VirtuaWin Goodness

I will admit I did not know what paging meant in the Linux world until tonight. It’s one of those things I’d keep hearing about when reading on Linux, but never cared to search on. Well, I did tonight, just to realize I’d been using paging (virtual desktops) for a while now, and it was actually something I missed when on Windows XP.

So I went digging, tried a few freeware packages, to finally discover VirtuaWin. Ahh, open source truly rules. VirtuaWin is hosted on SourceForge, truly one of my favorite websites, and has actually been updated in 2005, unlike many of the Virtual Desktop programs out there for Windows. Not only that, it is so darn intuitive, it’s frightening.

Actually, I may have to slow my mouse down to avoid some frustration, but it lets you navigate from one virtual screen to another either through quick keys (key combination of your choice), or simply by moving the mouse to the edge of the screen. And it’s fast…!

I’ve picked up an icon style I preferred, and I think this is one of those software that’s there to stay, as I have a severe case of split personality at IBM, where in the same hour, I can be a) a student (for certification), b) a technical expert and/or c) a sales rep doing a pitch.

Given that, having a few virtual screens loaded with my apps should be a godsend. And since RAM is now plenty (2Gb on my T40), I should be ok even if I forget I have all this stuff running at once.