This is one of those jokes that will absolutely spark a trend where in a few months Asus will have a diagonal monitor for sale and there will be videos and articles about how life changing it is.
It all comes from a blog post from 2021. A picture from it went viral on X/Twitter a week ago. (First two links in the article) Since then everyone is posting it.
I can't obviously see it there, I do think its a bit stupid, but I would have thought that Toms Hardware wouldn't have bitten the onion? Or have they gone downhill that far?
I swear to fucking Stallman, this is at least the fourth time this past week I've seen a unique post about this same fucking shit. One dude writes an article going "xrandr let's you rotate the screen 22 degrees" and the holiday tech news cycle just loses its mind.
Very fine, as long as the computer uses X (the good less shitty one). xrandr can use a matrix to transform the entire output, so you can scale, rotate, move, or shear it as much as you're evil.
Windows command to rotate the screen, screenshot the desktop, set it as wallpaper, hide the icons & start bar... Functionally reversed mouse, and can't click anything.
Earth's axial tilt is 23.5°, COINCIDENCE? I DON'T THINK SO!!!
Seriously though, I'd be tempted to set it to 23.5° as a gag and tell everyone "Well, for full accuracy, you have to correct for the Earth's axial tilt..."
It would be interesting to have an app that tilted your screen to see what it would look like from other places on the globe. I'm sometimes curious about the angle offset I have with various other parts of the world.
Though you'd need to be able to rotate in two dimensions to properly capture the differences on a globe. It might be able to, if it's rendering the desktop to a 3d surface and applying the rotation to that.
Actually, even cooler would be to have an actuator that would physically rotate the monitor around all 3 axii instead of rotating what it displays.
The use case I see is screens mounted on something that moves.
It's easy with accelerometers to know the orientation, so you can display things on something that in its whole or has parts that move in an additive way.
Imagine an movie screening with the screen mounted on a float in the ocean.
The float moves with the waves. You can stabilize the image of the movie to be still while the screen itself tilts.
Another use case would be applying this to smartwatches or other displays like that.
You could make the output of the screen always be perfectly aligned with your line of sight rather than have it tilted at an angle parallel with your arm.
Knowing how big Linux is in embedded systems I almost wonder if it was originally implemented for some kind of full-motion simulator since that could easily call for very funky display mounting
I think most people would just use media server software like pixera, d3, touchdesigner etc to accomplish playback of video on a moving surface with feedback sensors.
It's established tech, plenty of integrations, and most companies that are able to deliver something like this aren't a linux-first type of company.
If it was for an installation, something bespoke might be made using Linux. But the cost of touchdesigner and a suitable computer are tiny compared to doing this using Linux and then supporting and documenting it (especially considering how widespread skills in touchdesigner/pixera/d3 are in the industry Vs more esoteric Linux skills)
I once used a vertical monitor at work and people thought it was wild. A tilted monitor would cause a full blown riot at my job, and I don't want blood in my hands.