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Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011

Well for one example: I use 2 large monitors to work with and run allot of applications at the same time.

With gnome 2 I can put a seperate taskbar on each monitor and switch quickly between tasks with the keyboard or mouse. I also have another panel with buttons to launch my most common apps. Small amount of mouse movement and 1 click.

With unity I have to drag the mouse right to the far left or my furthest left monitor , possibly scroll through the icons , select the app I want, click it and then I have to select the window I want. Lots of mouse movement and 2-3 clicks.

Another problem I get is when launching a GUI app from a shell script , I load the app but then cannot dock it because it doesn't understand the relationship between the shell script and the app. This means I need seperate icons on my desktop to launch some apps.

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I use two monitors and I solved this problem by using multiple desktops. Every desktop has one of my "tasks". When I want to see what other window is doing, I move to that given desktop. This way, each desktop has one "context" - Emacs and a development server, a browser and another window to the same development server (screen is your friend), one with various "social" things - IM, Skype, IRC, Twitter - and others with assorted activities (managing servers on Amazon, remote upgrading my mom's computer (Unity is very grandma-friendly) and so on. If I'm ever lost, Super-S brings me everything up in a simple and easy way.

My two problems with Unity: It's too easy to get to get to the launcher when I want to hit the browser's back button and all my Super-related Emacs shortcuts had to be relocated. Now I need a Hyper key.

This is an approach that could work for sure, but then you need to be disciplined and remember what is open on each desktop. I love the simplicity of just having a list of windows at the bottom of each monitor, requires no memory or keyboard shortcuts to switch between things.

I tend to keep things consistent. The browser is usually on the top-left desktop, emacs on center-top, twitter and pidgin, on lower-left.

I have 2 24 inchers and what I do to get my "set up" in the morning is I have all the applications I need arranged in my launcher:

From top to bottom I have file manager and browser, then all my apps that I need to have open on my launcher, so I just hold down my winkey then hit 3,4,5,6 and my mail, irc, trello, calendar all launch, then I'm done.

OK. I see how it can be problem with two monitors but aren't shortcuts like (Start+1) helping in this case? While I still see problem with eyes movement. Lastly I'm against idea using multiple monitors so I don't feel competent enough to comment.

Problem with GUI apps from shell script is bug in my opinion but I was not affected by it yet.

I imagine allot of power users do use 2 monitors , especially now that they are so cheap. And I don't just mean developers either, I've seen plenty of estate agents , accountants , lawyers etc using 2 monitors with perhaps a large spreadsheet open on 1 and their email correspondence or web browser open on another.

To be honest I don't know what the Start + 1 shortcut does, so perhaps it would help or perhaps not. If you have to use keyboard shortcuts though I don't really see how this is simpler than the taskbar where I have a clear list of everything I'm doing on the most spacious axis of my monitor.

I use two monitors at work, and I can't imagine using just one. The productivity boost is great.

Even better than 2 monitors is a single 2560x1600 30".

I'd rather take two 24" monitors at 1920x1080 each = 3840x1080 combined. That would give me a similar number of pixels at a significantly lower cost than a single 30" monitor of similar quality.

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