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Comment by phpisthebest | Hacker News Reader

10 years ago I was 100% linux desktop only.

Today I am 100% windows desktop.

Linux still suffers from the same problems it did when I left, terrible multi monitor support. Right now I am running 4 Monitors, an UltraWide, 1080p Landscape, 4K Landscape, and a 1920x1200 portrait mode. This configuration of different sizes of montiors, in different orientations has always been, and continues to be a nightmare on linux.

Windows has the absolute best multi-monitor support, and even after going with an UltraWide I still find I want many montiors

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>Linux still suffers from the same problems it did when I left, terrible multi monitor support. Right now I am running 4 Monitors, an UltraWide, 1080p Landscape, 4K Landscape, and a 1920x1200 portrait mode. This configuration of different sizes of montiors, in different orientations has always been, and continues to be a nightmare on linux.

It's horrifically terrible on Xorg. It's not bad on Wayland.

What desktop manager are you using. With KDE I felt that even, with X11, it's far superior that the mishap that it's Windows

I don't know about four monitors, but three work fine it seems: https://social.librem.one/@francois/111254950660731005.

"Works" has always been hotely constested, the problem I always ran into is the wayland and X treat have only 1 composite or what ever space, it then attempts to carve it up, so when you have odd sized and monitors that are not in a perfect square you end up with problems

for example in the image there are 2 monitors above the laptop with the laptop being a 3rd screen, assuming they are all 1080p, x/wayland sees that as 3840 x 2160, then in effect attemts to block out 540 px on either side of the lower monitor, that only works sometimes

Then the shit really hits the fan when you go to play a game, windows is always very good about going full screen only on the primary monitor. X Wayland, I have no idea how it chooses were to go,

also placing things gets really weird if you monitors are out of order, as 0x0 coordinate may not be where you think it is...

There is just 1000 little things that deep in the core of X that were carried over in Wayland that makes multimonitor support poor in Linux, and I dont think it will ever change.

That's true of X, that's not true of Wayland. In fact that is one of the fundamental limitations of Xorg that drove the development of Wayland in the first place.

I'm not sure if the issue you're having is with the compatibility layer or the desktop environment support or what, but Wayland shouldn't have that issue and your experience doesn't match mine.

> It's horrifically terrible on Xorg. It's not bad on Wayland.

You got those mixed up.

I am both joking and dead serious. Which is why the graphics ecosystem should be indicted: engineers are far too keen to conveniently exclude user stories (or be fundamentally uninterested in them) to document to 1001 corner cases they should be covering with tons of nasty code, instead of finding and optimizing for the One True Way. Nothing changed with Wayland. Xorg is dead, long live Xorg.

> Linux still suffers from the same problems it did when I left, terrible multi monitor support. Right now I am running 4 Monitors, an UltraWide, 1080p Landscape, 4K Landscape, and a 1920x1200 portrait mode. This configuration of different sizes of montiors, in different orientations has always been, and continues to be a nightmare on linux.

This is exclusively an issue with Xorg. (as the other commenter also mentioned), the Wayland OOB experience is pretty solid these days, as much hate as Wayland got these are the real problems that it was designed to solve properly.

I would love to hear other complains, 100% linux to 100% windows is quite a strong transition, definitely not one I'd be comfortable making so your situation must have been mired with issues much larger than feeble mixed DPI support; because honestly speaking Windows has significantly larger issues than that.

From the average user perspective what “large issues” does Windows have? You and I can complain about telemetry and candy crush until we’re red in the face but the fact remains the same that Windows is far better for the average user with less problems.

Well, aside from the settings changing with every version and the fact that windows is still vulnerable to a icmp router broadcast attack.

There are issues like the requirement of a microsoft account, there are issues with snapping windows and global hotkeys and every piece of software needing its own bespoke update mechanism (often interrupting you while doing things).

Theres issues with ransomware, theres deep seated issues with the default filesystem which not only has abysmal performance but also does absurd cache things making it behave extremely strangely with even minor bit flips. I have never experienced inaccessible files except on windows. The permissions system btw requires a damn PhD to understand if you have more than one user on the system.

Or the fact that errors are by default opaque and hidden, the event logger is practically useless both providing no information relevant to the issue and simultaneously far too much information so you drown in irrelevance.

As a power user, windows is about as hostile as it possibly could be.

As a normal user the experience is really unclean, the 17 pop-ups I get when installing and the forced online account are enough, but honestly the weight of the OS is so much: you literally cant even run the thing on a standard spinning drive anymore.

I especially love when windows forgets my monitor layout after lunch and rearranges all my windows.

Every platform has issues. I prefer Linux when I get a choice simply because it aligns with my values.

This is highly dependent upon the desktop environment that you use. KDE seems particularly bad at this. I have no issues with Sway (3 monitors, some of them in rotated orientation.)

Whenever someone complains about Linux usability it almost always ends up being a KDE bug.

I have no issues, and haven't had any issues with Gnome for a long time.

KDE is great, and is highly customisable, but that also means it has a lot of footguns.

I used KDE 3 back in the day and loved it, then moved away with the KDE 4 mess. I started using KDE Plasma on my personal laptop about a year ago again and it's still in a pretty bad state. I have more issues with KDE than 3 other DEs combined.

The only thing I'm missing is HDR/DV on my 4K 120Hz OLED. Windows 11 has it, but it's not great like using a Pro XDR with Mac OS.

And maybe I'm just the luckiest guy, but I can't get Windows 11 to project between my two displays: a 14" 1080P 60Hz eDP panel and the 42" above. I've only spent enough time in Windows to know that the eDP panel doesn't work there, but I for certain don't care to wrangle with any of the different utilities, cleaners, and interfaces when it just works elsewhere.

10 years ago, 100% on Windows.

Today, 100% on Linux (Arch btw + KDE). (It's been years since I booted into my Windows drive. I don't even know if I remember the password.)

To me, using monitors of the same size (not that I've ever not done that) is a tiny price to pay for an OS meant for engineering and that doesn't fume with spyware and condescension for me. (That said, I wouldn't've survived long without Valve supporting Linux. :p)

I've been using 4 monitors on Linux since like 2013. Nvidia card (Quadro), Gentoo, Xfce. I've had different resolution and orientation in that time.

To be clear I agree that your setup should be supported, but I have to ask... How do you have those set up? I've seen people with a random smattering of monitors, but typically it seems like that happens with smaller/older monitors. I'm not sure I've ever heard of someone having so many different aspect ratios/orientations all in one setup.

I have no problem with weird monitor setups on Fedora (GNOME). It even remembers all my different setups at diffrent offices/locations with different docking variations. This used to be more of a challenge a few years ago under Xorg and during the early days of Wayland, but not anymore.

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