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I can hardly imagine being productive on a single monitor anymore. After having three 19" monitors for a couple very productive years, I tried switching to two

by enobrev 10y ago

I can hardly imagine being productive on a single monitor anymore. After having three 19" monitors for a couple very productive years, I tried switching to two 27" monitors. It added up to more space, to be sure, but I spent way too much time managing windows. And then I took a job with a startup and bought a laptop since they wanted me to show up in the office on occasion, and working with one monitor was like driving with one eye open. I started to get better at it, but there was so much extra effort involved in context switching. Even as it became muscle memory, it didn't come close to beating a simple glance to the left or right. They offered a separate monitor, but I chose to go back to working from home and switched to three 22" monitors, which has been perfect for years (though I want at least one more now for testing non-linux apps). Focus has nothing to do with monitor layout. I have three monitors, but only one thing is happening at any given time. When I'm coding, email, slack, etc, are all off. It's a terminal on my left with git, and logs, a fullscreen IDE in the middle, and documentation and test application on the right. When I'm shopping, it's reviews in the middle, shopping cart on the left, and search on the right. When I'm catching up on slack / email, they're both open on separate screens with an extra for research (Github, etc). When I'm editing photos, its the collection on the left, editor in the middle, research (editor docs, etc) on the right. Focus is all about strictly doing one thing at a time. Multiple monitors is about switching contexts without losing focus. The only problem I have now is that I don't blink often enough. Also, to the point about "Same Workflow When Remote", I just choose not to work while traveling any more. I'm not as productive, nor do I want to learn to be more productive while on the road. That used to be a dream for me; And then I really tried it; And I really sucked at it. I'd rather have my sit/stand desk, comfortable chair, and tea pot - all optimized for focus - than try to drive uncomfortably with one eye open.

zokier 10y ago
> After having three 19" monitors for a couple very productive years, I tried switching to two 27" monitors. It added up to more space, to be sure, but I spent way too much time managing windows That seems bit odd (in this specific case); half of a 27" display should have almost exactly the same screen-estate as a 19" screen (1280x1440 vs 1280x1024), and even Windows can do half (and quarter) screen layouts easily these days. So I don't really see why windows managing with 2x27" would be worse than 3x19"
- enobrev 10y ago
  For me, the larger screens made for either more wasted space or more effort to figure out placement of windows on each screen. With my three wide screens, I'm almost always running one window per screen - not necessarily full-screen, but still, one-per. With two larger screens, I constantly found myself trying to tetris my screens into an "ideal" layout.
  - adwf 10y ago
    Yeah I'm much the same. If I've got one monitor, give me 32" with as many pixels as you can get. Two monitors, give me 2x24"; Three monitors, 1x24" central, 2x22" side panels. I use a tiling window manager. If I have a single monitor I'll split it evenly, but I'll need as much space as I can - whilst using virtual desktops to avoid clutter. If I have two monitors I'll tend to use full screen apps rather than split, but may occasionally split open a terminal or small chat window. By small I mean, a narrow vertical tile rather than a wide horizontal. If I have three monitors, the extra width of large monitors starts to get annoying with how far around you have to look to see the farthest extent to left or right. It's easier to have smaller monitors (although still as high definition as you can get) and run them with full screen applications. The big problem though with the large monitors is that you have to do too much window management. On a 22" screen a horizontally designed app at fullscreen is great. At 32" you start feeling like you wasted a ton of space off to the right. So you use your tiling WM to do a vertical split. At that point the horizontally designed app at 3840×2160 is now a vertical oriented app at 1920x2160, which is not at all what you want, so you adjust the tiling to make the 2nd frame smaller. But if the 2nd frame should also be horizontal, you have to move it to a different monitor... Thus ending up doing a load of annoying window management when your WM is supposed to do it for you. So really, big monitors are just a tad annoying unless it's the only monitor.

by enobrev 10y ago

zokier 10y ago

> After having three 19" monitors for a couple very productive years, I tried switching to two 27" monitors. It added up to more space, to be sure, but I spent way too much time managing windows That seems bit odd (in this specific case); half of a 27" display should have almost exactly the same screen-estate as a 19" screen (1280x1440 vs 1280x1024), and even Windows can do half (and quarter) screen layouts easily these days. So I don't really see why windows managing with 2x27" would be worse than 3x19"

enobrev 10y ago
For me, the larger screens made for either more wasted space or more effort to figure out placement of windows on each screen. With my three wide screens, I'm almost always running one window per screen - not necessarily full-screen, but still, one-per. With two larger screens, I constantly found myself trying to tetris my screens into an "ideal" layout.
- adwf 10y ago
  Yeah I'm much the same. If I've got one monitor, give me 32" with as many pixels as you can get. Two monitors, give me 2x24"; Three monitors, 1x24" central, 2x22" side panels. I use a tiling window manager. If I have a single monitor I'll split it evenly, but I'll need as much space as I can - whilst using virtual desktops to avoid clutter. If I have two monitors I'll tend to use full screen apps rather than split, but may occasionally split open a terminal or small chat window. By small I mean, a narrow vertical tile rather than a wide horizontal. If I have three monitors, the extra width of large monitors starts to get annoying with how far around you have to look to see the farthest extent to left or right. It's easier to have smaller monitors (although still as high definition as you can get) and run them with full screen applications. The big problem though with the large monitors is that you have to do too much window management. On a 22" screen a horizontally designed app at fullscreen is great. At 32" you start feeling like you wasted a ton of space off to the right. So you use your tiling WM to do a vertical split. At that point the horizontally designed app at 3840×2160 is now a vertical oriented app at 1920x2160, which is not at all what you want, so you adjust the tiling to make the 2nd frame smaller. But if the 2nd frame should also be horizontal, you have to move it to a different monitor... Thus ending up doing a load of annoying window management when your WM is supposed to do it for you. So really, big monitors are just a tad annoying unless it's the only monitor.