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14 Megapixel, Six Monitor Ubuntu Karmic Setup
- ashleyw 17y agoI'd much rather have two decent panels than those six cheap TNs. Especially considering the poor viewing angles you'd end up with that setup. The colour degradation is going to be absolutely awful.
- krakensden 17y agoIt depends on the work you're doing. If he's not an artist, he almost certainly doesn't care.
- jasonmorton 17y agoI'm an academic, so it is mostly black-and-white and some data visualization.
- lanstein 17y agoHave you ever tried to write code on a TN panel? I ordered a Dell 22" UltraSharp with a TN, and sent it back the next day for the 24" that has the VA panel (and is 2.5x the price).
- ashleyw 17y agoSame, had my 24" TN for 2 days before returning it for a HP IPS panel for 2.5x the price — so glad I did. Even at the optimal viewing angle, colours were fundamentally lighter at the bottom (and darker at the top), making text in the bottom 1/3rd straining on the eyes. Never again, given a budget, I'd much rather to compromise on the computer hardware than the monitor.
- JshWright 17y agoPersonally I don't think it's right for a man to have more screens connected to his computer than he has blades on his disposable razor...
- pierrefar 17y agoWell the mainstream blades are catching up very quickly... Also, some men use a double-edged blade or a cut-throat (very rare), which means dual monitor setups already break your rule.
- eru 17y agoThe singularity is near: http://codeforfood.org/2006/03/19/the-razor-blade-singularity/ http://codeforfood.org/2006/03/19/the-razor-blade-singularit...
- pierrefar 17y agoFor some reason, the word "ouch" came to mind :)
- streety 17y agoI wouldn't consider my safety razor, or a cut-throat, as disposable though.
- happenstance 17y agoRight. I think the current max is [5 blades](http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930 http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930).
- electromagnetic 17y agoI personally need a maximum of 2 screens for working, 1 screen for social networking, 1 screen for procrastination and from time to time the 5th screen would do nicely for porn. I seriously would not know what to do with the 6th. I can't use it for social networking or procrastination as I waste enough time already, and 2 screens for porn is just creepy. I mean everyone has their needs, but 2 screens is beyond need. That 6th monitor is going to be creepy, no one will know what to do with it. It's just going to be blank and staring at you, making you feel shameful that you can't give it a dedicated task it can call its own!
- jacquesm 17y agoFor a much easier on the neck and cheaper solution: One 26" screen in the middle, two 24" screens rotated 90 degrees left and right of it. Raise the middle screen so the top aligns with the other two and push the other two down as far as they will go. edit: one of the nicest benefits of this setup that I have found to date is to have a full-height email client on one side (right for me) and a full height browser on the left screen. It especially pays off when searching for stuff, no more scrolling, all the results on one page are visible at once.
- Nwallins 17y agoOnce you've raised the middle screen so it is top-aligned with the other two, aren't you finished? Why would you then push the other two down? Do you mean to 'push' all three down?
- jacquesm 17y agoRight, ok change the sequence. Push the side ones down as far as they will go, then align the top of the center one with the top of the left and the right ones. Sorry. That was unclear. The reason why you want to push the left and right ones down as far as they will go is because that's already quite the height. The nice thing about this trick is that it is a relatively narrow setup and still gives you plenty of desktop space. It's about the width of a standard two monitor setup, only much higher.
- Luc 17y agoIn that case (rotating the screens) don't get a Twisted Nematic display. I have the Samsung 2443SW, which, like the Samsung panels in the link, has a TN display, and it is simply not usable rotated 90 degrees. The color and brightness gradient from top to bottom is bearable in panoramic mode, since both your eyes see the same color on each horizontal line. Rotated 90 degrees it's simply awful, because each eyes sees a different color/brightness, and the angle between top and bottom of the screen is so much larger.
- jacquesm 17y ago
- rythie 17y agoWe had a 15 screen setup for a while http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardcunningham/859013515/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardcunningham/859013515/ tried to run it from 32bit machine, but with 8 graphics chips (on 4 cards) it only left 700MB or so of addressable memory, so it crawled. In the end we ran it on a cluster.
- jacquesm 17y agoOn a university budget things get a little easier :) Very nice setup, I've done something similar with xdmx long ago, but with only 5 screens, the 5th screen, a mac is not visible in this picture: http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/projects/screen/dscf1072.jpg.html http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/projects/screen/dscf1072.jpg.ht... But I found that the 'wraparound' screen requires way too much movement, so that's why I've been trying to find ways to reduce the horizontal component. For desktop work I think the 1+2 solution I described elsewhere in this thread is next to optimal. This one is nice too: http://www.jmu.edu/hyper/visualization/hardware.html http://www.jmu.edu/hyper/visualization/hardware.html And I've seen another one but I can't seem to locate the link.
- daok 17y agoPretty impressive since it's already hard to have dual screens working well on Ubuntu. Nice job!
