Virtual desktops are a lifesaver, 3 finger swipe on the trackpad to go to the next screen
I need to be able to see what I’m referencing while working
The constant swap between virtual desktops is a pain
However I do wish material shell (tiling) treated separate monitors as separate virtual desktops so I could swap left>right and up>down
Man, I've been running i3 at home for years and using Windows for work kills my efficiency so hard. Lemme have my billion virtual desktops and move tiles in half a second so I can stop dragging shit all over! I do use PowerToys to help a bit but it's just not the same when you're used to a kwyboard-centric workflow.
You might be able to run WSL and just run a tiling wm/compositor inside that, depending on what it is you do and whether the company would allow WSL
I use multiple workspaces for different workflows. CAD software, reference material, etc. on one workspace, email, Slack, Trello etc. open on another.
Different vd is different workspace for me. One for project x the next for y, one for gaming...
I just tested if it works on GNOME, did couple swipes trying until I realized I have disabled trackpad in bios >.>
Rip lol. I don't think it works in gnome, I almost put that in my comment lol. It works in mint, but I'm not even sure if it's in base ubuntu.
Stock Gnome has this too.
Huh, I haven't really gotten it to work very well in nobara, do you know what the keyboard shortcuts would be?
Nobara may well use a non-stock configuration, but by default a three-finger swipe left or right on the trackpad will switch between workspaces. As for keyboard shortcuts, I believe they are disabled by default but you can always set your own by going to settings > keyboard shortcuts > navigation > switch to workspace on the left/right.
tiling window managers with multiple desktops is such a productivity boost and makes single screen work effortless. I don't think I'll ever use a traditional floating window os again
I had that and had to explain to the department why 6 monitors essentially (3 physical monitors with 2 virtual desktops on each) was not the same as 6 other monitors (2 physical monitors with 3 virtual desktops on each).
I use Xfce for my media laptop and was wondering why anyone would use virtual desktops when the buttons on the top panel are so tiny and annoying to click
Then I recently found out you can move your cursor all the way to the left or right edge and scroll with your mouse wheel to switch virtual desktops.
Made me consider actually using virtual desktops lol
There's a lot of keyboard and gesture shortcuts that make them easier to use on most OS's
I could go from 3 to 2, but no way in hell I'm going back to a 14" eye destroyer. Not when generic 24" monitors are cheap and have adequate refresh rates for most tasks.
Ya know if a company is gonna have you work from home they should be paying for your whole office set up :| desk, chair, monitors etc. At least the materials you need.
For me it's the opposite, if they want me to come back into the office they should at least pay for some decent monitors at the workstations.
pay for some decent
ROFL my laptop at work was low-mid when it was built in 2017
My work gave me $1000 for office stuff to work from home. They also provided a KB/mouse, three 1080p 24" monitors, a UPS, brand new laptop, a dock for the laptop, cables, a headset, etc.
I already had my system set up for work from home including two 1080p displays, a 1440p display, mechanical keyboard, wireless mouse with charging mouse pad... Even a headset and KVM.
I spent the money on an additional battery for my homelab rack (which will extend the uptime of my firewall during a power outage.
I'm pretty happy with my setup, I combined everything, and decommissioned my oldest display, and bought myself a laptop stand, so when I'm on my PC (selected from the KVM), I have five displays, three wide, and two above. When I select my work laptop, the laptop screen becomes a sixth monitor, and the stand props it up to be one of the top displays, so I have a 3x2 grid of displays.
I'm usually fine with three for my personal use, but more are not unwelcome, at work I was pushing from three to four pretty consistently in the past few years.
Though, I find that having a 1920x1200 or 1440p display set up in portrait is usually pretty helpful for work. So I can see more of a page. I wouldn't recommend doing that with a 1080 display, since most sites that have a static width are optimized for screens that are at least 1280x768 (around 720p) and going down from 1280 px wide to 1080px wide, results in some horizontal scrolling.... Which is never fun.
You sure it's not 1000$ for equipment you have to give back if you leave? That's how it works for me
Well, if they want to come and unbolt an 80lb battery from my rack and take it away after I've gotten a few good years out of it, I'm okay with that. By that time I'll already be saving up for a replacement.
