I'm mainly curious about software developers here, or anyone else whose computer is somewhat central to their life, be it professional or hobbyist.
I only have two monitors—one directly in front of me, and another to the right of it, angled toward me. For web development, I keep my editor on the main screen, and anything auxiliary (be that a dev build, a video, StackOverflow, etc.) on the side screen.
I wouldn't mind a third monitor, and if I had one, I'd definitely use it for log/output, since currently it's a floating window that I shuffle around however necessary. It could be smaller than the other two, and I might even turn it vertical so I could split the screen between output and a terminal, configuring a AutoHotKey script to focus the terminal.
What about y'all?
[ cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13864053 ]
I have 5 if you count the one on my server.
One 1440p, 3 1080s- one in a vertical orientation for reading through lengthy config files. An additional 1080p that is used for specific servers, so I’m not sure if that counts since it’s technically a different machine ?
Use case varies drastically but, left to right:
Monitor 1 on the left is typically used for for videos throughout my work day, usually some Indian guy explaining a very technical concept in fractured English in a notepad document- that’s how you know you’re in deeeeep
Monitor 2 is the 1440 and it’s the main event so to speak. Whatever I’m working on the most at that moment goes onto that monitor.
Monitor 3 is the vertical monitor and used mostly for comms separated into 2-3 sections. Video calls on top, work chat underneath that. Config files opened in notepad++ when not actively using the comms.
Monitor 4 is technically on a different machine as well but it stays on my desk and looks like a normal part of the setup. I use mouse without borders to use my keyboard across both systems.
Monitor 5 is attached to an Dell Poweredge that I use as a proxmox host, which itself is used to host a pi-hole, home assistant, graylog, an truenas instance running plex. The truenas thing will probably go away and I’ll run the plex server directly on a machine with more graphical capability. On its other input is an old datto that doesn’t really do much yet.
Note: not a software dev, but a network engineer
Interesting. I mean, if it's practical for the usage of your computer, then I would say it counts. What kind of information do you have displayed for your server? Just metadata, or logs?
Edit: posted before I could see your edit. But yeah, definitely checks out. I think I would get so distracted by that, but at most I really only need to be paying close attention to changes in three places at a time, at which point I've got to do some window-focus-fu with PowerToys. Cool answer!
Kinda varies. That particular monitor is pretty multi purpose, it has a server on the hdmi, a server on the vga, and a little dell tower that gets used as a demo machine/sacrificial lamb depending on the experiment. Day to day I’d say that’s the default.
For the servers it’s just console access for convenience. They mostly run headless.
Power toys is the BEST (if you just have to use windows anyway)