- jacquesm 17y agoWhy is that hard? I have something quite close to that here and was actually surprised how easy it was to get it running, including CUDA support and 3D acceleration.
- shabda 17y agoI have as basic a setup as a dual monitor can be. A laptop connected to a second display, http://uswaretech.com/dump/screenshots/screenshot_018.png http://uswaretech.com/dump/screenshots/screenshot_018.png With this Ubuntu will, 1. Get the initial display order wrong 50% of the time, (The monitor which was on the left will be on right on next startup.) 2. Wont get the the larger monitor to display in its full area, if I plug the second monitor and enable it to already running laptop, some part of display area will be blank. Admittedly, both of these are possibly fixable via modifying xorg.conf, but if I boot to windows, it gets it right, every time, without any modifications. :(
- jacquesm 17y agoMan that's frustrating. I'm in the same boat as the other poster in this subthread, nvidia all the way and that may be why it works so well. You may want to specify your PCI devices in the xorg.conf instead of leaving it to auto detection, that is one way to lock things down.
- justin_vanw 17y agoThe reason you are having problems is that the first monitor is selected by the bios at boot time. If there is no monitor attached, it has to make the 'first' monitor the one on the laptop. If the laptop lid is closed, it may pick the external as the first monitor. Generally the easiest way to get this done is to have nvidia graphics and use nvidia-settings. If you have some less well supported graphics setup, welcome to the world of linux!
- chime 17y agoIn 2001, I bought my first LCD, a 19" Princeton Graphics monitor for $1200. In 2004, I bought two Dell 19" for $600 each to replace the original LCD. In 2007, three Dell 19" LCDs for $400 each to replace the two Dells. Now, I can buy six 23" LCDs for approx. $200 each for a total cost of about $1200. It's funny how the number of monitors continues to increase while the total nominal investment remains constant. I had been talking on and on for years about getting a 6-LCD setup and I'd even predetermined what I'd do with each LCD in a 3x2 layout (top1: IM/Chat, 2: Graphics Editor, 3: Putty/Shell, bottom 4: FTP/Explorer, 5: Text Editor, 6: Browsers). My techie friends laughed at me but at a resolution of about 2048x1152/LCD, I would have ample resolution for just about everything and I wouldn't have to alt-tab at all. My productivity in web-dev would absolutely sky-rocket. And since could rig my own stand instead of buying a $600 one, I could get my dream-setup for about $1500. I had built my workstation in 2007 to easily handle 6 DVI ports when the time was right. Now all I needed was an excuse to splurge. Last month, two of my Dell 19" died, leaving me with just one monitor. My wife joked that I needed new monitors because she didn't wanna be married to some one-LCD guy. She practically kicked me out of bed and told me to find my 6-LCD X-Mas gift. I spent three hours surfing Newegg, Dell Outlet etc. and finally found my dream setup. Right before I clicked 'Place Order' I yelled out "Honey if I click this button, I'm never leaving my computer room." I don't think she heard me but I clearly did and for some weird reason I didn't like it. I cleared my cart and started looking for a laptop instead. I've always been anti-laptops because come on, how can you even compare a 3 or 6-LCD setup to a laptop with a tiny screen, tiny keyboard, and crappy batteries. However, something went off in my head at that point and I realized I didn't want my perfect 6-LCD setup even though it was right there in front of me. I have wanted 6-LCDs every single day for the past decade - ever since I started making web-apps. But it was when I yelled that I don't want to leave my room that I realized that I actually do want to leave my room. Now I take my laptop with me everywhere I go and program whenever/wherever I want to. It's a very big change for me and my productivity has definitely taken a hit. However, my desire to code has risen and that is important. Who cares if I'm capable of being highly productive if I don't feel like it most of the time? I guess the take-home lesson here is that it is not the specs but the environment and experience the setup fosters. I still might buy my 6-LCDs someday, if I ever have a crazy do-or-die startup idea, but for now, I'm just happier with a laptop.
- 17y ago
- paddy_m 17y agoI have a 30 inch at home, it is awesome, I like to use it in addition to my laptop screen. I run firefox on the laptop screen emacs on the big screen. When you move to a large screen, window management become even more problematic. Fitt's law falls apart at 2560x1600. I recently moved to stumpwm, and I have been having a blast. Stumpwm is a tiling window manager written in Common Lisp. I tried xmonad and awesome, but stumpwm just made more sense to me. I think that all of the tiling window managers are a bit clunky now, but they have a lot of potential. The next time I see 30 inch screens for less than $900 on outlet.dell.com I plan to buy 2 and mount them in portrait mode.
- Silhouette 17y ago> Fitt's law falls apart at 2560x1600. Indeed. I'm running 1920x1200 on a 24". I would really like a simple tool on WinXP so that I could "midimize" a window: drag a title bar to the corner of the desktop area (minus the task bar) and have the window snap to 1/4 of the desktop, or drag to an edge and snap to 1/2 the available space. I do something use the "Tile Vertically" and "Tile Horizontally" commands to get a neat layout, but it's too awkward to do it all the time.
