You really know the tumbleweeds are rolling across the dusty plains of the internet when you have not one, but two technically pointless stories about “Show us your [PLACEHOLDER]!” Yes, I figured that while we’re at it, we might as well take a look at not just our operating system’s desktops, but also our real desktops.
You know, that thing or place where you actually put your computer. Is it a neat and tidy desk, or is it a filth-covered stomach-ace inducing pile of cheeto crumbs and empty cola cans? Since I’m pathologically afraid of clutter and untidiness, my desk is usually an oasis of order and cleanliness.
This is basically where 99.9% of the magic happens, where I write all my OSNews stories. Those psychology books, by the way, are remnants of the time I used to study that at university – now they serve as 90 EUR a pop platforms for raising my display (preventing strain on the neck). I wish my former professors could see that.
So, what does your computer workspace look like? Yes, you can really tell we’re bored up here. My first day of Christmas (the only one that counts, the second one just kind of dangles there since I have no in-laws to go to) is already over, and there’s no news to report on. Hence, more superfluous nonsense from the OSNews team!
I’ll have to take some photos when I get home, but this is the desk I use with my NeXT. It’s changed a little; different mouse, LCD monitor, more junk
http://www.flickr.com/photos/helfer/3964565667/
So basically that is my workspace
http://www.leihwelt.de/trash/dualbaby.jpg
I also try to get my monitors a bit higher than i used it for years.
Recently i also switched to the Logitech Illuminated Keyboard (Not the one on the picture)
(Yes, there’s the ZETA Book on the shelf, i got it for free from my past employer
)
My Desk. (Not as messy as it normally is.)
http://pics.ihost.net46.net/view/Z980/100_0036.jpg
Well, we obviously don’t have the workspace set up like this all the time, but from time to time you could find it rather similar.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/angelaypablo/3778910786/in/set-7215760…
[just the photo at 1024px]
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2569/3778910786_9583c1063b_b.jpg
But the keyboard area seems a bit … displaced!
Notice that the essential mouse is far too right from the keyboard area. In the middle there is a superfluous area of editing keys and numeric keyboard that are seldom used (now that the mouse is a prevailing tool).
The rationale should be you that you have the right arm bigger that your left. Maybe… Or else you do have a very friendly quiropractic and LOVE to have her services.
Anyway, ONE DAY your back pains for streching the arm (and now using the once inexisting mouse) will prevail over the friendly quiropractic.
Or maybe keyboards are incorrectly made to make us suffer…
Nah! I do rather fancy the above hypothesis.
Merry Christmas (instead of Chop-mas)
And an happy new year that started with the Solstice.
1600 years ago it was at December, 25. Any clue?
Be well.
P.S. – Technology is a way to make errors with increasing precision. Is it not? Hum… I guess.
Edited 2009-12-26 00:40 UTC
You’re absolutely right about the far-reaching mouse. It’s not that far when I use it, though, but I get some backpain from time to time and it could be a mixture of the distance from arma to mouse and the type of mouse? (logitech trackman).
Pablo
PS: btw, I hope you are talking about the “sane” quiropractics, not the fancy pseudoscience followers 🙂
So this is what i have…
http://th08.deviantart.net/fs44/300W/f/2009/160/e/5/Cleaned_Desk_by…
and this is how it normally looks
http://th09.deviantart.net/fs42/300W/f/2009/158/a/1/Workspace_by_So…
http://i50.tinypic.com/5u031i.jpg
Not included: PC, placed it behind the wall and just routed a DVI and USB cable through
Nice and quiet, plus I do not need to care about all this fancy ‘silent’ cooling stuff.
Hey Thom, what monitor is that? Looks nice.
first it was this:
http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/7167/12001721.jpg
then like this:
http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/9291/13370165.jpg
now something like this, but it is everchanging
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/5162/51216915.jpg
of course on PC boxes there is GNU/Linux, and on Amigas there is AmigaOS and Gnu/Linux-m68 K
njoy
Edited 2009-12-26 02:52 UTC
I like your older setup more than the last one 🙂
Have you ever tried a tiling window manager? ( referring to your screen in the last picture )
It looks like you could use one…
incredible … do you ever see daylight?
My generic PC attached to an Apple flat panel screen, which is still the best screen I have ever used. The PC ruins Vista SP2. On top of the PC are some books and an MS of my work in progress novel.
On the desk, an xmas tree a friend gave the wife and I plus lots of chocolate that I found in my stocking. The mouse is vanilla Logitech optical wheel mouse, which has survived several computer changes and has to be over five years old.
