this post was submitted on 12 May 2024
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Alt-tab was my very last use-case because I literally have bindings to pull up my main programs.
As someone who has gone from tiling(i3), to floating (stump), to tiling again (i3/sway), and finally back to floating (awesome) - I can say floating wins in terms of predictability. You press a button to focus on your desired window and your entire desktop does not need to convulse to accommodate for it.
Floating window managers win on speed and predictability, and I'm wondering now if this is causing the rift in single/multi monitors in this discussion chain.
I didn't really mean "tile" as in tiling WM, more like that if you're this type of guy, then you could just just put everything you'd ever need somewhere on one screen, never maximize anything, and then nothing's ever going to be out of sight.
My setup is mostly static, with 6 screens, so I rarely even switch windows on screen. I've got top-left for whatever is making sounds - music, movies, youtube, etc. Top-right is for the stock charts. Left is for comms - I've got all chats tiled up in there, but if I'm in the videocall I'll fullscreen that, or, if I'm focusing, I put documentation and references there. Middle for IDE, right for the app I'm working on and a front-end debugger. There's also bottom screen for a back-end debugger, a live database view and a small log tail. Top two screens are stationary that I only use at home, so I don't need them when I'm out working. The rest are set up so that I don't ever have anything important out of view. It's exceptionally good when I'm debugging - I can see, live, absolutely everything that's going with the app, from rendered page down to db data, click through steps and instantly see what happens where. It also saves me some time, as with one screen I would sometimes forget I was debugging after doing something different in IDE, and then wonder why tf is my app not responding. With debug always open this is never the case. I also set up win+WASD to jump between windows by direction, which in most cases means jumps between screens, so win+w - space would stop whatever is making a noise. When I'm off work, I usually surf or game on my middle screen, tops stay the same, so does the left, bottom switches to PC performance metrics, and right usually has something that controls the PC itself, like fan curves or sound mixer. Surely I could do with a single screen, and I actually went single-multiple-single-multiple before. The second cycle really taught me some window discipline. On the first go at multi-screen I got a short boost of productivity but then fell into a pit where I would have stuff all over the place, constantly switching and leaving apps forgotten on others. It wasn't until after returning to single that I've realized exactly what I want out separated and consistent in one place.
Did you seriously set up awesome as a floating window manager? You monster! Jk, do whatever fits you
Ah I see what you mean by tiling. Still, such a setup feels... excessive, no? I can completely understand that you literally never need to pull up anything since it's all just there, but I dunno (I'm reaching here) doesn't your machine get hot from all the displays and forcing all screens to do constant screen updates?
It just seems unneccesary to me (like I said, I'm judgemental on this front). When you have to travel, you can't take all that with you -- so working on a laptop at the airport must be incredibly frustrating if you're used to things just being there, no?
Haha, yes, the other layouts are wasted on me. Ideally a dwm desktop would suit me fine, but I enjoy the Lua extensibility.
It is excessive yes, but I'm all about going above and beyond, sort of say. It doesn't really get hot since it doesn't update if there's nothing to update - I've checked in the driver. Actually an error in said driver might have put an end to my windows journey on this machine, as some bug was causing all screens to not refresh unless there was any app doing a draw somewhere. It does use quite a bit of VRAM, though(~1.5 gigs) but that doesn't matter when I'm working as I turn off the dGPU and the iGPU uses RAM which I have plenty. I used to just grab this machine and go to the nearest restaurant with poor internet(less distractions) and focus on work until the battery dies, and I've consistently got 2-2.5 hours off.
I do travel with it. It is a bit frustrating, yes, but as mentioned, the quad-screen setup is portable and I can pull it even in an airport given enough space. The problem is TSA, they used to not give a damn about laptops, but the last time I moved, they forced everyone to take out laptops and turn them on, at every one of the 4 airports I went through. But I had like 5 on me: My personal one w/extra screens, a corporate issued one as a spare, a tiny laptop that I used to carry in my pocket which saved me quite a few times, and also a colleague asked me to grab his laptop and iPad to pass off to his relatives. All this, along with a few HDD's, was just enough to fit into a carry-on bag. But checkpoints were all something like:
5 minutes later
I could've saved myself trouble and put all them into a checked baggage, but since I was moving through some totalitarian dictatorship states, I'd rather have all the data close to me rather than have it pulled out and searched without my consent, which they are likely to do given that they forced people to hand off unlocked phones for search before.
Well it sounds like your desktop is pretty scalable - no matter how many monitors - so that's pretty good.
And hah yeah, it might be worth investing in a badge that reads "Hi, I'm an IT specialist, this all normal" and pinning it on your shirt before you enter customs