Virtual Desktops: goodness for Intertwingulitis sufferers

Although I love software development in/for MS Windows (particularly because I'm am such a huge fan of Gupta Team Developer, my career-long bread and butter), I've never much liked using MS Windows at home.

Post Windows 98, I switched over to Linux at home (major love for Puppy Linux!)  Having old hardware, I really appreciated the lightness of Linux in general, and really appreciated the minimalism and general feel of Puppy Linux.

Fast-forward to about 7 years ago, when I started to find the old hardware getting much too sluggish for my liking.  Since I was going to drop some coin on new/newer hardware, I decided to seriously review my computing needs and review the device landscape.

I considered types of devices (desktops, laptops, tablets, all-in-one's, convertibles) and all types of operating systems (Windows, Mac O/S, Android, iOS, Linux, and new-to-me Chrome'OS).  To my surprise, Chromebook wound up winning me over.  I purchased my first Chromebook right away, and I have never looked back.

Although Chromebook and the Google ecosystem handled all my needs, I found myself about a year ago with an itch to get into hobby programming and load up on applications to help me explore "intertwingularity."  So when looking for a Chromebook with a larger display for my aging eyeballs, I picked up a new device that also happened to be Linux (beta) enabled.  That gave me the best of both worlds: all the goodness of Chrome OS with the ability to run certain useful Linux applications.

Recently, I've just discovered a new feature in ChromeOS which I really appreciated in Linux and had totally forgotten about (and had not really needed until I started using Linux apps on my latest Chromebook):

("Virtual Desks" in ChromeOS)

Any intertwingulitis sufferer such as myself likely winds up with a large number of simultaneously opened browser/application windows and switching between these windows, and likely wanting some of these windows side-by-side.

Virtual Desks in ChromeOS allows switching between multiple desks, each desk having certain windows possibly arranged side-by-side.  This allows quickly switching between different organization of windows without any fuss.  Oh-so useful for intertwingulitis sufferers !

If you want to know more about Virtual Desktops, read this Wikipedia article, and check out the following fantastic video on YouTube: "Virtual Desks on Chrome OS 77 Have Completely Changed My Workflow" by Robby Payne (Chrome Unboxed):


Cheers, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year !

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