On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 4:27 PM, Michal 'vorner' Vaner <vorner@vorner.cz> wrote:

I hope they don't eat you alive for that ;-).



They are used to running Windows XP. It is slow, it crashes (mostly due to the legacy
application I mentioned) and due to security reasons (XP being what it is) a lot of stuff
isn't allowed. With Linux/xmonad we can open up a bit more, and they will get the benefit
of running the legacy application in a WM that will reboot lightning fast.

The only thing they might eat me alive for, is the lack of easy personal customization of
things such as wallpapers.



I know that's not exactly what you're asking for, but there are two other
possibilities (I think both need the VirtualBox guest additions inside the
virtual machine):
 • Let the Windows auto-resize according to the size of the VirtualBox window.
   That way, the Window desktop would be slightly smaller, but nothing would be
   missing.



It eats too many vertical pixels. The legacy application isn't too pleased with that.


 
 • There's some kind of seamless mode in VirtualBox. It then just takes the
   windows inside the virtual machine and tries to present them as stand-alone
   windows in your WM, removing all the Windows desktop and taskbar, etc.


I intend to try this, but I'm not too sure it will work. I suspect the task bar will "fall out"
also, unless I can somehow get rid of xmobar on that specific workspace. But seamless
is most certainly an option.


 
It's not VNC as such, but I use xmonad through ssh X11 forwarding (so I have
local X server, remote xmonad and all the programs). It works well this way and
in mixed mode too (some programs local, some remote, xmonad on either computer).

I guess VNC wouldn't make much difference, since it's only transferring the
final image somewhere else, so it shouldn't make a difference with the window
manager used.



I need plain old vanilly VNC access for support. If someone is having issues with their
system I need to be able to log in and see the problem and help them fix it. This rules out
X11 forwarding I believe.

:o)
Thomas Løcke