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This is great. I recently moved to KDE Plasma (on Nobara Linux) after many years of Pop OS, because I recently moved into a new office, and no longer have room

by veidr 4y ago

This is great. I recently moved to KDE Plasma (on Nobara Linux) after many years of Pop OS, because I recently moved into a new office, and no longer have room to have my Mac and Linux setups side by side, but have to consolidate them in a single seat. There are 4-5 monitor arms and the monitors are a mix of 4K and 8K. AFAIK (and I have tried quite a lot, including the latest of all major distros like Fedora, Ubuttnu, OpenSUSE, etc) KDE Plasma using Wayland is the only way to have a typical "full desktop environment" (like GNOME, KDE, MATE, etc) that supports this kind of multi-monitor setup (where the monitors have significantly different ppi and thus need different scaling factors) and "just work" like Windows does. (BTW even macOS doesn't support this well in my experience - it renders the 8K at 6K and downscales that to 4K, and also with all monitors connected, one of them (seemingly random) blanks out for 1 second every few minutes. But I have only tested this on an M1 Max laptop.) Any modern Linux "kinda" works — if you are OK with the 4K monitors being HUGE or the 8K monitors unreadably small. Per-monitor fractional scaling is an iffy thing on Linux, and only KDE + Wayland. It almost works on X11 but just doesn't. The usual jank happens when switching monitors via a KVM, or unplugging one or plugging one back in — but then it goes into a "jank loop". So this is what finally dragged me reluctantly to Wayland. But I'm grateful to the KDE guys for hammering doggedly on multi-monitor Wayland support lately, because it is literally the only thing I have found that lets me boot up Linux and have all my displays work. I still feel like KDE is a little buggy overall, but not significantly more so than GNOME, which is the only other desktop environment with a similar breadth. P.S. If you want to deal with a desktop that is simpler (yet more DIY and higher maintenance), I think you can make Sway or Hyprland work with arbitrary resolution multi-monitor setups. But it is a lot of work. I mainly use desktop Linux for writing code at my day job, so I hoped to have something I can just install and use right away without tweaking and reading docs (fun as that might be). Pop OS works really well on 8K or 4K, but not both at the same time.