It's more likely that they would say "you owe us office equipment or the 1k", but again that's just if it works the same way it does where I work...
From what I know of my management (it's a fairly small company), unless I quit fairly soon after I claim the credit, maybe within a year, I don't think they'll bother making an issue of it.
There's an economic argument to be made, since most people would challenge such a demand, and the time and effort of the managerial team to pursue it, and the cost of hiring a lawyer to issue the correspondence to say that I should comply, among other associated costs would start to eat away at any benefit from getting the $1000 repaid they would end up spending more money chasing it down.
I think my employer is financially intelligent enough to know that. I also didn't see any such provisions or clauses in my employment contract. So it's borderline impossible to enforce to begin with, you can't really argue that it's breach of contract since it's not in a contract that I signed. So it needs to (legally) be pursued as damages, which is a bit harder to prove without a drawn out legal battle. The cost of the lawyers alone to get to that point makes it a triviality in terms of cost.
If they can threaten you with minimal cost to them, and you willingly pay it out of fear, that's on you.
Only people who penny pinch on principle would even bother doing anything more than issue a threatening letter demanding repayment.
I've known business owners that have that kind of mentality, and they are honestly some of the worst people to work for.
Do you get an electricity allowance?
It's offset by the commute cost
I get a stipend every month for home office costs, it's a modest amount, IMO, but it's to partially cover everything I need to pay for to work from home, electricity, internet, even my cellphone, since I occasionally will need to use my personal phone while working (no company issued phones at this place). So if I need to tether to my cell to work because my ISP is down, the stipend covers any costs associated with doing so.
The expectations are significant because of that stipend, but not unreasonable IMO.
The amount is separate from my pay, and untaxed. It's basically a reimbursement for expenses.
Vehicle costs are separate, if I need to drive anywhere for my job, I can submit the distance driven and I'm reimbursed separately, a set amount per unit of distance.
It hasn't happened for me yet but there's a nontrivial chance I may get deployed to another area of the country, in that case, I get airfare, hotel and a meal allotment daily, as well as a rental car to travel to customers sites for the duration I'm there, all at the company's cost. I'm reimbursed 100% for travel in those cases. Anything local is just by distance travelled.
About 80% of our client base is local enough that I can drive myself to their location when needed. It's rare that it is needed. I have not needed to go to a customer's location in the 6-7 months I've been at the job. Others have, and for the most part, they're closer to the customers that they traveled to, compared to me, but I should be ready in case I'm ever needed to travel, whether local or nationally.
Due to the work we do, and our relative size, we're only (currently) servicing clients in our country, nothing international right now, as far as I know. Our business model allows for it, but our specialty, which is our main marketing point, is pretty specialized to our country, so I don't think that will change anytime soon.
The last couple of jobs I held, had similar, but not as generous rules. Talking to the management, they're primarily interested in ensuring that we, the workers, are happy and healthy so we can work efficiently. IMO, it's the best management team that I've worked under so far. If things continue the way they have been so far, I don't see myself leaving anytime soon.
Yeah my office paid for my new chair (old broke). Asked if I could have one of the Herman Miller's we all used at the office since no one was there anymore but they just bought me a new one lmao that was really cash money of them. The Embody is easily the best chair I've ever sat in, it's not even close.
I use three monitors and could use a fourth one (ultra wide) for some specific tasks, meanwhile my colleague that does the same job is working from a 13" laptop screen sitting on a cushion at her coffee table...
I'm in this picture and I don't like it
I don't know if I would want to do it all the time, but I have come to appreciate the workflow when using a single monitor. I feel like I'm more focused.
Ikr. Though it’s largely dependent on the kind of work you’re doing, I find that for myself a 1 monitor setup is sufficient.
I feel like I was moving documents around too much when I had multiple. Or that it would make me lazy cause I didn’t bother closing something I was finished with.
That being said — widescreens are wear it’s at.
A second monitor is really useful for sticking post-it notes to though.
I specifically trained myself away from it when I went to working remote. I don't want to be tied to my desk when I could spend my day at the park, beach, coffee shop, bar, on a boat, or Disneyland and still get work done.
Luckily we have portable monitors now for when you're away from your dock
I recently downsized from 2 to 1. NGL, I miss the second in some circumstances, but I also don't miss the inclination to have YouTube or Netflix constantly open if I'm not using the second for anything else.
