Hiya!
Wondering how people’s experiences are regarding the use of ultrawide monitors on Linux these days. What kind of setup do you rock?
Am thinking about getting an oled monitor as my next monitor and current setup is two 32inch monitors where one of them is vertical. But been keeping a keen eye on ultrawides for a while but not sure its for me and how well it’s supported with Linux. I’ve read KDE supports it well, but what about when gaming? Also what’s the current state of oled and hdr support?
Also, please add your monitor brand+models, would love to see what peeps are rocking. Personally been looking at the Alienware AW3423DWF.
Edit: I’m looking at screens that are oled and 2k resolution.
Let me know your experiences, tips or recommendations!
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Just my two cents: I’ve had occasional problems with games through steam on dual monitors. Things like losing mouse focus or changing resolution on the other monitor (though that hasn’t happened for a long time).
Monitors are old Asus. I won’t bother looking up the models as I’m sure they’re outdated
I much prefer Multi-Monitor on vesa arms. Works better with the way I work, less hassle in games that don’t like unusual aspect ratios.
10-year old 40" 4K in standard 16:9 ratio. way less neck swivel than two 24" side-by-side and way more screen real estate. 60 Hz max, runs off a $30 RX 570 4 GB. got no HDR, 100+ Hz, freesync, and other rich-people-stuff.
to me ultrawides are like what I have, only they chopped off like a third of the vertical resolution and they want more money for it.
I have an Alienware AW3423DWF and use it with Fedora KDE.
No problems here. Some games don’t support ultrawide without mods but I haven’t encountered any of these mods that don’t work on Linux yet.
As for HDR, it should be ready for primetime once Proton 10 comes out with Wayland support. As of right now, you have to either run your game through gamescope or use Wine/Proton with Wayland support enabled, e.g. Proton-Tkg (Wine master).
It’s a really good monitor by the way, still impresses me with its pure black on a regular basis, even in SDR.
Ultra wide is better. If enough space an ultra wide and another 16:9 monitor. Games look so nice 21:9 and wider without the bezels of the older solution for ultra wide with multi monitors
i have a 3 monitor setup for work machine and a 49" 32:9 ultrawide for my home machine. i like them both because of the things i do on them.
my home rig is regularly for gaming. a single, large, high ppi, high refresh rate, ultrawide monitor is amazing for a gaming-first setup. there is flexibility for off-work productivity here where i split 1/3x3, 2/3-1/3, or even 2/3-2/3 with 1/3 overlap.
my work rig is regularly for programming, communication (chat, video conference, email, ticket comments), time management, word processing & diffing, testing web clients… i have to do a lot of things. the structured 3-monitored layout is great for me to keep everything in its place and flip between them frequently.
both multi-monitor and single-monitor setups have their benefits. all that matters is that you choose according to your preference and expected use-case.
My ultra wide monitor has worked perfectly from day one on Linux.
Currently I’m running an LG and Gnome 42ish, if I recall.
But Linux has had excellent support for ultra wide monitors since before I started being able to afford ultra wide monitors.
A multi monitor setup would be ideal. Get an OLED for gaming and an LCD for everything else. Text looks bad on OLED monitors because they don’t support subpixel antialiasing. Panels and window borders will start to burn into OLEDs after several years, so it’s best to save them for gaming and movies.
For an ultrawide monitor, you will definitely want a window manager that supports tiling. KDE supports basic tiling functions and there are plugins to make it better.
I have both lol, dual ultrawide setup. My main monitor is a 1440p 165hz ultrawide, and i have a 1080p 75hz ultrawide mounted above it that used to be my main monitor before i upgraded. A decent amount of games support ultrawide from my experience, but for some reason mostly japanese games often times don’t support it. Usually you can find guides to edit the exe to enable ultrawide support, but i haven’t had much luck with that myself. I don’t have an oled display or use hdr though, but from my understanding you might be able to make it work in games by using gamescope. For other types of content hdr isn’t really there yet, but the good news is that the required wayland protocol recently got merged, so it should be a matter of time before it will eventually be working. I usually always have atleast 2 windows open on my desktop next to each other, and ultrawide is really great for that because it gives each window more width to work with, so you have lots of space.
I have 2x32"@4k side by side at 100% scaling. No way I would switch to a single ultrawide as I would be losing screen size, so I would have to adjust the ratio to make it the same size and thus lose screen real estate.
I also prefer two monitors as I have different workspaces for each so I can switch just half the “screen” between different groups of apps. It would also be harder for my tiling WM, sway, to tile the large number of apps currently split over two workspaces without a lot more faffing.
Oh and switching apps to full screen would be less useful, I use that a lot as it’s just two keys to flip it back and forth. I can keep reference on the other screen and the other app full screen.
Depends on your workload. If you watch movies and game, ultrawide. If you do streaming or web development, dual monitor is like a must. Oled and hdr are also supported, stable on kde and gnome, experimental on xfce. Dual monitor is supported by these, plus cinnamon, mate, lxqt, budgie, pantheon and many window managers. I myself use a 15" laptop bc im poor
Once you go UW, you never go back…
Just try it out haha
don’t be mad at me, i went back. found out I really like the vertical space.
I have an ultrawide with a 16:9 on either side mounted portrait. I get the vertical space and the ultrawide.
i run some games in ultrawide window (if they don’t offer fov control), so i get the ultrawide too. but i do still prefer 16:9 so the game fills my whole field of vision
Not trying to argue with you or anything but i never really understood that sentiment. Don’t you have the same amount of vertical space on an ultrawide?
not because i went for a 4k tv, but normally yeah
Race traitor
I’ve tried both and I prefer Ultrawide for the following reasons:
- Less cables. Cable management is already hard enough as it is.
- No borders in between screens. Looks amazing when watching movies and for gaming.
My current monitor is a GIGABYTE G34WQC.
Have the non-curved version of that, prefer the curved display at that size but it’s a nice display regardless, at the distance it sits not really an issue, just preference, definitely recommend.
Built in kvm is fantastic for using with my work machine, used to use 3x 1080p displays, just like this more for pretty much everything I do.
I did multi monitors for years and switched to a single 34" 3440*1440 ultrawide both at work and at home and I have never considered going back. I use a curved msi at home and a flat samsung at work. I would go larger size or higher resolution eventually but ultrawide is really nice for cad work so you still get a good work area without the sidebar eating into your view/modeling space. For normal use, I just do window snapping so I still get the function of two work areas.
Same here. In the end, my second monitor was a window with chat and one with a browser while I was gaming or watching a video on the other. I can do that with one ultra wide as well. I have to alt+tab anyway.
I went for a 27" 1440p w/ 24", but that’s because I had the 24" laying around.
I use an ultrawide at work, and it’s fine, but I generally just use it like two monitors anyway, so for productivity I’d prefer two monitors so I’m not screwed when one dies. But I haven’t done any gaming on that monitor, so I’m not sure how the extra real estate would feel for the games I play.
I’m considering replacing my 24" and am considering another 16:9, just bigger (30+") and 4k, though I’m worried my GPU will struggle (6650XT). We’ll see.