artogahr 4y ago
Im curious what work you do that you need that many 4k monitors, let alone 8k ones?
- noisy_boy 4y ago
  Not who you asked but its quite common in folks in Finance work (especially trading etc) to have 4-5 (or even more) monitor setup - they need to keep their eyes on the multiple blotters/charts simultaneously. In time-sensitive work, you can't afford to miss something happening on a window that is hidden behind others, visual comparisons can be super fast and reduce mistakes and switching windows is bothersome. I use a 43" along with two 24" inch monitors and programming with 8 split-panes (4x2) on the main one with chat/email/tailing logs on the other two makes things so much better.
  - veidr 4y ago
    Yep, when I contacted Level1Techs to ask if their "1.4 Display Port KVM Switch - Dual Monitor - Four Computer" KVM switch would support it (the monitor needs 2 cables so you need a dual monitor KVM to make it work at 60Hz), the proprietor Wendel told me that indeed it does, they know a bunch of traders that use it with these monitors. [1]: https://store.level1techs.com/products/14-display-port-kvm-dual-4computer https://store.level1techs.com/products/14-display-port-kvm-d...
  - cjbgkagh 4y ago
    That way you can look at 20 charts simultaneously and the odds are at least one will be statistically significant.
  - moonchrome 4y ago
    This sounds like a great use case for VR workspace. Is that a thing yet ? I haven't touched anything VR related since original Oculus - how far away are we from buying a 1000$ headset and it replacing all my monitors (and ideally I can travel with it) ? Anyone here using such a setup ? What gear would you recommend ?
- veidr 4y ago
  The 8K (I only actually have one of these) is for coding. I normally go into an evangelistic fervor when somebody asks me about it, but I am on my way to dinner, so let me cut to the TL;DR: The 280ppi of an 8K 31.5" display is so much better than the 220ppi or so of a 27" 5K or Apple's ludicrously expensive Pro Display XDR 6K display, that is it night and day and I couldn't ever go back. Even though the Dell UP3128K is like 5+ years old, it is so much crisper and better than any other monitor I've ever seen (including that Apple and the 5K UltraFine popular with Mac heads). I didn't even think my middle-aged eyes were good enough to have that matter at all — I cannot see pixels on the 220pi monitors. But after trying it, I realized seeing the pixels or not wasn't the right metric. It's way, way better, and almost everybody who stopped by when I had the Apple and the Dell side by side on the desk (I eventually sold the Apple, of course) said indeed they could totally see that the 280ppi screen was way better. So YMMV, but everybody should try it. :) I completely switched from Mac to Linux, for all of my day job coding work, specifically and solely because of the monitor. (Almost no Macs support 8K monitors. The latest M2 Pro and better models do support 8K, but only on TVs at the moment (there are still no 32" HDMI monitors on the market yet, and Macs only support 8K via HDMI). As for why I need 3-4 additional 4K monitors, those are only "needed" for music — which I do on the Mac. I like to just leave my virtual gear (guitar amps, effects boxes, synthesizers, etc) spread out, like I would in real life. But since I do have them, I also use them for the usual multi-monitor stuff — put Slack and Discord out of the way on the far monitor, have one monitor for the browser and dev tools, code and terminals arranged on the other two, just to avoid having to context switch.
noisy_boy 4y ago
I'm using a mixed monitor setting on KDE on Pop_OS (I know, I added KDE to Pop_OS just to try Plasma and loved it). It all works on X11 but the jank is true - I am indeed afraid of any plugging/unplugging to avoid disturbing the setup (using a Lenovo thunderbolt dock with Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 2 which uses Nvidia MaxQ graphics). Maybe I'll go back to using straight-up Kubuntu (or even just Debian) - the only worry is quality of support for Nvidia card - Pop_OS folks were the only ones with a fully working Nvidia setup when I started using it but maybe by now, Kubuntu and/or Debian also has similar level of support. Would be great if someone using Kubuntu/Debian on a mixed monitor setup with an laptop with Nvidia graphics can share their experience - ideally with Wayland since I'm interested in moving to it for better multi-monitor support.
- noworriesnate 4y ago
  Do you use PopOS with KDE on System76 hardware? I tried that and the trackpad was not fully functional.
  - noisy_boy 4y ago
    No I use Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 2 - trackpad et all work fine (I think I also get the fingerprint reader to work but it was a somewhat hit and miss affair).
- doix 4y ago
  Are you doing different scaling per monitor in X11? Different resolutions is fine. I ran many different monitor sizes and resolutions with X11 and i3wm. Just configured everything with xrandr and just had a few scripts that I ran depending where/if I was docked. But per monitor scaling seemed impossible. I just gave up and ran some monitors at a lower resolution so that the DPI was similar.
  - veidr 4y ago
    Yes, that is exactly the problem that KDE+Wayland solves for me. The 8K 32" is way higher ppi than a normal 4K (mine are 27") so you really need per-monitor scaling factor. I used to run everything at 200%, and then the 8K looked great, but the 4Ks were all huge and clownish, like scaled up 17" screens. It worked, but it wasn't good.
burntsushi 4y ago
Does KDE let you change workspaces on each monitor independently? Or does it carry over the X11 EWMH backage that requires you to have a single root window across all monitors with each workspace stretched out across it? So when you change a workspace, it changes across all monitors.
- veidr 4y ago
  By "workspaces" do you mean what KDE calls "Virtual Desktops"? AFAICT, no, they don't seem to be changeable per-monitor. Additionally, when I was poking around in the System Settings to see whether there was some option for that, I enabled "Show animation when switching" -- and then half of my monitor froze!!! :-D So "less jank" is relative, ha ha...
- ta988 4y ago
  You can set it to have different activities for each desktop and then have different desktops on each screen. Have a look at that too https://github.com/wsdfhjxc/kwin-scripts#virtual-desktops-only-on-primary https://github.com/wsdfhjxc/kwin-scripts#virtual-desktops-on...
  - burntsushi 4y ago
    Yeah I remember activities from over a decade ago. I don't recall ever being able to get it to work right. I ended up writing my own WM instead: https://github.com/BurntSushi/wingo https://github.com/BurntSushi/wingo
- tmtvl 4y ago
  It still has Extended Window Manager Hints, presumably because it's a standard that applications can adhere to to get some semblance of coherency across applications and environments. It would be interesting if a modern standard could be created, but let's be real: unless a competing standard gets pushed by Red Hat it won't take off.
  - burntsushi 4y ago
    Yeah, this is why I had to go write my own WM to have sensible multi-monitor support. I had to break one particular part of EWMH to do it. And indeed, some apps (like pagers) don't work with my WM because of that.
cycomanic 4y ago
Do I understand you correctly, you use a mix of 4-5 4k and 8k monitors for just writing code? I mean I like a 2 monitor setup for coding but I don't know what I'd do with 4 monitors. Also if you're happy with defaults a hyprland setup should not take you longer than 15min (sway probably longer), but both are quite a different way of working, so would take getting used to. One thing i regard as a big lost opportunity is why wayland doesn't allow one to simply specify a desired DPI and it scales all monitors accordingly. As it is now one still has still tweak scaling factors to get two different size/resolution monitors to display windows exactly the same size. All the information is there why can't this be done? Am I misunderstanding something?
ohthehugemanate 4y ago
Great to hear that multi DPI setups work seamlessly on KDE Plasma. Actually that capability is what brought me to wayland 4 years ago. I switched from i3 to sway, using wdisplays and kanshi to control multi monitor setups... and it was glorious even then. In 20+ years on Linux I've never been able to make my variety of environments "just work“ this seamlessly on X. It's one of my favorite things about Wayland. Now that screensharing "just works" I've run out of complaints about wayland, though. Just that it's turned me into an insufferable snob about the blurriness and incompatibility of the X apps I still have to use in xwayland. But then, I stopped buying NVIDIA more than a decade ago, and linux compatibility is a priority for me in my device selection. So I'm sure there are plenty of other users out there with a less rosy experience than mine.

