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by skeledrew 4 days ago
> dropping legacy baggage (multiple screens[...]

Looked nice, but crossed it off as soon as I saw that, as I'm working on a project currently that uses many screens. Can't just call a thing legacy because you and the people you directly know aren't using it.
4 comments
rmu09 4 days ago
Maybe they mean X11-screens. That are more or less independent screens, you can't move a window from one to the other for example.Emacs supports that somewhat with the "open new frame on display server" menu option, but usually, multiple screens are not very useful.

Nowadays, multiple monitors present one big virtual framebuffer and only one logical X11 screen.

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freehorse 4 days ago
It is a niche feature, but it is still used eg when an application wants to have good control over a screen's frame buffer to display sth in an external monitor and minimise disturbances. I think it is fairly standard in psychophysics experiments, at least with some software. That's where I worked with such a ("zaphodsheads") setup.
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arcfour 4 days ago
They are also roughly analogous to the modern DE concept of "Workspaces" which people seem to enjoy.
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wtallis 4 days ago
I think X11 terminology may be causing some confusion. Refer to https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/MultiMonitorDesktop.html

The normal, usable way to have multiple monitors for your X11 desktop environment is for them to all be combined into one logical screen that you can move windows around in, and that applications aware of the right extensions can discover the actual physical layout of the monitors that comprise the single logical screen. Multiple screens in that X11 sense is a far more obscure feature than simply supporting more than one physical monitor.

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skeledrew 4 days ago
Ah yes I see it was a terminology issue. I was also confusing it with virtual displays, which is what I'm using a lot of. Thanks.
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PunchyHamster 4 days ago
X11 "screen" you normally work on is a single virtual one that stretches multiple monitors

What they are talking about is supporting more than one of those, and from app's perspective they are completely separate (can't move windows between them).

While I can see the use cases (say secondary screen only running single app) I never actually used that feature so it's understandable drop.

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dormento 4 days ago
Unless I'm mistaken, they probably don't mean xrandr, which is what you probably use. They meant legacy x multi head setup (same session but independent screens). I know its there, but i never used it.

edit: AND i've been using GNU/Linux and derivatives for the last 20 years.

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