Don’t have the luxury of dual monitors? Virtualize your desktop!

This entry is all about using one of several open source projects that bring a technology to Windows that has been on Linux and available from commercial sources for several years.

This technology is called virtual desktop, and essentially what you do is setup a desktop with icons or shortcuts on the desktop, but instead of being stuck with just one you can have four (4). So I have a desktop setup for development, a desktop for publishing, another desktop for internet surfing and web site development, and finally a desktop that I use for gaming. The advantage here is that I can switch form one desktop to another quickly.

Using VirtuaWin I can have up to 9 different desktops! Using Virtual Dimension you can have as many desktops as you can hold in memory. Memory can be issue here, please use this technology with no less than 512 MegaBytes of RAM, I have 1 Gigabyte on my system and use 4 different virtual desktops quite nicely. I have even gone so far as to start downloading stuff on one desktop and then switch to my gaming desktop and play “Command and Conquer” for a stretch. Then pause the game and switch back when a trouble ticket comes in over the phone. But don’t let your boss know what is going on, since that person will most likely be highly critical of what you are doing with the company computer, and you may not have my leverage of being a boss.

The main idea is that you have desktops or workspaces that are specific to a particular type of job, or a group of applications that often interact with each other. In my current “Lean and Mean” company the document archivist, is also a partial document formatter so she has 3 workspaces or virtual desktops. The company saw no need to grace her with 2 monitors, and the resultant increase in cost of her hardware so instead they increased her system RAM to 512 Megabytes and installed VirtuaWin and called it a day.

4sysops has some nice articles further describing VirtuaWin here

The official website for VirtuaWin is located here.

The 4sysops articles about Virtual Dimension is rather short but is located here.

The official website for Virtual Manager is here.

I found virtualWin first so I use that system myself, but then I have no need or desire to track over 9 workspaces or virtual desktops. Friends that use Virtual Dimension have no problems with on their white boxes, or Dells so which every system you choose, you should read the 4sysops articles first. Then use google to search for problems on either system and let your research be your guide. Both systems have active communities, so there should be relatively quick responses to questions. Again if you decide to continue to use either or both, especially in professional environments then send them some money. The commercial apps used to cost on the order to $99, but you have no ethical obligation so let your conscience be your guide.

[tags]microface, open source, virtual desktop[/tags]