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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#951

Post by the_af »

29athrowaway wrote: post #709
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…

> Good luck ever having a decent experience plugging in a 1080p monitor. A 4k monitor is now $300 (new). Used are even cheaper. > Configuring my preferred linux environment to work with 4k is either impossible or just super time consuming. I use i3 and it adds way more productivity to my workflow I use Gnome 3.36 and many HiDPI issues I was having before are now gone, without any extra configuration. > My argument in…

$300 is a lot of money where I'm from. And they aren't available at that price here, anyway.

What do you mean, fonts are pixelated at 1080p? Whether you can see the pixels probably depends on pixel size. I certainly can't see them on my 23" LG monitor unless I try really hard.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#952

Post by vor0nwe »

art0rz wrote: post #846
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'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. Haven't seen any scaling issues on Windows in years. Last time was Inkscape but they fixed that.

I'm currently working from home, accessing my Windows 10 desktop machine in the office via Microsoft's own Remote Desktop over a VPN connection. This works fine on my old 1920x1280 17" laptop, but connecting from my new 4k 15" laptop runs into quite a few edge cases, and plugging an external non-4k monitor has led to at least two unworkable situations.

I've now reverted to RDP-ing from my old laptop, and using the newer one for video calls, scrum boards, Spotify and other stuff that doesn't require a VPN connection or access to my dev machine. It mostly works OK in that configuration.

I've seen other weird things happen when using other Terminal Services clients, though.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#953

Post by floriferous »

compscistd wrote: post #115
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…

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 just can’t function optimally without 3 monitors:

1 for my full screen IDE: 3 files side by side, multiple terminals

1 with 2 browser windows: my product (a web app), and another with specs, stack overflow, google

And my macbook’s screen with slack or email.

Whenever I have 2 monitors or less, I find myself switching windows around all the time! With 3 I just move my eyes and mouse.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#954

Post by dmoy »

smabie wrote: post #737
dmoy wrote: post #445

You can pry my cheap A- panel Korean no-name brand 8+ year old monitor with one working button (thankfully the power button!) and a bunch of stuck pixels from my cold, dead, miserly hands.

Why?

Mostly the cheap and miserly part

It works fine, and the cost/benefit of buying a newer and/or more expensive monitor isn't worth it to me.

I also am the kind of person who drives a $50k car. Tradeoff isn't worth it imo.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#955

Post by lliamander »

keenmaster wrote: post #625
mulmen wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently upgraded to a 43” 4k monitor and use it the way you describe. I’m not sure I am happy with it. The real estate is nice but it might be too much. UI elements end up very far away. I rarely need all that space. I either need a bigger (deeper) desk to sit back farther or just a smaller monitor physically with the same resolution.

32” 4K is perfection, right in the sweet spot of size.

This. After doing some research, as far as I can tell a 32" 4K maximizes the amount of content you can see at one time within a comfortable viewing angle and without needing scaling to make text readable.

At typical desk monitor distances you shouldn't be able to see distinct pixels anyway.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#956

Post by opan »

Bitmap fonts look crisp and clear at small sizes. I find I enjoy them much more than a lot of the fonts in the article. Try out Terminus or Tewi at 9pt if you're curious. They make Fira Code and Inconsolata look blurry by comparison.

I recently changed my terminal emulator from Termite to Alacritty because Pango broke bitmap fonts, and Termite uses Pango. Unfortunately several other things I use are still using Pango, and I've had to switch to subpar fonts in waybar and a few other spots.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#957

Post by young_unixer »

avalexandrov wrote: post #439
young_unixer wrote: post #407

The monitor I want: - 1440p - IPS panel - size between 23 and 27 inches, ideally 24 or 25 - flatscreen, 16:9, normal monitor, no "gamer" or other weird stuff. - reasonably priced I don't live in a rich country so there's not much variety. I got tired of searching for it. All monitors with more than 1080p I've found are either "gamer" (which cost 5x as much because of the gamer tax and other features useless to me, li…

I think this is the monitor you're looking for: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/ultrasharp-25-usb-c-monitor-...

Thanks for the suggestion.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#958

Post by young_unixer »

hasperdi wrote: post #423
young_unixer wrote: post #407

The monitor I want: - 1440p - IPS panel - size between 23 and 27 inches, ideally 24 or 25 - flatscreen, 16:9, normal monitor, no "gamer" or other weird stuff. - reasonably priced I don't live in a rich country so there's not much variety. I got tired of searching for it. All monitors with more than 1080p I've found are either "gamer" (which cost 5x as much because of the gamer tax and other features useless to me, li…

What about this one / similar: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-LS24H850QFUXEN-WQHD-24-Inch... I'm using this and quite happy with it

Thanks. That looks like what I want.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#959

Post by kurkosdr »

If I may add a couple of things:

1. Buying 4K TVs as large PC monitors is a dangerous game, despite all the sweet lies about “convergence” supposedly enabled by HDMI. You have to make sure the TV has a true “PC mode” with true 1:1 pixel mapping and no “subsampling” (if it exists, it is usually enabled by labelling the HDMI input as “PC“), that you weren’t conned with an RGBW pixel format (or any non-RGB pixel format for that matter), and that the panel can display 6500K colour temperature in "PC mode". Also please note some TVs with IPS panels have a pronounced chevron pattern in their subpixel layout instead of the traditional 3 vertical stripes, which makes ClearType look slightly different even in true "PC mode" (I personally find it cute and inoffensive, your mileage may vary) and that all 4K VA panels have bad horizontal viewing angles.

2. Make sure your RGB levels match. That is, use “full range” for RGB 0-255 displays (PC monitors) and “limited range” for RGB 15-235 displays (TV monitors). Sometimes the drivers don’t get this right. If it’s wrong, and you get “limited range” on an RGB 0-255 display, you will get washed out blacks instead of inky blacks.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#960

Post by mov_ »

st-isidore wrote: post #758
mov_ wrote: post #664

This is a fantastic post, I just bought a 28", 158 dpi monitor recently and spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to maximize the font quality. Since there weren't any suggestions for linux, this is what I did for Ubuntu 20: * 2x scaling * Downloaded libfreetype, enabled subpixel rendering option, replaced existing libfreetype.so (I think Ubuntu 20 might already have this enabled, but just to be safe I did it ma…

Thanks, I saved this to use later when I get a better monitor. How did you devise these steps though if I may ask? And what are these things?

You're welcome, I hope it helps! To preface this, I think Ubuntu 20 comes with good font rendering options by default, so my suggestions are mostly unnecessary. I just wanted to experiment to see if I was missing anything. All the options I'm referencing are explained in detail in this blog post (e.g., subpixel rendering and lcd filtering), they're all just configuration options in the freetype2 font renderer.

I found that the Arch Linux wiki page (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration) is helpful because it applies to other distributions like Ubuntu, and provides example configuration files. (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration/Exam...)

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