This was never not the case for me.
In CRT era there was just no contest, the resolution (the amount of data displayed) alone was worlds apart. Yet I only ever had one CRT connected at a time.
Once the LCDs became minimally viable for me I just never disconnected the previous LCD when upgrading/buying another one (I've always been a "main screen + support screens" sort of operator).
Finally LCDs and OLEDs became just too big (and tiling much much better) to have "too many" monitors.
Yet there are times when I wish I had a mini monitor (one of those candy bar screens where I would just have Signal or something, about 480×1920 pixels, they are cheap but I then remember how silly the need is and don't want to further consumerism for needles thighs).
I remember when one crt was like 800x600 and another 1280x1024. Worlds apart.
Another time, another battle.
I was using dual monitors back before LCDs became the norm. I always had a splitting headache from looking at the screens. It went away with LCDs.
I must be lucky because I have a laptop + 2 24" 4K monitors setup and it turns out it is too much for me. Now I just use my laptop in clamshell mode with one monitor in landscape and the other in portrait mode, but I wonder if won't sell one those and keep the vertical one aside my open laptop.
"Clamshell mode". That's cool. I'm stealing that.
TBH I didn't invent it. I think it's the way Apple refers to a closed Mac laptop since the clamshell iBook. And since I'm not a native English speaker I usually find the expression easier to use.
I went from 3 to 2, as I went from 2x24@1080p + 1x34@1440p to 2x32@4k. I the jump to 4k with such large screens meant I have a massive more amount of usable screen real estate especially as I do not use any scaling on the screens, although I do marginally increase the font size. I can manage six windows per screen all neatly tiled as long as its not my IDE, that I need a good 2/3rd of the screen to actually be useful for me.
It would be unmanageable if I tried to do this without a proper tiling window manager though, I use Sway. I particularly like how the virtual desktops work on Sway as I have separate virtual desktops per screen, makes them actually useful for me. Typically I have two per screen, IDE/Terminal and Discord/Signal/Music, Multiple Browser windows and Email/Teams/Office.
It would be unmanageable if I tried to do this without a proper tiling window manager though, I use Sway.
"I use sway BTW" 😉
At least it's not on arch 😞
Sway on Arch master race?
Hyprland on NixOS gang
Sway on ubuntu, as it's my work machine. I will switch eventually when I replace the PC with a new one
I'm on Ubuntu because work too. I really hope nobody gets the idea to do really silly things like enforce Gnome or something. Wouldn't put it past them.
I ended up buying a portable 15" monitor so that when I'm forced to work on laptop, I have the option to use dual display. Basically the same size as a large tablet.
Build/test code on one screen
Write code on another screen
Attend bullshit waste of my fucking time meeting on 3rd screen
Wheres your monitor for email and IM?
I only have 3 you jerk
me too, thx
It's too early to call me out like this man, I'm not caffeinated.
Imagine me working on a 6.8" phone and a bluetooth keyboard...
It's enough for writing documentation, and for a while I was top notch at writing my docs at my underpaid job, but then I went through multiple burnout, while my sleep progressively got worse.
Hopefully they won't extend my contract after November, so I can finally sleep when I want, and not when people that feed their chickens at 5:00AM do.
Just got a 32" 4k OLED and can't work from a laptop anymore.
And the one screen is also smaller unless you get a desktop replacement laptop with an 18' screen.
14" is my jam. Hits my sweet spot between portability and usefulness. My work gave me some giant monstrosity (Dell precision 17"). It's horrible and stays in it's docking station. I refuse to take it on trips.
a desktop replacement laptop with an 18' screen.
I don't have the space for a laptop like that!
Nothing like placing the SUN directly on your lap! Raw dawg it! 🤣
I have a portable monitor just in case and I bust it out if there's no monitor for me to plug in.
"I need multiple monitors to see all my content!" -> dead giveaway you've never used a window manager with virtual desktops or window grouping.
Or that you're a streamer.
None of those things help you see more stuff at one time... I'll take physical screen real-estate over virtual screen real-estate any day of the week.
I use a tiling wm (Hyprland) across 3 monitors, it's just way more convenient to have 3 workspaces at once in front of me than to be constantly swiping back and forth between them all.
