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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#821

Post by GoblinSlayer »

ogre_codes wrote: post #648
renjimen wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You lost me right here on line 1. I'm on Windows and can confirm 1. is an issue. Windows lets users scale UIs to be readable at high DPI on small screens. Doesn't work on all UIs (e.g. QGIS). So maybe not all OS's, but two important ones. > You could say the same for any arbitrary DPI; 96dpi isn't "Required", we got by fine with 72dpi. It's all about ergonomics as far as I'm concerned. I think the point the parent…

> I think the point the parent is making is that human vision has limited resolution. If you can't see the difference between 4k and 1080p on a 24" monitor, then you probably need reading glasses. On a 27" monitor it's even worse. It's not so much that you can "see" the pixels, sub pixel rendering and anti-aliasing go a long way to making the actual blocky pixels go away, the difference is crisp letters versus blurry…

On Windows blurry letters depend on the font: some fonts have blurry letters, others have crisp letters.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#822

Post by berkes »

fouric wrote: post #146
compscistd wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like HN as a whole want blogs to come back, and part of that is well written exposition (the technical details) followed by near-outlandish opinions that tend to generate discussion. It's more fun, it leads to more conversation (here we are!), and clarifies our own values. I think three monitors is distracting, but that whole community discussion gave me the opportunity to compare how I use a multi-monitor set…

> I think three monitors is distracting Could you elaborate on this? Specifically, do you feel that having three/multiple monitors is necessarily distracting (no matter what you do with them) or just encourages distraction? My experience is the latter, and that if I am disciplined and only put windows from one task at a time on all three, then I have no more temptation to be distracted than I usually have at my inter…

For me, I can't use three monitors. It just takes too much brain-cycles to process and remember "where that window is".

I can process two fine: one "the workspace" the other "the reference/product/outcome/tests".

I tried really hard to teach myself structure, but with three monitors, I find myself always loosing windows, losing the cursor etc. Hacks like "find my cursor" (not default on Linux) help, but I'd rather have a clean mental map of where my cursor, focus and windows are, at all times.

What stuck best was having the third monitor hold the API/documentation/reference but still, the mental power to keep all my whereabouts mapped in my head were just too much.

Also note that I went from one to three monitors, so this is not "just too used to two monitors to ever change" it was the other way around.

Ubuntu has nice tiling features without requiring tiling for everything ([meta]-[→] and [meta]-[←]) that allow my now-ingrained use of two monitors on my laptop-screen when I'm somewhere without a second monitor. Another thing that I disliked about my three-monitor-setup: it does not map in any way to a single monitor: using virtual desktops worked, somewhat but still too different.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#823

Post by weiliddat »

nvarsj wrote: post #602
ogre_codes wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode You lost me right here on line 1. If there are apps on MacOS that can't handle high dpi mode, I haven't run into them as a developer (or doing photo editing, video editing, plus whatever other hobbies I do). Also, I don't have any trouble with plugging my highDPI MacBook into a crappy 1080p d…

> Also, I don't have any trouble with plugging my highDPI MacBook into a crappy 1080p display at work. Low DPI monitors are pretty much unusable since MacOS dropped subpixel rendering - with fonts being a blurry mess. You can only really use MacOS with high DPI monitors now for all day working. It’s a huge problem for everyone I know who wants to plug their MacBook into a normal DPI display. Not that the subpixel/hin…

I actually agree that most modern Linux DEs has better rendering. Especially since you can configure how much hinting and aliasing you want.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#824

Post by nvarsj »

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…

Yes, you're completely right. I remember when the Atwood article came out, and I was convinced I needed multiple monitors to be productive (I was quite junior) - it even caused me stress when I worked at places that didn't have multiple monitors. These days I'm pretty happy with a single screen - including feeling very productive on just a laptop screen.

It turns out the whole idea of needing tons of desktop space was vastly exaggerated. You can't focus on 3 screens at once, it is impossible. Even on a large screen you can only look at one place at a time. Programmers are focused on one thing for a long period of time anyways - your code editor. Maybe a terminal as well that you need to swap to occasionally. Having multiple monitors has limited benefits.

