexible by far, but quality of implementation depends a lot on desktop environment chosen and sometimes the applications you use. For example, KDE is great for multiple monitors in general, and its window manager (kwin) has a lot of flexibility to let you work around per-app weirdness or unwanted behaviour if you ever run into it. The desktop shell (Plasma) is highly configurable and you can get whatever combination of taskbar, systray, start menu, etc. you want on each display.
Of the three, Windows 7 bugs me the most because its support is so rudimentary that it's only slightly better than useless. It works but only just. 10 is probably best mix of simple and usable, but then you're stuck with Windows 10. Linux is the power-user option, as expected, and you can do practically anything, usually without touching config files.
No matter what OS you use, though, you'll occasionally run into an application that does something stupid with regard to the displays. For example, if your multiple displays aren't all the same resolution, some KDE4 apps fail to store window size and position location correctly, and it makes them start at weird sizes. Fixable with some window sizing rules from kwin, but slightly annoying.
My preference currently is to use Notion (tiling window manager) in Debian, and things mostly "just work" regardless of how many displays I use. Notion understands multiple displays if the correct extension is loaded, so it's easy to manage the tiles on each display separately.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Username on Monday August 22 2016, @12:15AM
When I’m in the zone I only hyper concentrated on one of them, rest are a distraction. I find it far easier to alt-tab or ctrl-alt-Fx or use the mouse than moving my head.
I have two PCs with one 23" monitor, two taps of scroll lock switches between. I have das keyboard without lettering or lights, since looking at the keyboard is a distraction.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by termigator on Monday August 22 2016, @04:24AM
I am a single monitor person myself. Mostly use command-line and Alt+Tab and other keyboard shortcuts to switch between apps and windows. Mouse use is mostly when using web browser.
I have tried multiple monitor setups before, but never achieved any productivity gains in doing so I do not bother with it.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday August 22 2016, @06:20AM
I also prefer a single monitor setup. Have two at work but only to angle one away from public view and read SN : P Would have to ditch the oscilloscope or something to fit a second monitor at home. One display is plenty : )
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @12:32AM
At one time I had a Mac Pro (running fedora) with three side-by-side portrait-mode 1600x1200 screens angled so that I'd be looking perpendicularly at each one as I turned my head from one side to the other.
Right now, I have a single 4k 32" screen, which btw has more total pixels than my three-monitor setup used to have...
Ultimately, I'd like a curved 40" screen, like some of those samsung curved 4k TVs. Problem is, I tried to use one as a monitor, and it won't go into power-save when dpmi turns off the signal from the video card, at least not for a long 20-30 minutes. Then, once it's "off", I needed to work the remote or push a button on the TV to wake it back up again, wiggling the mouse wasn't enough.
Once one of those 4k curved TVs would start working with dpmi, and if the ever made a matte (hate glossy with a passion) version, i'd finally have the last screen setup I ever needed. Wonder if anyone will ever make a real 40" 4k *monitor* (I think using them as TVs is stupid, don't see the point really).
Anyhow, my anonymous $0.02 (have an account, cant be bothered to use it, so there)...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @08:47AM
A 40 or 35-inch 4k curved monitor is my ideal too - but OLED and with FreeSync. I fancy one of the LG ones - tighter curves than Samsung.
At work, I got 3 x 22" at work (my little HP EliteDesk has 2xHDMI-out and 1 VGA-out).
At home, my desktop is a 24" Dell centered (landscape) and 30" off to the side (in portrait). The 30" was a bit too close.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 22 2016, @12:36AM
Single 4K 28" on the desk at work, complemented by the occasional 1080p (or smaller) that moves in beside it for special hardware projects.
Single 4K 55" touch for the kids' home-school computer.
Single 1080p 42" for the "Living Room Entertainment Screen" - it's 8 years old, and still working well enough that I'd hate to replace it with something that flakes out after a few years - I don't consider the lower resolution a problem when viewing from 15' away.
My notebooks are hooked up to 1080p externals (23" and 27"), with a "real" wired keyboard and mouse, though I rarely use the built-in keyboard/touchpad, I do spread work onto the built-in screen.
If you can't tell, I believe that spending $700 on a single 4K screen is a much better solution than buying 2 smaller 1080p screens and mucking about with special mounts to hold them, etc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by Frost on Monday August 22 2016, @01:26AM
Double 8-port PS2/VGA KVM (16 ports total) with an additional USB/DVI 4-port daisy-chained through PS2-to-USB and VGA-to-DVI translators. Yeah, that's right, 19 computers hooked up to one VGA monitor. I recently upgraded it to LCD with 1920x1080 which is the max res supported by the analog KVMs.
The computers all run Slackware, which still has no systemd in this year's 14.2 release. Some of them dual-boot various versions of Windows.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Monday August 22 2016, @01:47AM
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.
