Virtual Desktops on Windows? 121
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 use nvidia's virtual desktops when I use XP (Score:3, Informative)
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I agree.
In the past it's been unstable and now it's just clunky and doesn't seem as smart as traditional X11 desktopping.
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At work I use a program called multidesk [fusion-soft.co.uk]. This has the added bonus of being free. It can support up to 9 desktops and you can map your own hot-keys for switching.
It loads into the taskbar and has a nice GUI where you can drag windows from desktop to desktop.
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Good call.
There is only on logical choice (Score:2)
It is the fastest virtual desktop switcher out there, no pause, no hesitation whatsoever. Icons for the most part stay on their own virtual desktop. There is no gui,everything works by hotkey. It is the only virtual desktop manager that just stays out of my way and works.
Most virtual desktop managers for windows are dog slow, you can watch the minimized icons dissapear one by one, then the desktop switches, then the icons for that desktop
WinScroll (Score:2)
Virtual Dimension (Score:5, Informative)
http://virt-dimension.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
the power toys - or whatever the junk is from M$ - sucks!
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Looks interesting - I'll have to try it. I'm curious how well it performs though. The only real complaint I have for the powertoy is that it's a little slow. If virtual dimension is noticeably faster then that's good enough for me (especially with that apparent transparency affect).
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Couple of wishes, but they're probably already there if I get shell integration working. (Like 'Move to Desktop').
Anyone know if you can set a hotkey to show/hide the desktops window? I don't want it there all the time, but want to get it to show on a hotkey...
On the whole it's far better than the last ones I tried (which were slow and kept losing windows).
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This allows you to toggle the desktop list off or on.
JLE
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Thanks!
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I mean, with 3desk I have a cooler select method, but I like the "tile" thing too.
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Virtuawin? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Virtuawin? Absolutely! (Score:5, Informative)
Schwab
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It's open source too.
Eric
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Especially with the Cool Desktop Switcher module.
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UltraMon (Score:1)
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Yeah, I use Ultramon at work since I have two LCDs there. It's a great little app and makes dual monitors that much better. The two key features for me are the non-mirroring taskbars (i.e. apps open on one monitor will only show up in the taskbar for that monitor) and the button beside minimize that quickly lets you move a window from one monitor to another. Killer app.
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GoScreen (Score:1)
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Virtuawin (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 [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 [slashdot.org]
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Just putting another drop in the ocean, here.
Microsoft TCO (Score:5, Funny)
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Virtual desktops (Score:1)
Torrent here [linuxtracker.org] . Enjoy.
You might try some alternate shells... (Score:5, Interesting)
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The only PITA about installing it that I found was practically not finding the installer!
But, I just stopped using it this week because I enabled the X-Mouse feature of 'focus-follows mouse' (via TweakUI) and that didn't didn't play well with the Lite-Step's (or the default theme somehow?) menus.
But the great news is that this post showed up the next day after I installed MS's powertoy desktop imitater.
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I'm not sure what the current state of the litestep community is like - it seemed to undergo some sort of implosion a few years back, and the main litestep sites closed up shop. Was kinda sad, given how well the shell worked. Anyone here know how things are currently?
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Otherwise, it's lightweight, nice, clean, customizable and there's quite a lot of themes available.
Just my $0.02.
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To better help answer the question... (Score:2)
Note: Having Microsoft's name attached doesn't count.
-l
Re:To better help answer the question... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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On OS/2, I use the virtual desktop utility that came bundled with Hummingbird eXceed, and it seems to be much more "conventional" with an X x Y pane panel (I use 2x2) and the ability to drag apps between desktops using the mini window images. Maybe I need to get a copy of eXceed for Windows?
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Is that after having also tried VirtuaWin? I just installed it yesterday at the end of my shift and don't have any millage on it. I had installed Virt-Dimension just before that but found it to be very clumsy.
One thing I do not like about MS's offering is the difficulty of isolating a window to a desktop and the lack of a sticky feature. Which basically equals individual window-to-desktop management.
Re:To better help answer the question... (Score:4, Informative)
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I agree that the 2nd is a problem. I had that issue with Access, when working with it for a database class. Odd that these particular MS products don't work well together.
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That's right: it's a tedious work around I don't have time for at my work.
powerpro (Score:2)
I have used this for more years than I care to remember (more than 10). It is the second thing to get installed on any Windows system that I have to use. Immediately after GoBack.
desktop twister (Score:2)
download:
http://members.aol.com/SuperFlago/files/dsktw150.
It's worth a try (Score:2, Informative)
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Odd... (Score:2, Funny)
BlackBox for Windows? (Score:3, Informative)
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xoblite - makes windows a little less hellish (Score:2, Informative)
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
Two machines (Score:2)
I've had a machine to run only Outlook that way, and now I have one that's dedicated to compiling code that I edit and do version control with on my Linux laptop. The laptop runs Samba, and the compiler has to get the source over CIFS.
