+1 for the separate window. I typically use this as two windows overlapping, I can see the code and flip to the window to see the output. This is a good use of screen real estate which is wider than its tall.
The small window at the bottom is no good as you have to trade one set of window space for another and have a bunch of un-used desktop space doing nothing. Floating windows are part of the operating system, so lets use them as intended.
Its not easy to use a separate tool for serial monitoring, since you have to close it each time you compile and download, which slows things down.
A workaround on the ESP32 family is to use Over the Air (OTA) firmware updates, then use a separate tool such as PuTTY for the serial port monitoring and just forget about the Arduino provided one in the IDE