(Score: 2) by termigator on Monday August 22 2016, @04:47AM
> 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
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.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Monday August 22 2016, @03:45AM
When I bought my monitor I was so into playing TES-V: Skyrim and modding it to look immersive and shit, I went for the best monitor for color reproduction in my budget. I have Dell U2412M (1920x1200) IPS
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @03:54AM
6x LCD's on Win7pro. This station is about six years old, I have a new rig built but not configured yet. It has Linux on it, and I'm dreading getting everything up and going - it's not that I can't or that Linux is hard (it isn't! Be patient and read!), it's just that no matter what flavor you're used to, changing to a new environment after years of settling in will take time. And everyone is short on time.
(Score: 1) by Pete (big-pete) on Monday August 22 2016, @06:40AM
I have a single curved ultrawide (21:9) Samsung monitor on my desk running at 3440x1440.
I don't want to go back to anything narrower. I'm really not sure how 16:9 is so popular when 21:9 is an option. If I could pay a sensible amount of money to have a large 21:9 TV, I'd do it.
-- Pete.
(Score: 2) by boltronics on Monday August 22 2016, @10:08AM
I have an old Intel i7-930, 24Gb RAM and an AMD 5870 Eyefinity 6 [amd.com] graphics card (which I brought on bitmit.net with Bitcoin back in the day). 6x 1920x1200 monitors, all turned on their side, positioned around my desk in a semi-circle.
That's my work machine. At home I just have a i7-6700K overclocked to 4.6GHz, 32Gb RAM, 2x M.2 Samsing Pro 950 drives, a Fury X and a single 2k BenQ XL2730Z. One day the free software amdgpu drivers will support FreeSync... one day.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @12:20PM
Here's your chance to brag a bit about your dick!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @04:39PM
2 x 1920/1080 monitor.
1 x win7-steam and 1x os leap 42.1 w/ http://wiki.compiz.org/Plugins/Expo [compiz.org]
(Score: 1) by fubari on Monday August 22 2016, @05:57PM
For my laptop when I travel this thing has been awesome: ASUS MB MB169B+ 15.6" [amazon.com]. $180 well spent.
Very slim, easily fits in my backpack, fully powered by laptop (usb3). Uses display link drivers, and some of the amazon reviews say it works w/Linux (haven't tried that myself, just linux running in a vm on a windows host).
I've used it at home on my desk some times; can be nice to have an extra monitor in portrait mode for reading PDF's and longer web pages.
If you get one of these, make sure you look for the "+" plus option (as in MB168B+) which is 1920 x 1080, the cheaper versions I've looked at are only 720p vertical and hate trying to use 720p monitors :-)
(Score: 1) by pen-helm on Monday August 22 2016, @07:33PM
Got a 5k Retina iMac. Running at 3840x2160 thanks to the RDM utility.
(Score: 1) by dark_requiem on Tuesday August 23 2016, @12:08AM
OK, so I just finished building what I consider the ultimate gaming rig, and I will take the opportunity to brag.
First, in answer to the primary question, the new monitor has just been hooked up, and it's an Acer Predator X34, 34" 1440p ultrawide 100Hz Gsync. It is beautiful, and it is fast.
But, more interesting than the monitor is what it's connected to. The hardware itself is standard over-the-top gaming rig style: Gigabyte G1 Gaming Z170X Gaming G1 motherboard (dual full x16 PCIe slots and built-in water block!). An intel i7 6600k, 64 GB DDR4 3000 (15-15-15-35 timings), 2 x MSI GTX 1080 Sea Hawk EK (oc'd 1080s with EKWB blocks factory installed, no warranty voiding for my watercooling!), and a pair of Samsung 950 pro 512GB SSDs. There are two custom water cooling loops, one cools the cpu/memory/motherboard, and one cools the two GPUs, and even heavily overclocked, it runs icy cold.
But, more interesting still is the software setup. For a gaming machine, it's far from standard. First of all, the OS that boots on the machine is Debian Stretch with KDE. It is fast, it is stable, and we're at the point where most of the bugs I dealt with have been worked out, and most of the plasma desktop features have been added in. It does, unfortunately, run systemd, which is something I could do without, but for purposes of this machine, I'm willing to deal (I upgraded from Debian Jessie mostly due to plasma 5's superior dpi scaling adjustments, systemd was largely incidental to that).
