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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#451

Post by boomboomsubban »

the_af wrote: post #364
jwr wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having used CRT monitors, 1920x1080 displays, 4K displays and 5K displays, as well as various Retina Macbooks over many years, mostly for coding, here's my opinion: The only good solution today is the iMac 5K. Yes, 5K makes all the difference — it lets me comfortably fit three columns of code instead of two in my full-screen Emacs, and that's a huge improvement. 4K monitors are usable, but annoying, the scaling is ju…

> So no, I don't think you can develop using "tiny laptops with poor 1366x768 displays". At least not all kinds of software, and not everyone can. This opinion seems bizarre to me. You start by offering personal (and valid) anecdote, then end up saying "I don't think you can develop [...]". But this flies in the face of evidence. Most people by far do not use your preferred monitor setup (iMac 5K) and in my country a…

I don't think they were doubting that somebody does develop in those random setups, they were disagreeing with the people that say it doesn't matter and you can code anywhere. In your quote, a royal you.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#452

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

jseliger wrote: post #261
thomaslord wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! Person who actively dislikes 4k here. In my experience: 1. No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode. Depending on the OS that can mean it renders tiny, or that the whole things is super ugly and pixelated (WAY worse than on a native 1080p display) 2. If the 4k screen is on your laptop, good luck ever having a decent experience plu…

3. Configuring my preferred linux environment to work with 4k is either impossible or just super time consuming This seems like a long-standing problem with Linux, rather than a reason to dislike high-res screens.

So far, I've never had an issue with KDE Plasma and 4K@60Hz on linux, once I realized that you can't just use any old HDMI cable: you need DisplayPort or HDMI2

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#453

Post by tenebrisalietum »

speeder wrote: post #75

I still use a CRT, because features I want are still ludicrous expensive in newer tech (although they are getting cheaper over time). 1. Arbitrary resolutions, great to run old software and games, even better to run new games at lower resolution to increase performance. 2. Arbitrary refresh rates. 3. Zero (literally) response time. 4. Awesome color range (many modern screens still are 12bit, meanwhile silicon graphic…

3. 60hz CRT refresh rate is 16.67 millseconds of delay. Interestingly, I connected a VT220 to my 56' 4k Samsung TV via a BNC-to-RCA cable, and by comparing the cursor blinking on both screens there's a very noticeable and visible delay, like a 1/4 second.

4. CRTs are analog. It's as many bits as your output hardware can make up.

5. CRT is still supreme for contrast (at least over LCD) despite all the tricks and such for LCDs.

7. That VT220 I mentioned above is from 1986. It's monochrome, but works great.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#454

Post by holtalanm »

well, time to throw my brand-new BenQ 24" 1080p monitor in the garbage, I guess.

but really....1080p is just fine for looking at text on a screen. Maybe the reason the text is blurry for you is that _you need glasses_.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#455

Post by z3t4 »

thomaslord wrote: post #239
the_af wrote: post #76

The technical details are all right (or seem right to me, anyway), but this is too opinionated for my liking. No, you do not need a 4K monitor for software development. Some people might like them, some won't. [edit/clarification: someone rightfully pointed out that nobody will actively dislike a 4K monitor. I was unclear here: I meant "some people won't need them" more than "dislike them"] This sounds like when Jeff…

Hello! Person who actively dislikes 4k here. In my experience: 1. No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode. Depending on the OS that can mean it renders tiny, or that the whole things is super ugly and pixelated (WAY worse than on a native 1080p display) 2. If the 4k screen is on your laptop, good luck ever having a decent experience plu…

Im on Gnome and use fractal scaling . 2x and everything got too big. But 1.6 looks OK. Its actually not on the app layer, its the screen that is scaled up. Although some low level programs can have issues with mouse pointer position if they dont take into account the scaling.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#456

Post by monocasa »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #418
auggierose wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are on macOS, all is good. Never had a problem with any of my 4 monitors (3x4K, 1x5K). I set the scaling to a size I like, and the text is super crisp. I don't see how any programmer can NOT like that.