- jodrellblank 17y agoSo install one: http://www.winsplit-revolution.com/ http://www.winsplit-revolution.com/ http://jgpaiva.dcmembers.com/gridmove.html http://jgpaiva.dcmembers.com/gridmove.html As described with screenshots/animation here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000928.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000928.html
- Silhouette 17y agoMany thanks, that's exactly what I wanted. I searched for tools like that a while ago and never found anything that did it at the time, so it's nice to see someone meeting the need.
- sadiq 17y agoPersonally, i'm waiting for: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/08/samsung-and-ati-team-on-syncmaster-md230-mega-displays-for-wide/2 http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/08/samsung-and-ati-team-on-s... 6 x 30" (2560x1600) for $3,100 seems like an amazing bargain.
- izend 17y agoI was at CES this year and those monitors were amazing. We asked when they were going to be released the Samsung guy said later this year.
- paddy_m 17y agoengadget got it wrong. They are 23 inch screens at 1920x1200. Not an impressive deal at that price. if they were 30 inch at 2560 it would be outstanding
- z8000 17y agoWith so many screens I would think it might be interesting to consider removing the bevels on the edges. The big black bar effect looks bad IMHO. I have no idea if this is possible to remove while leaving the VESA mount on the back, or even if the entire monitor would fall apart. Great, now I'm going to spend the day taking apart an old monitor.
- sh1mmer 17y agoI'm always curious why people think having multiple displays is so super awesome. 1) It ruins your neck. The ergo people at Yahoo really dislike giving people dual monitors let alone 6. 2) You can only look at so many of these screens at once, probably too at the distance he is sitting. Why not just use virtual desktops at that point because it doesn't cause neck trauma.
- brianobush 17y agothe only application I can see is wall street traders, even they don't need more then 2-4.
- jasonmorton 17y agoand 640K ought to be enough for anybody. Seriously, if you want to move things like working on a big chalkboard or with papers spread out on a big desk to the computerized version, it makes sense to have space to work.
- slioslat 17y agoyou're clearly not a trader. give a trader a screen and they'll fill it.
- brianobush 17y agoNo, I am not, but I know a few. Depends on the markets you trade and the analysis you do though.
- listic 17y agoCould you please elaborate on ergonomics? Exactly what is causing the neck problems? Personally I am using much less monitors, but I am very interested in ergonomics of it.
- sh1mmer 17y agoMoving your neck around constantly. I've had recommended by multiple ergonomics specialist and a chiropractor to only use as much display as I can see without having to move my head to see it. It's not that moving your neck is bad, it's that constantly moving it around all day causes unnatural stress. Much like you can give yourself RSI from bad posture when using an input device.
- grandalf 17y agoI have been coding on a tiny netbook (with emacs in full screen mode) for the past few months and I LOVE it. I now think that needing more than a 9" monitor is a code smell.
- gphil 17y ago> I now think that needing more than a 9" monitor is a code smell. I agree with this for most simple coding tasks, but when profiling, debugging and looking at documentation I think that more screen real estate is necessary.
- grandalf 17y agoI guess that depends on whether you like having windows tiled or if you just like to use one window at a time. I generally prefer full screen with one thing going on at a time, and I can switch to a different one instantly by hitting alt-tab.
- wizard_2 17y agoMy problem is my hands start to hurt after typing on a netbook for any length of time. I usually use synergy to share a keyboard and mouse with my desktop and laptop, and honestly do more of my development on my mac laptop then my pc desktop. My laptop's keyboard is adequate but the trackpad is not. Switching between the trackpad and keyboard leads to pain. My main problem is finding a quality split keyboard that has function keys without special functions and doesn't feel like I'm typing on a sheet of rubber.
- grandalf 17y agoI've noticed that the biggest problem for my hands, wrists, etc., is using a trackpad or mouse. The more my hands just stay on the keyboard the better they feel. One nice thing about typing on the netbook is that the front part (in front of the keyboard where your palms tend to rest) is very short and this prevents me from the bad habit of resting my wrists... since the netbook is light it also prevents the bad habit of exerting downward wrist pressure to keep the laptop balanced. I think it's good to do whatever works,... I was skeptical that I'd like the netbook, but I haven't used my full size laptop in months.
- jorsh 17y agoWow! That's six whole displays I can't do anything useful on!
- andrewljohnson 17y agoThis is what I use: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3370/3638277193_27cc47d9b8.jpg?v=0 http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3370/3638277193_27cc47d9b8.jp.... The only extra hardware I need to run a 30 and a 24 off of my Macbook is a USB->DVI adapter... less than a hundred bucks. His set up is pretty nice, though I don't think I could use all of those screens. Some of the prices he throws out in his article are also kind of whack. I don't know of any Macbooks that cost $3600.
- jodrellblank 17y agoIn a multiple monitor discussion, it's never inappropriate to link to Stefan Didak's home office: http://www.stefandidak.com/office/ http://www.stefandidak.com/office/