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 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.
What I found helped when I moved to a large 4k screen is when I stopped trying to eke out every last bit of space and started using my desktop as an actual desktop analogue again. Whereas I used to full screen, and snap to half or quarters of the screen, now I have a few core apps open that take up roughly a quarter, usually a browser and email, and other apps I open up and move around to organize as I feel the particular task warrants (generally some terminals that are all fully visible). I often drag the current thing I'm working on to the bottom half of. The screen so it's slightly closer and easier to see directly, and leave reference items or stuff I'm planning on revisiting shortly up top.
I also was thinking I didn't particularly like the large desktop and screen at first, but now that I treat it as a combined wallboard and desk space, I can't imagine going back (and using the large but not quite 4k monitor at my desk at the office always felt like a step backwards).
I do set default scaling for Firefox and Thunderbird to be about 125% of normal though, as I don't like squinting at small text. I generally like how small all the other OS widgets are though, so I don't scale the whole desktop.
Thanks for the input. I’m about a week in and that is the realization I am reaching. My window sizes are almost back to where they were before.
It has been an iterative process but I’m getting a handle on it.
I have a sit/stand desk, I’m considering moving my recliner in to the office and elevating the monitor. Working from a reclined position seems ideal but I also thought a 43” monitor was a good idea...
If you're on Windows, consider the fancyzones power toy. Break up your screens into an arbitrary set of maximizable zones. Highly recommend if the normal 4 corners isn't enough for you.
I'm on MacOS. I basically never maximize anything. I just resize the floating windows and put them where they make sense at the time. The dream would be doing this with the keyboard using something like i3. I have been tinkering with that on weekends but M-F I focus on paying work.
Check out Moom. You can save window layouts and replay, save window positions and apply them to any app, arbitrarily move, maximize to a range with a customizable margin, etc etc.
https://manytricks.com/moom/
Depending on how exact of a similarity you're looking for, gTile for GNOME/Cinnamon might be of interest to you. I've also found PaperWM to be very productive.
I use gTile for gnome. I had to play around to find a setup that I like. I eventually settled on ignoring most of the features that were offered out of box. Now I have configured a few simple keyboard shortcuts.
For example, Super + Up Arrow will move a window into the central third section of the display. Pressing it again will expand the window a little bit.
Nice and simple. Makes working with large displays pleasant.
I use Rectangle. I’ve configured it with a few keyboard shortcuts that let me move a window into specific regions on the display. I use it to quickly have multiple non-overlapping windows.
I cannot imagine using a large display without it!
BetterTouchTool is _excellent_ for window placement/resizing; also can be triggered externally if you want to combine it with Alfred for Karabiner Elements (though you don't have to, you can define the triggers in BTT itself).
The 4K monitor at my office is a fair bit smaller than that, and I haven't used it since the COVID-19 epidemic sent me packing home. Since then I've just been using my laptop's built-in screen.
To be honest, I think I may stick to it. At first, the huge monitor was fun, and initial change to having less screen real estate was definitely a drag. But, now that I'm accustomed to it again, I'm finding that "I can fit less stuff on the screen at once" is just another way of saying, "it's harder to distract myself with extra stuff on the screen." My productivity is possibly up, and certainly no worse.
A major pain (literally) point for me with laptop screens is posture. My neck aches after a day of looking mostly down. I suppose an external keyboard and mouse would help but I would have to get a stand and blah blah.
Also for my particular workload real estate is very handy. I totally agree with there being some virtue to constraints but several times a day I really need the space.
I think this really depends on the work you do, also. Pure development or content creation and I'm good with just a laptop. For research, with team communication, concurrent terminal sessions, debugging, management - I really do want at least 3 screens.
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.
Agreed. My work monitor is a 32 or 34" ultrawide. It works well but I would really like more vertical real estate. I'm definitely shopping for 32-34" 4k displays right now.
Looks nice also, but I already have a 4k 32" Eizo Flexscan that I'm happy with - I'm after the 4:3 aspect ratio, everything just seems to go wider and wider these days.
Vertical is the reason I haven't upgraded from dual 1920x1200 (but of the time single anyway). Although I'm looking at 1440p mainly for 120hz+. (1440p at 30+")
43" seems rather large--how far away do you sit? If it were as close as a more "normal" sized monitor (~2-3 feet), wouldn't you be craning your neck all day trying to see different parts of the screen?
Nah. I have a 49" curved 1440p monitor. Things you look at less often go to the sides. You can fit 4 reasonable sized windows side by side. Code editor holds over 100 columns at a comfortable font size for me 40 year old eyes. It's the best monitor setup I have ever had. You can spend less and get the exact same real estate with two 27" 1440p monitors. Either way, it is a fine amount of real estate and not at all cumbersome for all day use in my case.
I am getting the same Dell 4919DW monitor, transitioning from two 25" Dell monitors. I think the built in KVM will be great addition as I have two workstations. Ordered the new Dell 7750 to pair with a WD19DC docking station. I hope the Intel 630 UHD built in graphics will do, as stated in the knowledge base.
The 4919DW only have 60hz refresh rate but I am not concerned about that. A great alternative would be the curved Samsung 49" C49RG9 at 120hz.
It’s quite a piece of hardware. It lets me plug a USB hub into it. It supports USB-C for its display adapter. So it’s the dream: one USB-C cable to charge the laptop, drive the display, and provide a USB hub for keyboard, mouse, etc.
I'm in the same boat. More real estate is the big win. I made a pandemic purchase of a TCL 43" 4k TV to use as a monitor primarily for programming. I sit a bit further from it: 30" rather than 24ish when working on the laptop. I drive it with a 2019 inexpensive Acer laptop running Ubuntu 20.04 and xfce. Every so often an update kills xWindows, but I can start it in safe mode and get things working.
I do find my head is on a swivel comparatively, but while noticeable without being a negative. Overall I like it. A lot. The only thing that is painful is sharing the desktop over Webex/skype. That does bog the system down and requires manual resizing of font size to inflate it so that viewers on lower resolution systems can cope with it.
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...
In the same boat here. I use a $400 49 inch curved 4k TV as my monitor along with i3wm and while I waste a lot of the space on screen to perpetually open apps I don't touch, having the ability to look at my todo list or every app I need for a project at the same time has its benefits. I just wish I could lower the height and tilt the TV upwards a bit so I'm not breaking my neck looking at the upper windows.
I had a similar setup at a previous job -- one of the early 39" TVs. It could only drive 4k at 30Hz, but for staring at text, nothing could beat it. It takes a good tiling window manager to get the most out of this setup. By the same token, a good tiling WM also makes a tiny little netbook screen feel much bigger. So I guess what I'm really saying is, use a tiling WM!
43" 4k is approximately 100dpi, like 21" 2k. It seems like a reasonable form factor to me (at 1x), but there aren't many of them that do high refresh rate, and they're all very expensive.
I've only seriously tested the Dell P4317Q that I have in the office. Others have had good success with small 4k TVs. Can't say I've noticed anything about the latency, but I've never gamed or watched movies on it, so IDK
I use Samsung 4k TV's (55in and 43in) at work and home and the experience is absolutely fantastic. In game mode the latency is reported to be 11ms and there's no difference visible to me compared to 60hz computer monitors.
Do you have the specific model numbers? I'm buying a new monitor soon, and considering using a 4K TV. Would be great to check out the ones you're using!
