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After my last, rather lengthy, article about useful graphical tools , I am going to talk about another aspect of the Linux graphical user interface that I also find rather useful: Virtual Desktops. Thankfully, this should be a much shorter article!
As always, this series of articles is not aimed at technical users, but at users who are thinking about making the move from Windows to Linux. I am trying to show that Linux is a viable alternative and that it can be very easy to use.
As a Microsoft Windows user, you may not be familiar with the concept of having multiple "desktops" as it is not a feature of Windows.
There are some third-party applications and one from Microsoft itself (but it is a PowerToy and you might already be familiar with my assessment of their attitude towards something they name a "toy") which will give you this functionality. However, I have always found that my computer was wildly unstable with these applications running and I had to uninstall them.
In a nutshell, think of multiple desktops as being the same as having a large office with a number of physical desks, all of which you can use. You are able to move documents between these desks by picking them up and walking them over to another desk. You can then sit at that desk, read the document and work as normal.
Virtual Desktops is the same concept for computers.
As always, I use Ubuntu, so I am referencing all of my commentary based on that distribution. Ubuntu comes with two Virtual Desktops enabled by default. They are represented on the graphical interface on the bottom right hand side, by brown-grey splodges just to the left of the Recycle Bin icon. The desktop that is being used by default is "Desk 1" and is the left-had of those two icons.
If you open an application, such as the Firefox web browser and expand it out to fill all of the desk space, you'll see that represented in the "Desk 1" icon on the bottom right-hand side of the screen. If you have multiple applications, such as Firefox and the Movie Player and change between them, the "Desk 1" icon also changes. If you have an application that isn't full screen and drag it around the screen a bit, you'll see it move around in the Desk 1 splodge too!
If you now click on the Desk 2 icon, the Firefox browser disappears and you will have a blank desktop. This is the same as walking to another one of those desks in that big office you have!
On Desk 2 you are able to start another application, such as OpenOffice Writer (which is a word processor application, similar to Microsoft Word) and have that full screen too.
If you click on the Desk 1 and 2 icons, you can change between the two Virtual Desktops. Both Firefox and OpenOffice Writer will be available full screen. This is far easier than walking between two physical desks!
Please read onto page 2 to find out more about how Virtual Desktops can be beneficial.
David Bass
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