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Currently my personal PC is hooked up to four 1080p monitors, each 21.5" because that's all I could reasonably afford to put on my table (monitor costs, VESA mo
by KronisLV 4y ago
Currently my personal PC is hooked up to four 1080p monitors, each 21.5" because that's all I could reasonably afford to put on my table (monitor costs, VESA mounts/stands for the weight, GPU that can serve that resolution well).
This setup works pretty well for most things I might want to do: it works well for recording or streaming because I can use one of them purely for the content that I want to show, while managing OBS/music/notes on other monitors.
It also works well for development, because I can look at code and a web browser, as well as have a Git client, terminal or something like docs open all at the same time and switch between those easily. I don't need to worry about overlapping windows or lots of windows on a single monitor, or many tiny tiled windows, or having to manage everything with multiple workspaces - everything is just there, side by side.
I can also vaguely organize things by importance, if I feel like it - my development stuff can be front and center (two widescreen monitors atop of one another), some utilities etc. on a vertical monitor to the side, whereas the less important things like e-mail or IM clients etc. to the side further.
I'm not saying that using just a laptop screen isn't workable, because it most certainly is, but for my personal approach more monitors is indeed better, at least up to a point. 3 or 4 monitors feels like the sweet spot so far (especially because it isn't too hard to get a GPU that supports them).
Pain point: if you ever use Windows and have any of your monitors turned vertically, you'll probably want something like FancyZones for the window snapping to work correctly: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzones https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzon... Also on widescreen displays it seems to me that vertical taskbars work a bit better, which can be problematic in certain OSes (like Windows 11), but isn't much of an issue in others (most Linux distros).
If VR resolution was better, it'd be nice to take this layout to the max: having windows in 3D space, using them as a monitor each. A bit like what Safespaces did: https://arcan-fe.com/2018/03/29/safespaces-an-open-source-vr-desktop/ https://arcan-fe.com/2018/03/29/safespaces-an-open-source-vr...