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Virtual Desktops on Windows?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the a-more-comfortable-environment dept.

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?"

3 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Virtuawin by christophe.vg · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Back in the days when I was still using windows, I used Virtuawin. It works very nicely, has a rich feature set, but ... 9 virtual desktops, each one filled with application, sometimes brought Windows to its knees ;-)

    http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net

    See also my previous post about Virtuawin an other posts in reply to an article about "Improving the Windows XP User Interface" containing other useful applications in the same line: http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/14/19 18218&tid=201

  2. Re:Virtual Dimension by JamesTRexx · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I can't compare to the powertoys, but Virtual Dimension performs very well. I've been using it for years on Windows 2000 and now XP, and the only real complaint I have that on rare occasions I can't switch desktops, but that could be related to the use of Synergy2 and VMware/Virtual PC at the same time. (one can only use so much keyboard grabbing software constantly at the same time..) I highly recommend trying this one.

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    home
  3. You might try some alternate shells... by Mr.+Gus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I haven't used any myself in quite a while, but there are alternative shells for windows that replace explorer (start menu et al) that are very unixy. I used to use LiteStep, which made it seem a lot like AfterStep. I even had a theme that made it seem kinda' WindowMaker-y (though it was a bit cheesy). I'm not current, don't know what's "the best" these days, but it's a direction you might want to look in to, if you're employers will let you do it.