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Comment by haakon | Hacker News Reader

This is mostly blogspam for this: http://www.afiestas.org/screen-management-got-magic/

It's easy to be cynical about this, but I for one am very pleased about this development. So sorely needed. Perhaps in a small way it can help slow down the migration from Linux to Mac on the desktop.

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Hardly blogspam, the source you cited is listed clearly as a source at the bottom of the article. It even gives credit to the referrer.

"John said Sally got a noew job, how do you feel about that Debrah?", "That's great." said Debrah. "I can't wait to tell Frank!" "Frank, John just told me that Sally got a new job!"

It also contains 200 words of original commentary as a lead-in, and the report is less 300 words in total.

Actually, the OP provided some context that helped. It's been a few years since I used Linux as a desktop - so I had forgotten all the x11 conf horrors. I appreciated the lead-in.

I use Linux on the desktop and I haven't touched an X11 configuration file in many years. I would have to Google for its location if I wanted to even look at it. Stuff just works now - except we don't have intelligent multimonitor support (until now).

The GNOME 3 "Displays" app is pretty good. You can toggle mirrored, external screen to the left or right by just dragging, etc. It isn't quite as slick as the one shown in the video, but it's certainly functional and easy to use.

KDE has the same thing, but it's not smart at all. It will pick the wrong resolution for the wrong screen, if I disconnect a screen the windows that were on it become inaccessible, it never remembers my setup when I re-dock the laptop, and so on.

It depends. For example if you use Nvidia driver and tools - they offer good and convenient multimonitor support out of the box. Without Nvidia it's quite messy, I agree.

Is there any major migration from Linux to Mac OSX on the desktop? Did you see any statistics?

It's just an impression from my own life. 3-5 years ago, lots of people around me used Linux. Many of these same people now use Macs. Not exactly scientific, I know.

Well, impressions of course can differ. I observe lot's of people moving from Windows to Linux, and never yet observed anyone moving from Linux to Mac OSX. But globally this probably doesn't mean much.

I did for what it's worth, for exactly this kind of reason. I needed my computer to just work so I could.

Surely it can depend on the computer and the kind of work you need to do. But I doubt there are any systems which "just work" for every single use case and scenario in the world. So if you found something that fits your particular needs (and wasn't achievable on Linux) - good. But for many use cases Linux is even better than Mac OSX. So it depends.

Of course you're right about the corner cases where somebody has particular requirements, but I'm also counted among the Linux-to-Mac migration. I couldn't afford the amount of time I was spending just to keep my desktop functioning, so I got a macbook. I run a dozen Debian or Ubuntu servers, but my primary workstation is a mac laptop.

Honestly, this article made me realize how much I take it for granted that all of the LCD projectors and dual-monitor setups I've encountered in the last half-decade have just worked with my mac. I thought back to 1999, when I got my first Xinerama dual-head setup working with X11 after about 4 hours of work...

xf86config? Oh the pain! One of the video cards was running at 50hz in 15-bit color mode. Madness.

I'm using "Nvidia X Server settings" tool for setting multiple monitors. Never had any problems with it on my Debian testing. And configuring system is usually trivial. How long ago did you stop using Linux for the desktop? If it was indeed around 1999 - then really, try again. Linux is not standing in one place.

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