by veidr 4y ago

artogahr 4y ago

Im curious what work you do that you need that many 4k monitors, let alone 8k ones?

noisy_boy 4y ago
Not who you asked but its quite common in folks in Finance work (especially trading etc) to have 4-5 (or even more) monitor setup - they need to keep their eyes on the multiple blotters/charts simultaneously. In time-sensitive work, you can't afford to miss something happening on a window that is hidden behind others, visual comparisons can be super fast and reduce mistakes and switching windows is bothersome. I use a 43" along with two 24" inch monitors and programming with 8 split-panes (4x2) on the main one with chat/email/tailing logs on the other two makes things so much better.
- veidr 4y ago
  Yep, when I contacted Level1Techs to ask if their "1.4 Display Port KVM Switch - Dual Monitor - Four Computer" KVM switch would support it (the monitor needs 2 cables so you need a dual monitor KVM to make it work at 60Hz), the proprietor Wendel told me that indeed it does, they know a bunch of traders that use it with these monitors. [1]: https://store.level1techs.com/products/14-display-port-kvm-dual-4computer https://store.level1techs.com/products/14-display-port-kvm-d...
- cjbgkagh 4y ago
  That way you can look at 20 charts simultaneously and the odds are at least one will be statistically significant.
- moonchrome 4y ago
  This sounds like a great use case for VR workspace. Is that a thing yet ? I haven't touched anything VR related since original Oculus - how far away are we from buying a 1000$ headset and it replacing all my monitors (and ideally I can travel with it) ? Anyone here using such a setup ? What gear would you recommend ?
veidr 4y ago
The 8K (I only actually have one of these) is for coding. I normally go into an evangelistic fervor when somebody asks me about it, but I am on my way to dinner, so let me cut to the TL;DR: The 280ppi of an 8K 31.5" display is so much better than the 220ppi or so of a 27" 5K or Apple's ludicrously expensive Pro Display XDR 6K display, that is it night and day and I couldn't ever go back. Even though the Dell UP3128K is like 5+ years old, it is so much crisper and better than any other monitor I've ever seen (including that Apple and the 5K UltraFine popular with Mac heads). I didn't even think my middle-aged eyes were good enough to have that matter at all — I cannot see pixels on the 220pi monitors. But after trying it, I realized seeing the pixels or not wasn't the right metric. It's way, way better, and almost everybody who stopped by when I had the Apple and the Dell side by side on the desk (I eventually sold the Apple, of course) said indeed they could totally see that the 280ppi screen was way better. So YMMV, but everybody should try it. :) I completely switched from Mac to Linux, for all of my day job coding work, specifically and solely because of the monitor. (Almost no Macs support 8K monitors. The latest M2 Pro and better models do support 8K, but only on TVs at the moment (there are still no 32" HDMI monitors on the market yet, and Macs only support 8K via HDMI). As for why I need 3-4 additional 4K monitors, those are only "needed" for music — which I do on the Mac. I like to just leave my virtual gear (guitar amps, effects boxes, synthesizers, etc) spread out, like I would in real life. But since I do have them, I also use them for the usual multi-monitor stuff — put Slack and Discord out of the way on the far monitor, have one monitor for the browser and dev tools, code and terminals arranged on the other two, just to avoid having to context switch.

