How I put Linux and Windows windows together on my Windows desktop (Re: Boston Linux Meeting Wed, October 21, 2009...)

[Brendan Kidwell]

Eek! I showed this after Jerry's informative talk and I promised I'd post it
here, and I almost forgot!

Motivation: VirtualBox and VMWare (I believe) have "seamless" modes whereby
a Windows in a Guest system will project its windows separately on the Host
desktop where they sort of co-mingle with the Host's own windows. In
actuality what I've observed is that all of the Guests windows are projected
as a single window on the host with transparent holes in it for other
windows to show through. If you activate a Guest window, all Guest windows
are brought on top of Host windows. Furthermore, I've never been able to get
this to work with two displays, which is somewhat irritating.

Anyway, as I am forced to use Windows at work to support particular job
functions as a developer (I switched to Ubuntu and held out for a few years
but eventually broke down and switched back to Windows 7)... I wanted to get
a similar effect with a Windows Host and a Linux Guest. VirtualBox and
VMWare offer no "seamless" mode in their Linux add-on drivers.

But hey! Linux desktop apps are just X clients, right? And X is network
transparent and all that. All you have to do is peel away all the Linux
desktop stuff from a modern Linux distribution on your Guest, install an X
server on the Host computer, and launch an appropriate toolbar/panel to
provide Start menu, Run command, and whatever other widgets you need. Here's
how I did that:

http://www.glump.net/howto/seamless_remote_linux_desktop_in_windows

I didn't immediately post this on the mailing list Wednesday because I
wanted to change my advice in the article from launching xfce4-session as
your first X client, to running lxpanel instead. Unfortunately this week has
been nuts at work and I forgot all about it until today. In case I just
never get around to rewriting the article, I just crammed an addendum about
lxpanel into the introduction and I'm writing this email now.

The article is CC-licensed. Please read, learn, rewrite and repost and let
me know so I can toss mine out. :^)

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