Subject: Virtual screens.
From: Rotary Engine
Date: 10/26/2006, 12:39 AM
To: AA-me



   large snip ------------

   This is what I use. With Linux it is running all of the time in
   one of the 36 virtual screens. http://www.onlineconversion.com/

   You handicapped Windows blokes can use the free Firefox browser
   and run it all of the time in one of half  a dozen "tabs".
   Not as nice as virtual screens but it is a start.

   Paul Lamar ...No rotor no motor.
   ----------------------

   Sorry I just have to make quip here my notebook runs currently 15
   virtual screens
   quite handy really and I use them. The support is built into the
   graphics card
   and the driver software, I just could not help myself pointing this out.
   :-)

   However I do prefer Linux, but various hardware will not work under
   Linux
   so I'm stuffed with Windows  :-(

   Regards David

   Only 15? :)
   Always interesting to find out something new. What brand of
   graphic card is that? Interesting that a Windows company is starting
   to copy Linux. I notice the Firefox and Thunderbird is increasingly
   popular with Windows users. Also Open Office works and does what
   Office does without all the Bill Gates treasure protection BS.

   Paul Lamar ...No rotor no motor.

   ----------------
   It is not Windows thats does this it is the graphics card & ATI driver
   software that comes with
   the notebook/ATI Graphics Chip,  The computer is IBM T42P, later models
   (some not all) of
   the notebook also do this as this one is now 18 months old, the one
   thing you do need if you
   are going to use a lot of different software all at once is RAM so this
   one is maxed out in the
   RAM dept. The graphics chip that is built in to the notebook is an ATI
   Mobility FIRE GL T2

   Regards David




I think we might be talking about a couple of different things here..

Linux supports multiple virtual consoles.  Ctrl-Alt-F1 through
Ctrl-Alt-F6 gets you to the different consoles.  Ctrl-Alt-F7 gets you
back to X (if you are running it).

Most versions of X11 window managers support many virtual desktops (or
the equivalent).  Gnome supports 16 (in stock form).  That's probably
not a hard limit.  The number of desktops is configurable using the
window manager tool.  I like having 6 desktops.  At initial setup, the
various desktops are selectable by clicking with your mouse in the
portion of the toolbar used to select the desktop.

None of this is hardware dependent (beyond just having enough RAM to run
it - 32M actually runs okay).  And it context switches very
efficiently.  The hallmark of linux is that it handles stuff like this
smoothly.  There's not typically nearly as much bs going on in the
background as a windows box has.


Matt-

--------------------------

Yes I agree with the linux senario. On the servers we use here
we use multi screen all the time. All I was doing was throwing
in my 2 cents worth! and the fact that with the right
hardware and driver software, I can do about the same thing
with windows in similar way. nothing more :)

Regards David



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