Theme 1 – Screens as an application‑grouping / project‑oriented workspace
- “What I think made screens feel different was as a grouping mechanism, usually driven by a single application … you can do that with virtual desktops, but it takes some effort to simulate the behaviour.” – vidarh
- “I now snapshot the (by default tiling) layout and restore it, letting me ‘open’ and ‘close’ screens/virtual desktops, and re‑open the applications on them … instead of opening a single application that opens a screen, I will open a ‘project’ and it will open a desktop and multiple applications on it.” – vidarh
Theme 2 – The concept faded because modern hardware removes the need for per‑screen resolutions/color depths
- “Maybe its me, but i believe the primary or secondary reason for screen is different screens had different resolutions and color depths, both of which don’t really exist these days on any major OS.” – MiroslavPokorny
- “It feels like the concept faded with the advent of large VRAM and fast fill rate graphics accelerators. … The hardware would compose windows from memory during display scan‑out, all to save VRAM.” – summa_tech
Theme 3 – Pixels are a flexible abstraction; analog video timing allowed per‑line resolution changes
- “Analog monitors don't care about the dot clock. They draw lines, but you can put whatever signal you want in the lines so long as the dot clock doesn't exceed the available bandwidth. Horizontal resolution is effectively a range you can change at any time …” – kmeisthax
- “In the context of the Amiga you didn’t need to change the signal frequency, the underlying video signal stayed the same. For wider pixels, the hardware just drew each pixel for longer, and for taller pixels each pixel spanned more lines. Pixels weren’t real in the CRT days :)” – noone_youknow
- “In a sense pixels aren’t even real today right? It's an abstraction.” – fallat