Where multiple monitors is helpful is if you're an operator - you are watching many dashboards at once to observe if things break or change. Traders for example will have workstations with 9 screens at once. But this makes sense - they are not focusing on one thing at a time, they need to quickly look at multiple things for anything unusual.

I've personally found that using a tiling WM gives me vastly more benefits than multiple monitors ever would. Although I was also pretty happy using Gnome's super-tab/super functionality during my non-tiling days.

4K is sort of a nice to have, but hardly a requirement. I'm as happy on a normal DPI screen as I am on a retina screen. Our brains adapt very quickly and unless the text is overly blurry (because of poor hinting implementations), a regular DPI screen is perfectly fine for coding on. My own personal preference is high refresh rates over anything else - I can't stand latency.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#825

Post by leokennis »

One key takeaway is that using external monitors connected to a Mac sucks.

My eyes are not so good and I like big text:

* On my Windows 10 laptop connected to a run of the mill 24" 1920x1080 Dell monitor, I put the scaling at 125% or 150% and everything is rendered bigger and sharp. Maybe one or two dinosaur apps are upscaled and blurry.

* On MacOS, the serious OS for graphics people, I can either render everyting sharp at 1x (with tiny menu bars) or have everything rendered as a blurry mess.

On a sidenote...I'm liking my Mac less and less. Reasons to stick with it are: no ads in my start menu and tracking in my calculator app like on Windows, no need to install crappy third party drivers to get peripherals to work.

Is it just me or is that insane in 2020?

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#826

Post by Pmop »

Currently, I work with a 720p 12.5" display, and fixed point bitmap fonts. I'm moving like crazy these days, can only rely on laptops. And Retina Macs are quite expensive where I do live; plus, we are not allowed to import used goods from other countries, and importing a new Mac yields a customs tax that's very painful to pay.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#827

Post by nvarsj »

thruhiker wrote: post #611
nvarsj wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, I don't have any trouble with plugging my highDPI MacBook into a crappy 1080p display at work. Low DPI monitors are pretty much unusable since MacOS dropped subpixel rendering - with fonts being a blurry mess. You can only really use MacOS with high DPI monitors now for all day working. It’s a huge problem for everyone I know who wants to plug their MacBook into a normal DPI display. Not that the subpixel/hin…

This is an interesting position. I have always thought that font and font rendering were always an especially pernicious issue with Linux and a relative joy on MacOS?

I think that is a historical artifact. Ubuntu had a set of patches for freetype called infinality, developed around mid 2010, which dramatically improved font rendering. Since then, most of those improvements have been adopted and improved in upstream. [1] Any relatively modern Linux desktop should have very good font rendering.

[1]: https://www.freetype.org/freetype2/docs/subpixel-hinting.htm...

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#828

Post by tapland »

LegitShady wrote: post #432
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you used a 4K display? I'll go one step further: I used the LG 27" 5K Display for two whole years before returning to a 34" Ultrawide with a more typical DPI. Obviously I preferred the pixel density and image quality of the high-DPI screen, but I find myself more productive on the 34" Ultrawide with a regular DPI. (FWIW, LG now has a newer pseudo-5K Ultrawide that strikes a balance between the two). I look for…

I upgraded from dual 34" ultrawides to one 49" super ultrawide and won't look back. 5140x1440 on a single monitor at 120hz.

But the DPI is low, about half of the retina DPI the article author is on about.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#829

Post by tapland »

kubav wrote: post #815
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…

I have 4K monitor on laptop and also as external monitor but I have no problem with linux (using debian testing with gnome 3). I can easily combine it with 1080p monitors. Everything works out of the box. I still switched to 1440p as 4K is just better looking 1080p. You cannot fit more information on the screen with scaling and without scaling everything is too small. I work as backend developer so space is more impo…

Why not scale for example 50%? The same things hold true for 1440p (or are you just able to suck up things only getting a bit smaller?)

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#830

Post by C1sc0cat »

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…

Yes you can code well on tiny laptops with poor 1366x768 displays - but double or triple set ups are more efficient.

Its more about maximising productivity in my opinion.

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