It rests on a mini Persian rug mousepad. They sell ’em at Staples and they last years.
My desk is always a mess and heck, this is the cleanest it’s been in years.
http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/9319/spacef.jpg
Edited 2009-12-26 02:57 UTC
My main rig is a Nokia N800 running OS2008 Diablo with a Stowaway ThinkOutside portable Bluetooth keyboard. I use AbiWord for most of my word processing tasks, and when I need something more heavy duty I fire up OpenOffice through the “easydeb” package, which runs a Debian chroot image off of my SD card. I also have a kernel with screen rotation and full 48 MHz SD bus speed enabled. For web browsing, I use the built-in browser and switch between MicroB (Nokia’s adaptation of Gecko) and Webkit, though I’m thinking about using the browser-switcher tool to migrate to Tear.
I’m out of town for the holidays, so I couldn’t take a photo of my usual desk stacked high with books and cables. Here’s a photo of where I’ve been typing from for the past week, the kitchen table of my girlfriend’s parents’ house (note that I was taking the photo with my N800, which is why it’s not pictured): http://www.flickr.com/photos/41897704@N02/4214200841/
A lot of people ask why on Earth I’d ever use an underpowered 4.1″ discontinued consumer device as a main computer. My reasons in their order of importance:
1) Small screen size keeps the computer as a tool and not a world to get sucked into (NB: I am young and my eyesight is good)
2) A computer has never felt so good to me. Excellent hardware/software integration and UI design.
3) Portability. Fits with my keyboard into an external 2.5″ HDD case.
4) Insane battery life. 6 hours in use, days on standby.
For development, I use a Gateway LT3104 netbook with Slackware64 13.0 and GNUStep. OpenOffice, Firefox, etc., with some custom init and HAL scripts. Most of my time goes into hacking the N800 or working on AbiWord =). I’ve been programming since I was 8, but I consider myself first and foremost as a writer and an aspiring scholar; thus, I’m proud to be a “regular user” who made the jump to becoming a developer and an open source contributer.
Finally, when I want to have fun I fire up my Toshiba 420CDT running MS-DOS 7 and also a custom floppy Linux distro that I’ve been making/fiddling with for the past five years. Nothing better than a good game of Machiavelli the Prince/Railroad Tycoon/fitting Linux kernel 2.6.31 + userspace into 1.44 MB. Oh, I also use it as my photo processing station, as I still use my Sony Mavica to take pictures.
Edited 2009-12-26 03:20 UTC
++
That is great. Makes me want one more. I’ve been contemplating getting one and I think your post just sealed the deal.
Love to see shots of it running debian + OO.org. Too amusing.
Edited 2009-12-26 03:25 UTC
That’s terrific! If you’re serious, however, I feel obligated to give you a list of the hacks and apps I’m using that have gotten my tablet up to speed. Most can be installed via the Application Manager once you add the “devel extras” Maemo deb repository. Google is your friend:
-“easydeb” Debian package (provides OOo, Gimp, etc.)
-AbiWord
-(not an app) mv /home/user/.modest /media/mmc2/ && ln -s /media/mmc2/.modest /home/user/.modest (“modest” is the default mail program, doing this will move the cache to the internal SD card saving you much precious internal flash space.
-48 MHz kernel (48 MHz refers to the SD bus speed, which is arbitrarily capped much lower with the stock kernel) with screen rotation (not that useful)
-webkit-eal (one of several options to get a webkit browser, this one integrates with the built-in UI rather than giving a full new browser)
-Custom 256 MB swap file (has to be done by hand, the standard menu-driven procedure allows a max of 128 MB)
-Backported quite a few system libraries, not sure if that has an effect or not, but I posted my packages at talk.maemo.org for the brave
-OpenSSH
The N800 is not perfect. It suffers from several annoying bugs that Nokia won’t fix anymore because they’ve moved on to the N900. The N900, however, is a smartphone with a 3.5″ screen, whereas the 4.1″ N800 is the minimum (and therefore in my book the optimum) size to get work done. These bugs aren’t too serious anymore, but you should be aware of the main ones that affect daily heavy usage:
-Bluetooth keyboards once in a while (every one or two pages in AbiWord) will repeat a letter several times (i.e., you’re typing “hello” and you get “hellooooooo”). No workaround, but not very painful either.
-On rare occasions, bluetooth keyboards will not keep the backlight on during usage as they’re supposed to. Disconnect/reconnect and it works normally again.
-Deleting text with backspace is painfully slow in AbiWord. I’m working on a patch, but this might simply be because of the rendering engine, in which case there might not be any solution. OpenOffice deletes fine, however.
