#4 was a good recommendation. I pretty much strictly run RStudio Server and hadn't thought of opening as a separate window.
Like the OP, I would like to customize the pane layout beyond the default options. I'd really like a 3 column, 1 row layout:
- Console/Terminal
- Source
- Everything else
This is slightly possible with the pop-out scripts panel, but I tend to have 3-4 editor panels up at a time and it becomes unmanageable.