Now, first thing any gamer will see wrong with this is, I'm running Linux. I'm a big advocate of Linux gaming, and for any given game, given the option, I will run it under Linux. But we also all know the AAA titles mostly never hit linux (yet. Work your astounding magic, Vulkan!), and if you want to be gaming with the latest and greatest, you're stuck running Windows. But I'll be damned if I'm going to boot to it directly, if I don't have to. And, luckily, I don't. My Windows install runs in a VM, via qemu/kvm/libvirtd. The host Debian OS gets only the integrated Intel GPU, and the 1080s are bound to the vfio driver for passthrough. I also pass through one of the two (or three, if you use the sata express usb 3.1 bay that comes with this mobo) USB controllers on the motherboard (luckily, one of them is in its own iommu group, so can be passed through by itself), as well as passing through the onboard creative sound card (not ideal, the linux host doesn't seem to like unbinding it cleanly, so while it works in the guest, it doesn't rebind to the host properly, but this isn't a big issue for me). The VM's disk drive is an LVM volume (my entire system is on a RAID0 based on the two Samsungs, with a LUKS volume on top of that, and an LVM VG on top of that, so thanks to latest grub2, everything, even the boot partition, is encrypted, and it all unlocks with one password.). So, I created to LVs, one for installing a VM of debian stretch, one for installing Win10 (the debian LV is for linux gaming, so I don't have to mess with binding/unbinding the GPUs to the host OS, and can just pass through to whichever VM I'm going to use for the game I'm going to play. Unfortunately, both cards are in the same iommu group, so I'm limited to passing them both through to an OS, I can't, for instance, run separate VMs, each with one card running different games).
I get what is, so far as I can tell, full native performance. The monitor was the last piece of the puzzle (it has, among its other features, both HDMI and DP, so I can now use the input button on the monitor to switch between host on hdmi, and guest on DP, since I want the guests to have gsync support, but don't care about gsync on the host). I have a single set of kb/mouse connected (along with a thrustmaster warthog hotas/rudder pedals), which I connect to an IOGear USB3 switch, which connects the whole setup to two USB ports on the computer (one on each USB controller, so one is on the host, one passed through to the guest), so I can switch I/O between host and guest with two button presses.
The sole and singular problem with this setup, at present, is that with recent nvidia driver versions, I'm unable to run in SLI, so I'm wasting an entire 1080 on physx processing. There is a program called DifferentSLI, which I believe would solve my sli problem (by patching the nvidia driver to always report that sli is certified), but it hasn't been updated for recent driver versions. I've looked at the code, and it's searching for a specific hex string to identify the patch location, but I haven't had the time to pour over nvidia drivers with a hex editor to see what's needed to get it working with current driver versions). But, other than SLI, the whole setup works perfectly. I'm currently working on building a set of iptables rules that allow the Windows VM to install updates, run games, and have exactly no other internet access, so windows won't be able to report home. Basically, I'm taming the beast and keeping it in a cage.
So, what I have created is a completely virtualized Windows gaming environment, carefully isolated within a Linux host, which allows me to run any and every game on the market at ultra settings in 1440p, while still conveniently avoiding ever actually booting Windows on the bare metal (other than firmware updates, which, unfortunately, gigabyte only releases as Windows programs, but I have a separate old HDD with a windows install I can boot to run firmware updates, as necessary). And, I gain many of the advantages Linux brings to the table, like regular LVM snapshots should I need to experiment with, and possibly break, Windows, or to roll back to when MS breaks my install, or a virus slips past ESET. Once I have SLI, the setup will be complete. And, all the while, I can also support and hopefully encourage Linux gaming by playing those games which are actually ported on native linux. All without ever having to reboot the machine!
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Tuesday August 23 2016, @01:45AM
At home, I have a pair of Dell 24" monitors (kindly provided by work with the laptop dock)
At work I have 2x27" (run off the Dell docking station) and 1x23" (run off a USB to DVI Displaylink from Monoprice.com)
On the road I have the 1600x900 laptop display and a 15.6" 1920x1080 USB powered ASUS MB168B+
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by cykros on Tuesday August 23 2016, @09:05PM
I have a tower I built a few years ago, nothing too special, with an AMD Phenom II x6 processor at 2.4 ghz, with 16 Gb of 1033 ddr3 ram, an nvidia geforce gtx 670 graphics card, and a wireless keyboard/trackball, as well as Xbox 360 wireless game controller. For monitors I've got a 50" LG LCD tv via hdmi, and a 30" svga emachines monitor. My "chair" is a lovesac sactionals couch (definitely the most expensive part of the whole setup), and I've got a sennheiser 900 mhz wireless headset for late night audio. I run Slackware 14.2, because I'm lazy, and fixing everything that "user friendliness" breaks on the other distros got old long before systemd even came around.
The tv also gets used for other things, including the occasional cable tv viewing (comcast discounted our internet if we agreed to let them pipe 12 or so channels into our home), a Wii, and a raspberry pi. I've considered also hooking up a Windows 7 desktop I found on the side of the road when a neighbor moved out for gaming or anything else I felt the need to use Windows for, but so far, I've never had a need (I prefer mostly emulator gaming anyway, along with the occasional minecraft, or once in a blue moon native steam game).