-Selecting text using the popular ThinkOutside keyboard by holding shift and up doesn’t work, as shift + up is mapped to question mark. That’s the price of portability! Otherwise it’s a terrific keyboard.
-Up and down keys in the default web browser do not navigate through a text box when the cursor is inside of a text box on a web page. Instead, it cycles through different elements on the page.
-Text input can lag considerably depending on the app when using the bluetooth keyboard.
-Rare random reboots, especially when using OOo under heavy load. I haven’t tested this since upgrading to a 256 MB swap file with the 48 MHz SD bus kernel.
-Obviously security is a joke…at least you should change the default passwords.
-On rare occasions, bluetooth will refuse to connect. Reboot.
-On rare occasions, the browser gets hung and won’t work. Soft reboot works fine, or use one of the alternative browsers.
Despite all these problems, I still find the N800 worth my time. Simply put, I’ve never enjoyed doing work with a computer more than with this device. Check out talk.maemo.org for more info. Also search for “Maemo Mer”. Mer is a community-driven effort to mix Ubuntu with Nokia’s packages to provide a stable and continually updated OS for the tablets. It’s still a long way off, but it shows promise.
I hope that helps! YMMV. Good luck!
Thanks for all the info! Very valuable
Thought about creating a dump of your OS install for newbies like me to get started with?
I don’t think this is weird at all, you’re just ahead of the curve is all!
That’s too much horsepower for me, I hacked GNU Emacs to fit into my beloved HP 48G and I can read/write email, browse the web and talk to my Doctor who keeps telling me if I’ve got problems with “size” 😛
I’m planning to build a cluster with a Casio calculator, just for the keyboard feeling, you know.
Pablo
http://inaneframe.com/images/P1000158.JPG
mmm, G5
…but the equipment is updated since these shots.
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=candiazoo&target=ALBUM&…
Bah! Humbug!
My workspace.
Like Thom, i’m a neat-freak. I’m allergic to messy workspaces.
Sorry about the image quality – the iPhone camera plain sucks.
http://imgur.com/Mz1pu.jpg
You realize your speakers are set up wrong, right?
Oh nooo!
(your left speaker is on the right and vice versa)
I hadn’t noticed it before you mentioned it!
That doesn’t bother me though. As long as they’re standing “symmetrically” LOL.
http://twl.no-ip.org/~foranamo/asema.jpg
Unfortunately the speakers are quite close to the screen, need a bigger desk
http://danwa.net/junk/desktop-09.png
I got a new desk a month or so ago, and I’ve been keeping it relatively neat since. One-stop computer… Stop. I do my writing, coding, graphic design and audio recording on that little gray box you can’t quite make out. I likes it.
Is that a fridge just behind your chair there. I totally need a fridge!
]{
But of course, within arm’s reach, my fridge, freezer, microwave and water cooker
Tea and snacks for the lazy man!
That’s my desk this morning:
http://u-mass.de/pics/IMG_1117.jpg
However, while looking for the camera usb cable – which was actually in the living room with my notebook
– I cleaned it up a little:
http://u-mass.de/pics/IMG_1118.jpg
However, I just got a new desk for christmas, 200×60 cm
so I had to clean up anyway. Will make a new photo of the new desk for next christmas, maybe.
That’s basically what my wife says when she encounters my desk. I love clutter. I always have had a somewhat cluttered desk. Empty coffeecups, cd-roms, noteblocks, pens, usb-sticks. All “filed” in such a way I can find stuff fast.
I didn’t have any shots of my current desk available, but here is one from when I was working from home a couple of years ago 🙂
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45922765@N07/4215751540/
Some years ago I had this setup:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/31/52759623_bdaa8071b5_o.jpg
The screen’s hinge was broken so I made this scaffold.
That’s amazing. Some of us really have great ideas.
http://www.biffuz.it/misc/desk_0912.jpg
I change it often, but it is always more or less similar to this. Below the desk, my self built quad-core Q9650 is playing World of Warcraft, which you can see on the 23″ monitor, on Windows 7 Professional x64.
On the desk, my MSI Wind U100+ is running Haiku; sometimes it runs Ubuntu as server for my web development. But my real “personal” computer is the one on the right: a MacBook running Snow Leopard.
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r23047445-Getting-setup-in-my-new-h…
This is a work in progress. We moved last March and redid the basement giving me a home office.. Well, before I was even to get settled in we purchased another house with a move pending so I gave up getting the office just right.
