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I'm not old, but things like this make me go "back in my day we had a CRT with one input, VGA, and it just worked". Obviously we don't have to worry too much about a monitor's supported modes anymore (though that wasn't a problem at the tail end of the CRT), but we're in a period where plugging in a monitor doesn't guarantee that it'll work.

Signal integrity and all that sure, but really it's just a freaking monitor.

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The VGA days were the times where a computer user could kill a CRT screen because the analog data stream wasn't what the monitor supported or expected. I don't miss those days!

Plugging a monitor nowadays will always work. Of course, buying a new monitor only to have it fall back to a lower-quality compatible mode is unacceptable, but that's what happens in today's world. Monitors are more varied than ever. A 1080p60 monitor will work everywhere, and all monitors will accept such a signal. But we all love fancy toys.

True, although to be fair I did spent an inordinate amount of time circa 2006 trying to get multiple monitor setups working reliably in Linux, across several years, PCs, and Linux distros.

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