noisy_boy 4y ago

I'm using a mixed monitor setting on KDE on Pop_OS (I know, I added KDE to Pop_OS just to try Plasma and loved it). It all works on X11 but the jank is true - I am indeed afraid of any plugging/unplugging to avoid disturbing the setup (using a Lenovo thunderbolt dock with Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 2 which uses Nvidia MaxQ graphics). Maybe I'll go back to using straight-up Kubuntu (or even just Debian) - the only worry is quality of support for Nvidia card - Pop_OS folks were the only ones with a fully working Nvidia setup when I started using it but maybe by now, Kubuntu and/or Debian also has similar level of support. Would be great if someone using Kubuntu/Debian on a mixed monitor setup with an laptop with Nvidia graphics can share their experience - ideally with Wayland since I'm interested in moving to it for better multi-monitor support.

noworriesnate 4y ago
Do you use PopOS with KDE on System76 hardware? I tried that and the trackpad was not fully functional.
- noisy_boy 4y ago
  No I use Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 2 - trackpad et all work fine (I think I also get the fingerprint reader to work but it was a somewhat hit and miss affair).
doix 4y ago
Are you doing different scaling per monitor in X11? Different resolutions is fine. I ran many different monitor sizes and resolutions with X11 and i3wm. Just configured everything with xrandr and just had a few scripts that I ran depending where/if I was docked. But per monitor scaling seemed impossible. I just gave up and ran some monitors at a lower resolution so that the DPI was similar.
- veidr 4y ago
  Yes, that is exactly the problem that KDE+Wayland solves for me. The 8K 32" is way higher ppi than a normal 4K (mine are 27") so you really need per-monitor scaling factor. I used to run everything at 200%, and then the 8K looked great, but the 4Ks were all huge and clownish, like scaled up 17" screens. It worked, but it wasn't good.

burntsushi 4y ago

Does KDE let you change workspaces on each monitor independently? Or does it carry over the X11 EWMH backage that requires you to have a single root window across all monitors with each workspace stretched out across it? So when you change a workspace, it changes across all monitors.

veidr 4y ago
By "workspaces" do you mean what KDE calls "Virtual Desktops"? AFAICT, no, they don't seem to be changeable per-monitor. Additionally, when I was poking around in the System Settings to see whether there was some option for that, I enabled "Show animation when switching" -- and then half of my monitor froze!!! :-D So "less jank" is relative, ha ha...
ta988 4y ago
You can set it to have different activities for each desktop and then have different desktops on each screen. Have a look at that too https://github.com/wsdfhjxc/kwin-scripts#virtual-desktops-only-on-primary https://github.com/wsdfhjxc/kwin-scripts#virtual-desktops-on...
- burntsushi 4y ago
  Yeah I remember activities from over a decade ago. I don't recall ever being able to get it to work right. I ended up writing my own WM instead: https://github.com/BurntSushi/wingo https://github.com/BurntSushi/wingo
tmtvl 4y ago
It still has Extended Window Manager Hints, presumably because it's a standard that applications can adhere to to get some semblance of coherency across applications and environments. It would be interesting if a modern standard could be created, but let's be real: unless a competing standard gets pushed by Red Hat it won't take off.
- burntsushi 4y ago
  Yeah, this is why I had to go write my own WM to have sensible multi-monitor support. I had to break one particular part of EWMH to do it. And indeed, some apps (like pagers) don't work with my WM because of that.

cycomanic 4y ago

Do I understand you correctly, you use a mix of 4-5 4k and 8k monitors for just writing code? I mean I like a 2 monitor setup for coding but I don't know what I'd do with 4 monitors. Also if you're happy with defaults a hyprland setup should not take you longer than 15min (sway probably longer), but both are quite a different way of working, so would take getting used to. One thing i regard as a big lost opportunity is why wayland doesn't allow one to simply specify a desired DPI and it scales all monitors accordingly. As it is now one still has still tweak scaling factors to get two different size/resolution monitors to display windows exactly the same size. All the information is there why can't this be done? Am I misunderstanding something?

ohthehugemanate 4y ago

Great to hear that multi DPI setups work seamlessly on KDE Plasma. Actually that capability is what brought me to wayland 4 years ago. I switched from i3 to sway, using wdisplays and kanshi to control multi monitor setups... and it was glorious even then. In 20+ years on Linux I've never been able to make my variety of environments "just work“ this seamlessly on X. It's one of my favorite things about Wayland. Now that screensharing "just works" I've run out of complaints about wayland, though. Just that it's turned me into an insufferable snob about the blurriness and incompatibility of the X apps I still have to use in xwayland. But then, I stopped buying NVIDIA more than a decade ago, and linux compatibility is a priority for me in my device selection. So I'm sure there are plenty of other users out there with a less rosy experience than mine.