Anyways, here is my triple 24″ monitor setup. Its Linux running on a Core i7 920 with 12GB of RAM and dual NVidia 9500 GT cards. The window manager is FVWM, and to get any level of performance out of it I have to use twinview for 2 screens, xinerama in the 3rd and then use a fake libXinerama to provide the real screen info. Quite a pain in the ass for a triple monitor setup.
Hopefully Linux drivers for the Eyefinity cards with 3+ outputs will make 3 screens on Linux a better experience. But since I don’t need compositing for my workflow, its all fine once setup.
uhm … excuse me, but what are you using your hardware for? and … don’t you feel a little uncomfortable with such oversized monitor setup? O_o that must me a real pain in the neck.
I’d say it could be right for the flight coordinator.
Software development. 3 is great. Keyboard shortcuts to bring any windows into the center and to swap the contents of one display for the other really help.
I never use virtual desktops anymore.
I don’t like clutter so I have a sleek and tidy desk:
http://89.31.97.146/s6300005.jpg
(date in the picture is wrong)
the real google earth beta
The workspace in my home office …
http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/9310/dsc0007jpgu.jpg
A little cleaner then usual.
Now that’s what i’m talking about! I wish i could have such a sleek looking corner of my apartment.
How’s the multi-monitor setup with OS X? I mean, what about apps on the monitor without the menubar?
Is there any way to have more than one menubar? Say another menubar on the second screen, with “menu” items only…
http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/7063/dsc01562n.jpg
I’m in a bit of a mess as my room is not decorated and I plan to eventually have a workbench the full width of my room (double this current desk) to host my full set of consoles. I’ve wanted to have my C64 unpacked and in use for ages.
MBP on far left, then the Dreamcast, 17″ TV/TFT monitor, Wii, MacMini with MorphOS CD, Mighty Mouse & RC on top then printer with two Apple keyboards on top.
PC with dual screen 22″ monitors
AmigaOne with 22″ display on the right.
Pic is from a few months ago, but not much has changed.
http://i46.tinypic.com/34g965f.jpg
Looks like someone has thrown a hand grenade on the workspace, and afterward poured a bag of rubbish on the floor
😛
You think so? I thought mine was one of the tidier ones here lol.
… in the typical home setup fashion. I actually had to have an ergonomist tell this to me, but the monitor should be lower than your head, tilted so that you are looking down on it.
This comes naturally with laptops, but you should emulate it on your desktop as well.
Regarding keyboard – it should be some distance away from the edge of the table, so you can rest your arms against the table.
I don’t know, my back starts hurting quickly when I have to work on a laptop. I use my amplifier to raise my monitor to eye level and I experience zero problems.
Also his keyboard is a good distant away from the edge of his table, maybe you failed to see it because to outer border of his table is fully transparent.
For me the only problem with his setup is that its tidiness would give me allergic reactions because it is so far removed from my natural habitat. Also, I would constantly perform a Lock Stock and two Smoking Barrels on his table
With 22″ monitors so cheap these days, I’m surprised so many of you are sporting small monitors, and I figure more of you would have a dual monitor setup.
I’m too lazy to take a pic of my setup, but I have a 23″ monitor and a 24″ monitor setup. I thought I was gonna take the crown for biggest monitors, until I saw the dude who posted with a triple 24″ setup… that’s just crazy
I plan on buying more LCDs and running several… eventually. Right now I’d rather blow the cash on storage space
I have a 22″ monitor but I find working on my 15.6″ notebook screen to be more satisfying. Large monitors to me are an annoyance since there is more to focus on.
I use a 42″ LG LCD TV (DVI -> HDMI). See the link below, it’s a pretty decent screen, though unfortunately you can’t tell from my crappy picture.
http://theunixzoo.co.uk/files/setup.jpg
My techy son thought this article was cute and I suggested he photograph my desktop, register for the site and submit it.
He posted it on his website; check it out here.
http://www.comlore.com/DSCN1626.JPG
Here is a haiku I found and thought it would bring warmth to some hearts.
Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.
*insert Linux distro here* is like that.
Fixed it for you.
There is an app for that … on a Mac ;-P
(just kidding, no need to start a flame war)
Finally! Someone with a desk that’s actually used for productive work.
Here’s my setup, pretty messy right now. This is all in the front bedroom of our house which is soon (around the end of July) to become the bedroom of our unborn son/daughter (don’t know what it is yet). When that day comes I’m planning on adding a new room to the back of the house that will be a dedicated office with a REAL DESK rather than the table I’m currently using! For what it’s worth, the rest of our house looks nowhere near as messy as my work/goof off area. Shit just tends to get thrown around and left out by my computers because I’m constantly pulling stuff out and fiddling with things.
