14 Megapixel, Six Monitor Ubuntu Karmic Setup
blog.jasonmorton.com
blog.jasonmorton.com
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.
I'm not sure about this. Context switching is not a good idea. Imagine that you are in the middle of your project and a new IM message appear in your first monitor.
The mental cost of task switching probably takes a larger toll than Alt-Tab-ing.
> She practically kicked me out of bed and told me to find my 6-LCD X-Mas gift.
;-) Probably because you kept whinning and talking about it and she got tired of it.
> 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.
I am also in general anti-laptops but for a different reason -- keyboards. As long as I can fit 2 80 column code windows in my emacs I can work fine, but not if the keyboard is crappy. That is why I spent a little extra and got a thinkpad -- it has one of the best keyboards and an integrated trackpoint (nipple) mouse. Between that and using emacs I don't have to lift my hands from the keyboard at all.
Now I still use a laptop as my main machine (Dell D830), but I've got some extra monitors (and other hardware as well). They're handy for glance-over peripheral stuff, but I work best with things right in front of me (mostly vim, bash, and a Web browser).
This topic got me wondering if alt-tabbing for window-switching, or ctrl-Fn'ing to a different desktop, was all that much of a distraction, or a worse interrupting, than moving my head and adjusting my focus. I just don't see it. Switching apps or desktops via the keyboard is no more of a "context switch" than moving my head and attention to a different device. Maybe even less so. Finger memory FTW.
Mostly I think I just adapt to what I have when I have it. Additional screen space, while nice, doesn't mean that much of a productivity gain.
What makes the biggest difference to productivity is how distracted/distractable I am. With no room for IM or IRC and such, they simply get turned off or moved to a desktop out of view. With the extra screen, I'm tempted to keep them running off to the side.
It seems a lot like closet space. They more you have, the more stuff you find to put in it. You acclimate.
They call it the "clitoris" and the name fits pretty well IMO. Last time I noted this I got downmodded something rotten.
Recently I had a change in direction and stopped taking my laptops out unless it was for a specific trip. Instead, I enjoy myself when I'm out. If I get a cool idea, I have a little pocket notebook to write the idea in. (I might start taking a netbook along someday, but at present the netbook that I have - EEE900 - is just too underpowered for the work I'm doing. So it's a web-browsing box only, which I don't need for work. I think I need to get rid of that thing altogether.)
So instead, I focused on improving the home environment. I got a monitor(HP2009M 20") a few weeks ago and added a USB keyboard and trackball and figured that I would have a dual-monitor setup with that and the laptop monitor. Except that it hasn't worked out that way; Win7 makes it pretty easy to tile things two or three across if necessary with the Win+(Arrow key) shortcuts and the 20" has ample resolution for that. And my work style has transitioned towards "one thing at a time, no distractions." I haven't used an IM client in months. IRC rarely. So the laptop screen sits empty most of the time, like right now, and I have unused space on the main monitor too! (That would change quickly if I were to go back to having stuff I check impulsively every two seconds again, but it's probably better not to...)
The main improvement to what I have, I guess, would simply be a more powerful box, possibly with multiple drives so I can keep clean, separate OS installs without even having to dig into partitioning...which leads me towards thinking about a desktop again...
You sound like a man in desperate need of virtual desktops.
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.
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.
Also, some men use a double-edged blade or a cut-throat (very rare), which means dual monitor setups already break your rule.
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!
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.
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.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
And I've seen another one but I can't seem to locate the link.
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.
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.
http://www.winsplit-revolution.com/
http://jgpaiva.dcmembers.com/gridmove.html
As described with screenshots/animation here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000928.html
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.
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.
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.
So, my question is: How do you program on a tiny netbook for months on emacs with such a small keyboard?
Moreover, the text size on his computer was comparably tiny. For me, a netbook screen cannot comfortably accommodate two heads, while preserving a decent amount of code on the screen. My head usually obscures the entire screen and he'll have to remind me not to look so closely.
My second question is: How do you deal with text size without sacrificing the amount of code on the screen?
I don't use a particularly small font. I find that emacs works great -- switching between buffers, toggling between marks, bookmarks, etc., is extremely easy, and some chords are easier to type b/c of the keyboard design.
I have the font size set to 10pt which seems to be about the right size. I would probably use that size even on a larger monitor. Subpixel rendering and the LED backlight on this netbook (plus a nice emacs color theme) makes the text read very easily.
For documentation, I just open it in a web browser and switch with alt-tab or ctrl-tab (within the browser).
The secret for me (along with knowing the keys for managing bookmarks and multiple buffers well) is abusing virtual desktops. With 6 or 9 virtual desktops, running emacs in one, documentation in one, web browser in one, IRC in one, terminal in one, etc. it's a breeze for me. It's like using a tiling window manager. I don't think I'm any less productive thanks to the screen size than I usually am.
I will say that I'm glad I'm not writing a more verbose language like C++, C# or Java (not an insult, I like C#) -- I can see how it could be much more painful than it is with Clojure and Scheme, which are relatively concise and encourage a little-independent-pieces-of-code sort of functional programming.
I guess I was a bit one-sided on my keyboard judgment. However, could you elaborate on your emacs chording remark? How exactly is it easier? (I'm not an emacs user)
This may be a bit off-topic, but I've heard stories about people suffering from eye strain due to bright LED lights and/or smaller font sizes. Have you ever suffered from eye strain due to extended use? How does coding on a netbook feel if you use it for an extended period?
Lastly, I'm concerned about performance issues. I've heard that netbooks are notoriously slow, which implies slowing down the coding process? Is that true for you? Does it allow for virtual desktops and is it fast (enough)?
I have not experienced eye strain from the display brightness, though a few times I have temporarily made the font larger (I find that sometimes I just feel like using a 12pt font to write code)...
The netbook is somewhat slow (about 70% the speed of my regular laptop for things like running a test suite, etc. I have actually enjoyed this and taken the extra time to take a few deep breaths and practice mindfulness :) I know it sounds weird but it's easy to get caught up in the rush to write more code -- to the point where even a very fast laptop will feel mind-numbingly slow at times... I know this one is a bit slower, and by accepting that and enjoying the occasional moment of patient waiting I have come to enjoy some of those previously annoying slowdowns...
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.
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.
Personally I am using much less monitors, but I am very interested in ergonomics of 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.
By the same token, I totally understand people who want a big central screen and secondary screens either side for supporting tools/reference information. As long as the set-up doesn't have a break in the middle so I can spend most of my time looking straight ahead rather than keeping my neck permanently kinked to one side or other, I'd find such a set-up very useful.
In what way, by what mechanism, over what timescale and possibly, demonstrated significant in which study?
I've been using multiple monitors on my home computer since 2001 and at work since 2005 and I attribute my neck crunchiness to general physical atrophy due to aging and desk driving.
Usually people advocate movement, saying people weren't built to stay still for long periods, multiple monitors require head turning but not as much as walking requires leg join movements (and neck movements for that matter).
"because it doesn't cause neck trauma."
'Trauma' is a scarily strong way to describe "turning your head".
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.
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. :(
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.
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!
Granted, I'm fairly certain that the difficulties had more to do with X.org than with Ubuntu, per se.
The ubuntu configuration app has evolved significantly in the past two years; connecting multiple monitors on ubuntu is now about as easy as doing the same on Windows.
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.