Text honestly looks like shit an any non 4k external monitor for macOS it's kind of crazy how bad it is compared to windows.

It's just a different stylistic choice. A lot of font nerds prefer the OSX choices because they try to stay true to the original font spacing without regard to the pixel grid.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#457

Post by saltcured »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #284
thomaslord wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! Person who actively dislikes 4k here. In my experience: 1. No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode. Depending on the OS that can mean it renders tiny, or that the whole things is super ugly and pixelated (WAY worse than on a native 1080p display) 2. If the 4k screen is on your laptop, good luck ever having a decent experience plu…

FWIW, my main monitor is a 43" 4k display, and it works perfectly fine on AwesomeWM - but I' don't use any scaling, the 4k is purely for more screen real estate - literally like having 4 perfectly aligned borderless 24" monitors. I can fit 10 full A4 pages of text simultaneously.

I am somewhere in between. I don't go for hi-DPI but am using 28" 4K on the desktop and 14" 1080p on my laptops. So identical dot pitch and scaling settings. I just have more display area for more windows, exactly as you say like a 2x2 seamless array of screens.

I actually evolved my office setup from dual 24" 1920x1200 and went to dual 28" 4K. But with the COVID lockdown, I only have one of the same spec monitor at home for several months, and realize that I barely miss the second monitor. I was probably only using 1.25 monitors in practice as the real estate is vast.

People who complain that a monitor is too large should stop opening a single window full-screen and discover what it is like to have a windowing system...

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#458

Post by screye »

I would strongly advocate for a 1440p 34" 21:9 ultra widescreen monitor.

The 21:9 aspect ratio is perfect for having the standard IDE + chrome tab arrangement. It doesn't have the issues brought in by having multiple monitors and 1440p is a good middle-ground resolution.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#459

Post by nine_k »

thomaslord wrote: post #239
the_af wrote: post #76

The technical details are all right (or seem right to me, anyway), but this is too opinionated for my liking. No, you do not need a 4K monitor for software development. Some people might like them, some won't. [edit/clarification: someone rightfully pointed out that nobody will actively dislike a 4K monitor. I was unclear here: I meant "some people won't need them" more than "dislike them"] This sounds like when Jeff…

Hello! Person who actively dislikes 4k here. In my experience: 1. No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode. Depending on the OS that can mean it renders tiny, or that the whole things is super ugly and pixelated (WAY worse than on a native 1080p display) 2. If the 4k screen is on your laptop, good luck ever having a decent experience plu…

FWIW, switching between resolutions in my favorite desktop environment, Xfce, is two steps:

  # This affects every GTK app. 
  xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Xft/DPI -s 144
The second step is going to about:config in Firefox, and setting layout.css.devPixelsPerPx to a higher value than 1.0. I really need to write an extension to do that in one click.

What is really tricky, though, it's having two monitors with different DPI. Win 10 does an acceptable job with it; no Linux tools I'm aware of can handle it reasonably well. Some xrandr incantations can offer partial solutions.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#460

Post by namdnay »

auggierose wrote: post #313
thomaslord wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! Person who actively dislikes 4k here. In my experience: 1. No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode. Depending on the OS that can mean it renders tiny, or that the whole things is super ugly and pixelated (WAY worse than on a native 1080p display) 2. If the 4k screen is on your laptop, good luck ever having a decent experience plu…

If you are on macOS, all is good. Never had a problem with any of my 4 monitors (3x4K, 1x5K). I set the scaling to a size I like, and the text is super crisp. I don't see how any programmer can NOT like that.

I’d say all is bad with MacOS and external monitors... It can’t manage text scaling like Windows, so you either have to downscale resolution and get everything blurry or keep the ridiculously high native resolution and have everything tiny :(
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