So anyway, on to the pictures. Here you’ll see my dell xps 430 workstation running win7 pro, my dell poweredge 1600sc server running debian 5.0 and my dell d420 laptop also running windows seven. You’ll also notice yoda, darth vader and a tall glass of jack and mountain dew I’m drinking as I type this.
http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/6998/img0879dj.jpg
In this image I have my samsung laser printer that obviously isn’t used much because on top it sits my cisco 800 series router along with my cisco 1200 wap. The little filing cabinet is full of cables, 8.5×11 paper, software (legal… well mostly) and other random computer parts that I feel are too important to stuff in a box in a closet but never really end up using anyway.
Behind all of this on our guest bed sits anything from cat5e cables, to broken laptops and my ancient powerbook g4 17″ that I never use but can’t bring myself to get rid of. Just took a quick glance behind me and Office 2007 has also found a home there also.
http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/2791/img0880f.jpg
This is my workspace:
http://g.imagehost.org/0521/pict0004.jpg
The picture is obviously distorted, but that’s because of my old camera [blame KonicaMinolta
]. The setup which the peripherals are hooked up to runs FreeBSD/OpenBSD tandem with virtualisation under FreeBSD [VirtualBox that is].
The desktops consist of XFCE4 environments, but the camera decided to not to show it. Oh, well
http://yfrog.com/1rworkspacej
My desk at home. Sorry for the terrible picture quality, my blackberry camera isn’t very good. I mainly use the screen for MythTV and work on my couch on a laptop, but when I need the screen real estate, nothing beats the 42″ LG TV at 1920×1080.
I couldn’t get far back enough to include the speakers (hifi floorstanders) as they’re about a metre away from the desk on each side. But you can see my headphone rig.
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/mUOZKysL5KYyQXLHnbnLkg?feat=di…
…with plenty of space (2-meters-long table!) and a wall-mounted monitor, I don’t have problems anymore when I need to deal with paper or “guest” computers.
The table is simply a wood desk “top” onto two adjustable IKEA trestles.
My home office is
Half Office (My 2 walls):
http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/6460/cimg0087f.jpg
and Half Walk-in Closet (Wife’s Side, although I’ve started to encroach on her territory)
http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/6977/cimg0088d.jpg
The additional monitors are for working on PC’s…
looks cozy
http://jessta.id.au/pictures/misc/workspace.jpg
It’s always a mess. A lot of the mess I blame on paper which people keep giving me for some strange reason.
I don’t understand paper.
This is mine, taken in 2 shots ’cause the camera from the crappberry can’t make it better…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45991191@N03/4222538562/
I’m into computers and music so my workspace combines a slide out keyboard drawer, place for my keyboard, a home built addition on the side to access my laptop, a mac mini with 19″ LCD as my primary desktop PC, a Casio keyboard midi’d to the computer, Behringer mixer, iPod and dock, Audio Technica microphone, desktop mic stand, desk lamp, wireless phone, Lexmark printer and scanner, media storage, file storage, etc. Spent months looking for a desk that could do it all and with a few field modifications (specifically the laptop shelf, pipe, u-brackets, MDF shelf).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjhi11/4221828459/in/set-7215762296230…
We just moved into our new office space with 1500 sq ft data center.
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/0EHG1KLHMWkCApTmKbkSXg?authkey…
From right to left: Lenovo dual core laptop; my main workstation running Win7 x64, 8gb ram; 19″ 2x HP stock DC workstations on KVM, one with Ubuntu x64 and the other with our stock workstation XP image for testing applications; a Fluke OptiView S3 for when i need to take it out in the field; finally my 4 cup coffee pot.
The Fluke is a nice tool. However i can get 90% of what i need done on my laptop.
And of course the mix of kids pictures and garb.
Nalls
Where’s the clutter?
Here’s my desk.
http://www.fraglimit.net/~collin/workspace.jpg
Note the cramped confines, the unergonomic desk height, the grit, the grime, the stacks of stuff. Actually it’s usually worse ’cause the cat knocked the stuff off the top of the computer recently and I actually put it away properly.
It’s not all doom, though! I have a laptop, too, which sits next to the couch.
http://www.fraglimit.net/~collin/workspace-laptop.jpg
Note the realistic amounts of clutter there, too.
http://www.reanimality.com/hidden/desktopShot2.jpg“ http://www.reanimality.com/hidden/desktopShot2.jpg