Virtual desktop
In computing, a virtual desktop is a term used with respect to user interfaces, usually within the WIMP paradigm, to describe ways in which the virtual space of a computer's desktop environment is expanded beyond the physical limits of the screen's display area through the use of software.
This compensates limits of the desktop area and is helpful in reducing clutter of running graphical applications.
Switchable desktops were designed and implemented at Xerox PARC as "Rooms" by Austin Henderson and Stuart Card in 1986[1] and (unknowingly to the authors until their publication) was conceptually similar to earlier work by Patrick Peter Chan in 1984.
All Amigas supported multiple in-memory screens displayed concurrently via the use of the graphics co-processor, AKA the "Copper".
The video output is simply told (once, or many times) where to display (scanline) and from what screen memory address.
This also allowed the OS to seamlessly mix "Full Screen" and Windowed "desktop"-style applications in a single environment.
Some programs, VWorlds[4] (an astronomy simulator) being an example, used the multiple desktops feature to overlay a set of controls over the main display screen.
Some window managers, like FVWM, offer separate "desks" that allow the user to organize applications even further.
IBM's personal computer OS/2 operating system included multiple desktops (up to 4 natively) in the OS/2 Warp 4 release in 1996.
[9] However, there are many third-party (e. g. VirtuaWin, Dexpot and others) and some partially supported Microsoft products that implement virtual desktops to varying degrees of completeness.
On the classic Mac OS, scrolling desktops were made available to Macintosh users by a 3rd party extension called Stepping Out created by Wes Boyd (the future founder of Berkeley Systems) in 1986.
The code for this extension was integrated by Apple into a later version of the Mac OS, although the ability to create virtual desktops larger than the screen was removed.
The code was used instead as an assist for visually impaired users to zoom into portions of the desktop and view them as larger, more easily discerned images.
Despite its Unix underpinnings, macOS does not use the X Window System for its GUI, and early versions had no provision for virtual desktops.
In this example a Unix-like operating system is using the X windowing system and the Compiz cube plugin to decorate the KDE desktop environment .