Virtual desktops are a lifesaver, 3 finger swipe on the trackpad to go to the next screen
I need to be able to see what I’m referencing while working
The constant swap between virtual desktops is a pain
However I do wish material shell (tiling) treated separate monitors as separate virtual desktops so I could swap left>right and up>down
Man, I've been running i3 at home for years and using Windows for work kills my efficiency so hard. Lemme have my billion virtual desktops and move tiles in half a second so I can stop dragging shit all over! I do use PowerToys to help a bit but it's just not the same when you're used to a kwyboard-centric workflow.
You might be able to run WSL and just run a tiling wm/compositor inside that, depending on what it is you do and whether the company would allow WSL
I use multiple workspaces for different workflows. CAD software, reference material, etc. on one workspace, email, Slack, Trello etc. open on another.
Different vd is different workspace for me. One for project x the next for y, one for gaming...
I just tested if it works on GNOME, did couple swipes trying until I realized I have disabled trackpad in bios >.>
Rip lol. I don't think it works in gnome, I almost put that in my comment lol. It works in mint, but I'm not even sure if it's in base ubuntu.
Stock Gnome has this too.
Huh, I haven't really gotten it to work very well in nobara, do you know what the keyboard shortcuts would be?
Nobara may well use a non-stock configuration, but by default a three-finger swipe left or right on the trackpad will switch between workspaces. As for keyboard shortcuts, I believe they are disabled by default but you can always set your own by going to settings > keyboard shortcuts > navigation > switch to workspace on the left/right.
Thank you!
Win+scroll wheel works on GNOME btw
Good to know, I'll have to try that too
tiling window managers with multiple desktops is such a productivity boost and makes single screen work effortless. I don't think I'll ever use a traditional floating window os again
I had that and had to explain to the department why 6 monitors essentially (3 physical monitors with 2 virtual desktops on each) was not the same as 6 other monitors (2 physical monitors with 3 virtual desktops on each).
I use Xfce for my media laptop and was wondering why anyone would use virtual desktops when the buttons on the top panel are so tiny and annoying to click
Then I recently found out you can move your cursor all the way to the left or right edge and scroll with your mouse wheel to switch virtual desktops.
Made me consider actually using virtual desktops lol
There's a lot of keyboard and gesture shortcuts that make them easier to use on most OS's
I could go from 3 to 2, but no way in hell I'm going back to a 14" eye destroyer. Not when generic 24" monitors are cheap and have adequate refresh rates for most tasks.
Ya know if a company is gonna have you work from home they should be paying for your whole office set up :| desk, chair, monitors etc. At least the materials you need.
For me it's the opposite, if they want me to come back into the office they should at least pay for some decent monitors at the workstations.
ROFL my laptop at work was low-mid when it was built in 2017
My work gave me $1000 for office stuff to work from home. They also provided a KB/mouse, three 1080p 24" monitors, a UPS, brand new laptop, a dock for the laptop, cables, a headset, etc.
I already had my system set up for work from home including two 1080p displays, a 1440p display, mechanical keyboard, wireless mouse with charging mouse pad... Even a headset and KVM.
I spent the money on an additional battery for my homelab rack (which will extend the uptime of my firewall during a power outage.
I'm pretty happy with my setup, I combined everything, and decommissioned my oldest display, and bought myself a laptop stand, so when I'm on my PC (selected from the KVM), I have five displays, three wide, and two above. When I select my work laptop, the laptop screen becomes a sixth monitor, and the stand props it up to be one of the top displays, so I have a 3x2 grid of displays.
I'm usually fine with three for my personal use, but more are not unwelcome, at work I was pushing from three to four pretty consistently in the past few years.
Though, I find that having a 1920x1200 or 1440p display set up in portrait is usually pretty helpful for work. So I can see more of a page. I wouldn't recommend doing that with a 1080 display, since most sites that have a static width are optimized for screens that are at least 1280x768 (around 720p) and going down from 1280 px wide to 1080px wide, results in some horizontal scrolling.... Which is never fun.
You sure it's not 1000$ for equipment you have to give back if you leave? That's how it works for me
Well, if they want to come and unbolt an 80lb battery from my rack and take it away after I've gotten a few good years out of it, I'm okay with that. By that time I'll already be saving up for a replacement.
