On Sunday, October 14, 2012 14:45:56, Allen wrote: > I have a 22" LCD monitor. I'm considering changing the way I use the > monitor so as to achieve the maximum productivity benefits offered by > a wide screen. I've read that the approach to use is to have multiple > nonmaximized windows simultaneously visible on a virtual desktop. IIUC, > this requires using a tiling window manager. > > I mainly use KDE (on Fedora) with KWIN window manager. I've read that > KWIN tiling functionality is unsatisfactory (I haven't tried it myself). It > looks like a time-consuming research project to find a good tiling > window manager to use with KDE. I'm interested in hearing from the > group about how you have made optimal use of a widescreen monitor. > (Some of you use multiple monitors. This is not an option for me at this > time.)
In KDE4 the settings to look at are in: System Settings -> Hardware -> Display and Monitor -> Size and Orientiation The good news is that (at least in KDE 4.8.4) this allows setting up both multiple monitors as well as monitor rotation, both of which are done using RandR, if I understand this correctly. The bad news is that for now these settings must be manually set at every login, and must also be manually changed prior to removing an external monitor. There are changes being made in KDE upstream to deal with this better, but they'll take a while for the KDE packages to propagate to distributions. http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/09/27/1750247/kde-multi-monitor-control- getting-an-overhaul […] > KDE "activities" might be a complementary approach, but I don't > understand how to exploit them. Basically a KDE "activity" is "a KDE desktop with it's own set of virtual desktops". Each KDE activity can have it's own "style" of desktop -- so one activity can be used for the traditional "Desktop Icons" like you were used to with KDE3 (in KDE4 this is called a "Folder View"), and another activity can be a KDE4 "Desktop" without icons on it. You can also assign a different power setting to each activity, and thus being in one activity or another can move you from "powersave" to "performance" and so on. I don't find this feature particularly useful. I'm still not using "activities" myself either, even though I know what they are, because I haven't found a use for them yet. So I'm likewise in "Virtual desktops yes, Activities no" for the time being. > What are your experiences and/or thoughts regarding making optimal > use of a widescreen monitor? Basically I just "use whatever space there is". -- Chris -- Chris Knadle [email protected] _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College Nov 7 - Typography: Physical Art to Digital Art Dec 5 - Sysadmin Panel
