4 ms·

Same for me. Multiple desktops with tiled windows on a single screen has been a much better experience than the two screen setup I had in every job before. Exa

by smoe 6y ago

Same for me. Multiple desktops with tiled windows on a single screen has been a much better experience than the two screen setup I had in every job before. Example for my desktops setup for web application development over the last couple of years: 1. Browser with the product I'm currently working on, nothing else 2. Shells for all sorts of small tasks like tailing a log to REPLs for quick experimentations 3. Application IDE(s) 4. SQL IDE 5. Music player 6. Communication (Mail, slack, etc.) and secondary browser for miscellaneous things The greatest thing for me is, that what I'm currently doing is in full focus and everything else basically doesn't exist. No notifications dinging in peripheral vision or other distractions. Also it is nice, that when I switch to laptop only, the workflows are exactly the same just with more limited screen space = less tiles I can use. If for a given tasks it is beneficial to have things side by side, it is just a couple of key strokes to re-arrange windows and or create an ad-hoc desktop until the task is finished. Of course I could use multiple desktops and tiled windows on multiple screens, but from my experiments it added more complexity that benefits. I would rather go for a bigger, higher quality screen than adding another.

markstos 6y ago
Agreed. My major workflows involve a 28" 4K screen with a tiling window manager. The second monitor is often empty or has chat window or music player in it.
- rightbyte 6y ago
  Ye that is how I use multiple monitors too. 2nd monitor has something I use like 5 minutes to the hour, like Spotify etc.
- dajohnson89 6y ago
  what does a 4k screen do for productivity? i get the image is clearer than 1080p but is it worth the higher spend?
  - alasdair_ 6y ago
    It lets you fit more stuff on the screen, legibly.
  - oneplane 6y ago
    Depends on how you run it. A screen is more than just "4k", or 4000 pixels wide. The amount of pixels in total spread out over the physical dimension, depending on the aspect ratio and the distance between you and the screen as well as the rendered density by the computer together make the result. So, you could use a 27 inch 4k display at 16:9 aspect ratio (which is 3840 by 2160 pixels) in a way that gets you the native resolution which results in much more usable space but the displayed quality isn't all that great. You can run them at 2560x1440 rendering which sacrifices some pace for much improved quality. Works well when you don't sit super close to your screen. Or, if you like more space but still have a little better quality than the jagged mess that is the native resolution, you could run it at 3008x1692. Close to fully usable space but still way better in terms of quality. The scale of your computer rendered interface and text versus the actual pixel size and density on your display gives you a balance to choose from for space vs. quality. Which one works best is a combination between physical distance to the screen and personal preference (which mostly forms based on cognitive load).
  - spanhandler 6y ago
    My experience, after buying a monitor for home for the first time in like a decade and getting a very nice 27" HP z27 4K: it's... fine. I think I'd need like 5 more diagonal inches before I could really fit more on it than I can on a lower-pixel-count 16:10 monitor the same size. Because of the way scaling works, what I want is everything scaled to about 1.5x, but that's computationally expensive and/or looks bad, so in practice I run at 2x anyway, so the benefits in stuff-on-screen aren't really that high. I can keep fonts set a little smaller I guess. I kinda regret not getting 2x 1440p monitors with similar picture quality for less money. Meanwhile it makes using Linux a giant pain in the ass, unless you go all-in on a major desktop on a major distro, and then also get lucky. Possibly I'd have a better opinion of it if I were using it with macOS rather than Win10 and Linux. [EDIT] and OMG lacking auto-temp-control based on surrounding light has me really wishing I'd just put the monitor cash toward an iMac. Way more eye strain.

by smoe 6y ago

markstos 6y ago

Agreed. My major workflows involve a 28" 4K screen with a tiling window manager. The second monitor is often empty or has chat window or music player in it.

rightbyte 6y ago
Ye that is how I use multiple monitors too. 2nd monitor has something I use like 5 minutes to the hour, like Spotify etc.
dajohnson89 6y ago
what does a 4k screen do for productivity? i get the image is clearer than 1080p but is it worth the higher spend?
- alasdair_ 6y ago
  It lets you fit more stuff on the screen, legibly.
- oneplane 6y ago
  Depends on how you run it. A screen is more than just "4k", or 4000 pixels wide. The amount of pixels in total spread out over the physical dimension, depending on the aspect ratio and the distance between you and the screen as well as the rendered density by the computer together make the result. So, you could use a 27 inch 4k display at 16:9 aspect ratio (which is 3840 by 2160 pixels) in a way that gets you the native resolution which results in much more usable space but the displayed quality isn't all that great. You can run them at 2560x1440 rendering which sacrifices some pace for much improved quality. Works well when you don't sit super close to your screen. Or, if you like more space but still have a little better quality than the jagged mess that is the native resolution, you could run it at 3008x1692. Close to fully usable space but still way better in terms of quality. The scale of your computer rendered interface and text versus the actual pixel size and density on your display gives you a balance to choose from for space vs. quality. Which one works best is a combination between physical distance to the screen and personal preference (which mostly forms based on cognitive load).
- spanhandler 6y ago
  My experience, after buying a monitor for home for the first time in like a decade and getting a very nice 27" HP z27 4K: it's... fine. I think I'd need like 5 more diagonal inches before I could really fit more on it than I can on a lower-pixel-count 16:10 monitor the same size. Because of the way scaling works, what I want is everything scaled to about 1.5x, but that's computationally expensive and/or looks bad, so in practice I run at 2x anyway, so the benefits in stuff-on-screen aren't really that high. I can keep fonts set a little smaller I guess. I kinda regret not getting 2x 1440p monitors with similar picture quality for less money. Meanwhile it makes using Linux a giant pain in the ass, unless you go all-in on a major desktop on a major distro, and then also get lucky. Possibly I'd have a better opinion of it if I were using it with macOS rather than Win10 and Linux. [EDIT] and OMG lacking auto-temp-control based on surrounding light has me really wishing I'd just put the monitor cash toward an iMac. Way more eye strain.