It's more likely that they would say "you owe us office equipment or the 1k", but again that's just if it works the same way it does where I work...
From what I know of my management (it's a fairly small company), unless I quit fairly soon after I claim the credit, maybe within a year, I don't think they'll bother making an issue of it.
There's an economic argument to be made, since most people would challenge such a demand, and the time and effort of the managerial team to pursue it, and the cost of hiring a lawyer to issue the correspondence to say that I should comply, among other associated costs would start to eat away at any benefit from getting the $1000 repaid they would end up spending more money chasing it down.
I think my employer is financially intelligent enough to know that. I also didn't see any such provisions or clauses in my employment contract. So it's borderline impossible to enforce to begin with, you can't really argue that it's breach of contract since it's not in a contract that I signed. So it needs to (legally) be pursued as damages, which is a bit harder to prove without a drawn out legal battle. The cost of the lawyers alone to get to that point makes it a triviality in terms of cost.
If they can threaten you with minimal cost to them, and you willingly pay it out of fear, that's on you.
Only people who penny pinch on principle would even bother doing anything more than issue a threatening letter demanding repayment.
I've known business owners that have that kind of mentality, and they are honestly some of the worst people to work for.
Do you get an electricity allowance?
It's offset by the commute cost
I get a stipend every month for home office costs, it's a modest amount, IMO, but it's to partially cover everything I need to pay for to work from home, electricity, internet, even my cellphone, since I occasionally will need to use my personal phone while working (no company issued phones at this place). So if I need to tether to my cell to work because my ISP is down, the stipend covers any costs associated with doing so.
The expectations are significant because of that stipend, but not unreasonable IMO.
The amount is separate from my pay, and untaxed. It's basically a reimbursement for expenses.
Vehicle costs are separate, if I need to drive anywhere for my job, I can submit the distance driven and I'm reimbursed separately, a set amount per unit of distance.
It hasn't happened for me yet but there's a nontrivial chance I may get deployed to another area of the country, in that case, I get airfare, hotel and a meal allotment daily, as well as a rental car to travel to customers sites for the duration I'm there, all at the company's cost. I'm reimbursed 100% for travel in those cases. Anything local is just by distance travelled.
About 80% of our client base is local enough that I can drive myself to their location when needed. It's rare that it is needed. I have not needed to go to a customer's location in the 6-7 months I've been at the job. Others have, and for the most part, they're closer to the customers that they traveled to, compared to me, but I should be ready in case I'm ever needed to travel, whether local or nationally.
Due to the work we do, and our relative size, we're only (currently) servicing clients in our country, nothing international right now, as far as I know. Our business model allows for it, but our specialty, which is our main marketing point, is pretty specialized to our country, so I don't think that will change anytime soon.
The last couple of jobs I held, had similar, but not as generous rules. Talking to the management, they're primarily interested in ensuring that we, the workers, are happy and healthy so we can work efficiently. IMO, it's the best management team that I've worked under so far. If things continue the way they have been so far, I don't see myself leaving anytime soon.
Yeah my office paid for my new chair (old broke). Asked if I could have one of the Herman Miller's we all used at the office since no one was there anymore but they just bought me a new one lmao that was really cash money of them. The Embody is easily the best chair I've ever sat in, it's not even close.
I use three monitors and could use a fourth one (ultra wide) for some specific tasks, meanwhile my colleague that does the same job is working from a 13" laptop screen sitting on a cushion at her coffee table...
I'm in this picture and I don't like it
I don't know if I would want to do it all the time, but I have come to appreciate the workflow when using a single monitor. I feel like I'm more focused.
Ikr. Though it’s largely dependent on the kind of work you’re doing, I find that for myself a 1 monitor setup is sufficient.
I feel like I was moving documents around too much when I had multiple. Or that it would make me lazy cause I didn’t bother closing something I was finished with.
That being said — widescreens are wear it’s at.
A second monitor is really useful for sticking post-it notes to though.
I specifically trained myself away from it when I went to working remote. I don't want to be tied to my desk when I could spend my day at the park, beach, coffee shop, bar, on a boat, or Disneyland and still get work done.
¿Por qué no los dos?