Wiki Article (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_desktop [wikipedia.org]
They list a bunch of alternatives on there. I hooked a friend up with Dextop, it works pretty slick.
sharpe (Score:1)
http://www.sharpe-shell.org/ [sharpe-shell.org]
Vern (Score:3, Informative)
Virtualwin (Score:1)
Alt-Tab? (Score:2)
Virtual desktops are so early 90s.
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Currently I have the following desktops open on my linux box:
1: shell, web browser
2: IM client, shell, two special-purpose web browser windows
3: 2 shells, 2 editor windows for ppc development
4: shell, irc client for lab testing
5: shell, 10 editor windows for x86 development
6: email, calendar, shell
7: vmware, shell
8: remote shell for code submission
Why would I want to put them all in one desktop when I don'
No, no no. (Score:2)
Normally I will have a dozen Firefox windows (each with a dozen tabs, so don't bother suggesting tabs) and three dozen xterms. Often I will also have several PDFs open, a couple spreadsheets, and an image editor.
So, how usable is your taskbar with 60 apps running?
Multidesk (Score:2)
It's by no means flawless, though - it's freeware, but not Free; and the code is old, having not been updated since Win98 days. But my Windows days at work would be vastly more painful without it.
I will be
BossKey (Score:2, Informative)
http://keir.net/bosskey.html [keir.net]
XDesk (Score:2)
I've used something called XDesk [xdesksoftware.com] for quite a while on my remaining windows machine. Before settling on that, I tried just about every one I could find and felt this handled just about everything better than the others.
I do turn some of the "bells and whistles" off. For example, I really don't need to see representations of the individual windows. From my point of view, that usually just gets in the way.
I believe the purchase provided updates for one year. Since I really don't use windows all that much
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If you just want to switch between desktops using hotkeys and nothing else, then you could probably do with something less bloated. But otherwise, give XDesk a try. They have a free trial.
SDesk (Score:2)
I use SDesk [tomasek.cz] even though it's "closed as of 2000" whatever that means. This is exactly like the FVWM desktop switcher and I've mapped ctrl-arrow key combinations to move around, just like on my Linux system. It's GPLed, so you can theoretically modify it if you want. It's written in Delphi?? I don't even know what that is.
My only complaint is that SDesk seems to take a really low process priority. So that when an application is busy, it's difficult to change desktops. In practice, this doesn't seem
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I like that I can drag around the windows directly from the Visual Pager, which is a graphical representation of all the open windows. You can customize it to have a lot of windows (I'm using 24 currently).
AltDesk (Score:1)
flashdesktops application (Score:1)
Very easy to move apps from one VD to another. You can also make them sticky.
Customizable keyboard shortcuts for moving between windows as well as other
process/.exe-specific handling if you desire.
I've been using it for at least 5 years. There's a try-before-you-by period,
cost is $25.
Best feature -- it's FAST.
Andy
compass (Score:1)
It's not well-known, and we haven't hacked on it since 2001, but it works pretty well as is. And it's GPL. It requires no installation, and the zip file is only 117kB.
The sourceforge page has since lasped, but here's the last version we released (with source): compass.zip [twinaxis.com]. Try it out; if someone wants to do more with the code, by all means.
Enable Virtual Desktop (Score:2, Informative)
'HAVE' to run native Windows? (Score:2)
Run X11 and use Terminal Services to connect to your Windows servers for anything you could ever want to do (except games).
standard X11 pager (Score:2)
VDesk from the windows nt resource kit (Score:2)
Litestep (Score:1)
http://www.litestep.net/ [litestep.net] should have all the stuff necessary for litestep's needs.
x-desk (Score:1)
Free (Score:1)
Virtual Dimension (Score:1)
Check it out:
http://virt-dimension.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Here's the big question... (Score:1)
I have KDE and GNOME both set up to do that. If I'm on desktop 2, I don't want to see the window entries from desktop 1.
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Stardock Object Destop has Virtual Desktops (Score:1)
Try ATI's Hydravision (Score:1)
If you've got an ATI card, you should try Hydravision. It will allow you to set up multiple virtual desktops and has a pager...
If you don't have an ATI card it might even still work (it doesn't seem to be hooked into the ATI drivers). More info on ATI's site [ati.com].
Litestep (Score:2)
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I think that means the MS powetoys are more toys and less power?
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Sounds a little drastic, don't you think?
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Probably so. I wanted to point out a general problem on IT field rather than comment on this specific case (as there weren't many technical details about the case).
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Well. okay. That's a fair reply.
There's a lot to be said for someone who is, essentially, looking for a way to keep doing things the non-Windows-way in a Windows-only environment. If the company has a survival path, it will be through people like these who have the vision to see beyond the dogma.
That said, I don't hold out much hope for that company, nor can I offer any relevant Windows solution, not having much experience working under s