Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Adrian Caspersz Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: Am I the only one sick of "modern" desktops? Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2017 12:58:49 +0000 Organization: Keep Usenet Newsgroups Alive!! Lines: 40 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net kCAkR8jJKNZytJblUPSzbw9xgpOFE7ssokBAiQ2q6v8nV0nOs+ Cancel-Lock: sha1:A6ey7vZTM+JZsm+q31nm9UhqGGo= User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.7.0 In-Reply-To: Xref: csiph.com comp.misc:13301 On 13/03/17 00:38, Michael Casadevall wrote: > I've been recently fighting a major uphill battle with adding a second > monitor to my desktop, and in what is quite possibly a fit of insanity, > went and compiled CDE from source. The end result is surprisingly usable > though Motif has some hiccups with dealing with X apps that are a bit > too smart (pinentry-x11) for their own good. > > I'd like to say that this is a *NIX only problem, but Windows 8 and 10 > also pail in comparison for usability and "getting stuff done" that 7 > had. Both Linux and Windows are way too tied up with forced code to get it all 'plug and play' compatible, however its stuff that doesn't play nicely with users when it fails. This class of code gets worse with every new generation of the OS and workarounds get more difficult when their developers forget what's out there and still usable in the real world. 'Plug and Pray' indeed. For example, both Windows 10 and Ubuntu/X11 use DDC for automatic monitor capability detection. They also use the presence a new DDC communication for detecting that the monitor has become attached. I use my monitor through a Belkin omniview rack KVM that doesn't properly passthrough VGA's DDC, so... Ubuntu needs a custom xorg.conf file added to give it a modeline for the native monitor resolution it can't see, and ... Windows 10 display settings constantly need changing to use the external monitor for a laptop every time it's reconnected to via the KVM switch - it makes a half-hearted attempt to autoconfig, gives up and switches back to the laptop internal screen (which lives in a cupboard). I have programmed a keyboard shortcut to get me out of that one, but AFAICS disabling connected monitor notifications can't be done in Windows 10, and this wasn't a issue / feature with previous Windows releases. -- Adrian C