I’m not sure I understand the point of wide screen monitors. With my useage patterns, about 25% of the screen is wasted, over there, off to the side, full of white space.
Most of the time, I find myself wanting more vertical space than horizontal. Especially, when writing code, or web browsing, or reading email, or running commands in a terminal. Aka, 99.9% of what I do with a computer.
I kind of miss CRT’s for that big, almost square aspect ratio. I’ve been tempted to find a wide screen LCD that I could rotate vertically. Never really been able to get a hardware/software combination that actually worked that way, though in theory, it should be easy.
I think it’s about time to put a new desktop machine together (and probably a new laptop as well). So I’ve been thinking a new monitor setup as well. Currently got a 21″ dell.
[And of course, the Civil War nerds will point out the Monitor was actually called the CSS Virginia]
A pretty large number of monitors nowadays do the rotate thang, and with xrandr the software should keep up. I think that’s your best bet.
$ xrandr –output blah –rotate left
I had a Hanns.G HW192. It was 1440×900, and rotated on end.
I sold it because I didn’t like it that skinny, but it would have been a useful 3rd monitor to have just for an email client on one end of your desktop. I didn’t have the space for that, and I didn’t like it so tall and skinny or vice versa. My new ones are a bit squarer. ;)
xrandr + portrait mode widescreen monitor = WIN.
It is terrific for me for paper-writing/reading, but I got the idea from google folks, who swear by dual portrait-mode monitors- one for viewing a web page under development; the other for writing code on.
If you get a rotating LCD, make sure it looks good in portrait mode. LCDs are often made to display well from a large horizontal angle, but not a good vertical angle. When you turn it sidewise, that affect can make the screen look funky because your eyes see different levels of brightness.