Luckily we have portable monitors now for when you're away from your dock
I recently downsized from 2 to 1. NGL, I miss the second in some circumstances, but I also don't miss the inclination to have YouTube or Netflix constantly open if I'm not using the second for anything else.
This was never not the case for me.
In CRT era there was just no contest, the resolution (the amount of data displayed) alone was worlds apart. Yet I only ever had one CRT connected at a time.
Once the LCDs became minimally viable for me I just never disconnected the previous LCD when upgrading/buying another one (I've always been a "main screen + support screens" sort of operator).
Finally LCDs and OLEDs became just too big (and tiling much much better) to have "too many" monitors.
Yet there are times when I wish I had a mini monitor (one of those candy bar screens where I would just have Signal or something, about 480×1920 pixels, they are cheap but I then remember how silly the need is and don't want to further consumerism for needles thighs).
I remember when one crt was like 800x600 and another 1280x1024. Worlds apart.
Another time, another battle.
I was using dual monitors back before LCDs became the norm. I always had a splitting headache from looking at the screens. It went away with LCDs.
I must be lucky because I have a laptop + 2 24" 4K monitors setup and it turns out it is too much for me. Now I just use my laptop in clamshell mode with one monitor in landscape and the other in portrait mode, but I wonder if won't sell one those and keep the vertical one aside my open laptop.
"Clamshell mode". That's cool. I'm stealing that.
TBH I didn't invent it. I think it's the way Apple refers to a closed Mac laptop since the clamshell iBook. And since I'm not a native English speaker I usually find the expression easier to use.
I went from 3 to 2, as I went from 2x24@1080p + 1x34@1440p to 2x32@4k. I the jump to 4k with such large screens meant I have a massive more amount of usable screen real estate especially as I do not use any scaling on the screens, although I do marginally increase the font size. I can manage six windows per screen all neatly tiled as long as its not my IDE, that I need a good 2/3rd of the screen to actually be useful for me.
It would be unmanageable if I tried to do this without a proper tiling window manager though, I use Sway. I particularly like how the virtual desktops work on Sway as I have separate virtual desktops per screen, makes them actually useful for me. Typically I have two per screen, IDE/Terminal and Discord/Signal/Music, Multiple Browser windows and Email/Teams/Office.
"I use sway BTW" 😉
At least it's not on arch 😞
Sway on Arch master race?
Hyprland on NixOS gang
Sway on ubuntu, as it's my work machine. I will switch eventually when I replace the PC with a new one
I'm on Ubuntu because work too. I really hope nobody gets the idea to do really silly things like enforce Gnome or something. Wouldn't put it past them.
I ended up buying a portable 15" monitor so that when I'm forced to work on laptop, I have the option to use dual display. Basically the same size as a large tablet.
Build/test code on one screen
Write code on another screen
Attend bullshit waste of my fucking time meeting on 3rd screen
Wheres your monitor for email and IM?
I only have 3 you jerk
me too, thx
It's too early to call me out like this man, I'm not caffeinated.
Imagine me working on a 6.8" phone and a bluetooth keyboard...
It's enough for writing documentation, and for a while I was top notch at writing my docs at my underpaid job, but then I went through multiple burnout, while my sleep progressively got worse.
Hopefully they won't extend my contract after November, so I can finally sleep when I want, and not when people that feed their chickens at 5:00AM do.
Just got a 32" 4k OLED and can't work from a laptop anymore.
And the one screen is also smaller unless you get a desktop replacement laptop with an 18' screen.
14" is my jam. Hits my sweet spot between portability and usefulness. My work gave me some giant monstrosity (Dell precision 17"). It's horrible and stays in it's docking station. I refuse to take it on trips.
I don't have the space for a laptop like that!
Nothing like placing the SUN directly on your lap! Raw dawg it! 🤣
I have a portable monitor just in case and I bust it out if there's no monitor for me to plug in.
"I need multiple monitors to see all my content!" -> dead giveaway you've never used a window manager with virtual desktops or window grouping.
Or that you're a streamer.
None of those things help you see more stuff at one time... I'll take physical screen real-estate over virtual screen real-estate any day of the week.
I use a tiling wm (Hyprland) across 3 monitors, it's just way more convenient to have 3 workspaces at once in front of me than to be constantly swiping back and forth between them all.