Slashdot Mirror
Virtual Desktops on Windows?
raist_online asks: "After long years of X11 (and recently Mac OS X) I'm now in a job that mandates Windows and uses some Windows-only tools, providing us with XP Pro installs. Using VMWare with dual heads means I can still mostly live in X11-based goodness but I'm really missing a virtual desktop when I have to use Windows. The MS Powertoy doesn't really cut it for me and I've been trying out Cooldesk (some task-bar integration but not behaving well) and altdesk (which is OK but doesn't integrate into the task-bar). I'm really looking for something as simple as the standard X11 pager. Please note that I HAVE to use native Windows for some things so suggestions for Wine / VMWare inside Linux are missing the point. Slashdot, what are your suggestions?"
I don't have them set up at the moment, so I don't remember what they're called offhand; but one of the utilities that nvidia gives you gives you virtual desktops; though they're a lot clunkier (IMHO) to navigate than what you get with either GNOME or KDE. But, none-the-less; they're there. The downside being you have to have an nvidia card, of course.
http://virt-dimension.sourceforge.net/
the power toys - or whatever the junk is from M$ - sucks!
Never really used it, but it might do what you want... http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Free for personal use last time I used it. http://www.dexpot.de/
However, it costs $40 if that matters to people who prefer free software like VirtuaWin.
1) It's slow, very slow.
2) Dialogs (such as VS.NET pops up a dialog when a file has changed) pop up on the visible screen, not on the screen occupied by the parent. You can waste time wondering why your app appears to have locked up - it's just waiting for you to clear a dialog on another desktop.
3) MS Excel looses all it's toolbars if you flip between virtual desktops.
4) Some apps don't behave well to being switched and the window contents 'slide' down inside their container.
5) If an app on one of the other desktops wanders off into the long grass and consumes lots of CPU, it's the devils own job to switch desktops. I find after starting using MSVDM I use taskmgr much more frequently.
That said, it's definately the best of a bad bunch.
- I have yet to find a way to send windows to another desktop - they stay where you open them. This can lead to dialogue boxes on a different desktop to it's parent program.
- Some programs don't get on well with it, Excel 2003 loses the tool bars and one of our in-house apps hangs if you change desktop.
- If a program freezes it will lock things up when you try and change desktop - ctrl-alt-del is the only way I've found to get round this and killing the stuck process can kill explorer and bring everything back to destop 1.
- It can be slow to change desktops and will often re-arrange the order of windows and their buttons on the task bar when you return to a desktop.
It's better than no vrtual desktops but not by much. However, it does have the virtue of not showing up on our internal software audit scans as a verboten software install.I currently use bbLean. It has not been updated in awhile but it is reliable.
http://xoblite.net/
Granted it's not been updated for almost a year now, but I use it at work for the very same reason. I use the edge flipping and mousewheel plugins with the pager so I have a lot of flexibility in how I move from desktop to desktop. It gives me Unix like interface and with Cygwin (which also has an option to run X windows but I've not played with it much) augmenting my command line, I'm almost happy with it.
I've used various Blackbox for Windows branches, and xoblite seems to be the best of them. Fast and stable; the only times I've had problems with it, could be traced back to another program.
Plus there is the added bonus that my Windows only co-workers can't figure out how to navigate around my machine.
Yep, that does work but it's a long winded way of doing something I am used to doing with two mouse clicks in X. A menu item of 'Send to Desktop [n]' is what I call rather obvious, this I call an obscure workround, but that's semantics for you.
i figured someone would save me the trouble of posting this, but an hour or so later, no one has.... so here you go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_desktop
They list a bunch of alternatives on there. I hooked a friend up with Dextop, it works pretty slick.
Vern
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
10 desktops, lightweight, free, portable, allows window exclusion - works great
http://keir.net/bosskey.html
From Enable Software at http://enablevirtualdesktop.com/ Works pretty much just like an X11 desktop pager, you can drag apps from window to window and they behave as expected. It also has a set of 'rules' that you can implement to handle apps that don't play nice. I have been using this software for 8 years now, it just works.
I can vouch for this. I've used VirtuaWin for ~3 years, and it is hands down the best virtual windowing utility for Windows I've tried.
It's open source too.
Eric
"Highly, highly recommended."
Especially with the Cool Desktop Switcher module.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Another vote for GoScreen. It is rock solid, and has lots of nice features.