moonlit Posted March 21, 2008 Share Posted March 21, 2008 I use a lot of VMs and I began to realise it was a little inconvenient having windows and tabs all over the place to access them. I though about switching to Linux, using compiz-fusion and getting the 3D cube thing going but I wanted to stay with Windows, I had all my stuff set up how I liked it... I remembered that there had been attempts at doing the whole 3D cube on Windows before, so a little googling gave me YODM (Yet anOther Desktop Manager, it was bought by a company and rebranded but if you look hard enough you can still find the freeware 1.4 version). So, downloaded it, installed it, threw up a couple of virtual machines in VMWare, full screened them on each of the cube faces. The outcome I think is awesome, see below: http://arch.kimag.es/share/14759199.jpg [image Removed] http://arch.kimag.es/share/24290556.jpg http://arch.kimag.es/share/41867636.jpg Video (excuse the hosting). Vista as the host OS, VMWare 6 running OSX 10.4.9, Windows XP SP3, Ubuntu 7.10 full screened (1600x1200x32@85) with 512MB each on an Intel E2180 @2x2GHz, 2GB DDR2 @800MHz, 8600GT w/256MB. Usable speeds on each VM and the host OS, the box is pretty much idle when the cube, the VMs and Vista w/Aero are all sitting doing not much so it doesn't really cost much in the way of performance unless the VMs are actively processing rather than idling/showing basic screensavers/etc. Overall I think the experiment was a success and I'd recommend the same to anyone who uses a lot of different virtual machines/OSs at once. YODM 1.4 Freeware available here: http://rapidshare.com/files/26524705/yodm3D.zip.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manuel Posted March 21, 2008 Share Posted March 21, 2008 very good! In my "spare" time, I may have to try this. Thanks for the inventive idea! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted March 21, 2008 Share Posted March 21, 2008 Pretty cool. It woudl be nice if you could have multiple machines(not just vms) hooked up this way to share one monitor and then just rotate between them. (makes note to self, check google for possibilities). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaun Posted March 21, 2008 Share Posted March 21, 2008 Pretty cool. It woudl be nice if you could have multiple machines(not just vms) hooked up this way to share one monitor and then just rotate between them. (makes note to self, check google for possibilities). Well, you could using vnc or something in fullscreen. Edit: Oops, wrote vlc instead of vnc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlit Posted March 21, 2008 Author Share Posted March 21, 2008 Pretty cool. It woudl be nice if you could have multiple machines(not just vms) hooked up this way to share one monitor and then just rotate between them. (makes note to self, check google for possibilities). Technically you could do that with full screen SSH/VNC sessions, that'd be quite nice too I reckon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted March 21, 2008 Share Posted March 21, 2008 Pretty cool. It woudl be nice if you could have multiple machines(not just vms) hooked up this way to share one monitor and then just rotate between them. (makes note to self, check google for possibilities). Well, you could using vnc or something in fullscreen. Edit: Oops, wrote vlc instead of vnc. Pretty cool. It woudl be nice if you could have multiple machines(not just vms) hooked up this way to share one monitor and then just rotate between them. (makes note to self, check google for possibilities). Technically you could do that with full screen SSH/VNC sessions, that'd be quite nice too I reckon. Yeah, but I want to not have to share resources with multiple machines open on one box through VNC. VNC would require havinf it installed on all the machines and makes for a security risk in the process. We have hardware switches at work where when you press the print screen button, you can scroll through 5-10 different machines that all share the same monitor, keyboard and mouse, but to have this just be tied to something like alt-tab(or ctrl+alt+tab) and then rotate 3 dimensionally would be pretty neat.Maybe have it spread out by zooming away to show all the screens in real time sort of like Vistas flip but more viewable area of the desktops and then you can click which machine you want to zoom back into. Its still cool though, just to see something like what you showed us, it does seem like it would come in handy for programs that go full screen and hide the task bar, like a VM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue Dragon Posted March 21, 2008 Share Posted March 21, 2008 Wow, this looks really awesome. I'd like to know how you got OSX working on there! I thought you can only buy the OS when you buy a new Mac and it can only be installed on a Mac and not a PC (a least not legally, I think there even was a Hak5 Episode on installing MacOS10 on a PC a while ago). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted March 21, 2008 Share Posted March 21, 2008 [me=Sparda]wonders what OS hosted these virtual machines[/me] One of the four is not in a VM, I suspect it has a distinctive brown theme to it as well ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue Dragon Posted March 21, 2008 Share Posted March 21, 2008 Vista as the host OS, VMWare 6 running OSX 10.4.9, Windows XP SP3, Ubuntu 7.10 full screened (1600x1200x32@85) [me=Sparda]wonders what OS hosted these virtual machines[/me] Am I missing somethng? Did I get something wrong? He said he used Vista as the host OS, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted March 22, 2008 Share Posted March 22, 2008 I lack the ability to read more then any thing. Reading isn't all essential tbh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlit Posted March 22, 2008 Author Share Posted March 22, 2008 Vista as the host OS, VMWare 6 running OSX 10.4.9, Windows XP SP3, Ubuntu 7.10 full screened (1600x1200x32@85) [me=Sparda]wonders what OS hosted these virtual machines[/me] Am I missing somethng? Did I get something wrong? He said he used Vista as the host OS, right? No, you're quite right, I am using Vista as the host, Sparda's our regular Ubuntu fanboy. ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue Dragon Posted April 11, 2008 Share Posted April 11, 2008 Sry for digging up that old thread again, but I ran into some problems when I just tried it myself. I got the Yod'm 3D thing wokring all right, but everytime I want to flip by pressing crtl and shift, the fullscreen goes back to normal window. I'm using VMWare Server and not the full VMWare, so that might be what's causing it. Anyone tried it with VMWare Server? Also, Moonlit, you still haven't told us how you got OSX10 wokring on there. As I said a few posts above, I thought you needed to buy a Mac in order to be able to install OSX...? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlit Posted April 11, 2008 Author Share Posted April 11, 2008 That would, as they say, be telling. There's a pile o' guides on the net, but make sure the VM type is Windows NT and Darwin's boot flags say: -legacy "Graphics Mode"="XxYxz@R" Where X is your horizontal screenres, Y is the vertical, Z is bit depth and R is refresh. It's hardly worth the effort, but those little hints should help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkSenay Posted April 11, 2008 Share Posted April 11, 2008 Moonlit, you should suggest that Darren use this for a segment, awesome idea! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlit Posted April 11, 2008 Author Share Posted April 11, 2008 Moonlit, you should suggest that Darren use this for a segment, awesome idea! lol, he saw it soon after I'd posted it... I know that because he made a copy in the tips section :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DLSS Posted April 12, 2008 Share Posted April 12, 2008 i have it on my usb stick :p (check the post about what's on your usb stick) its portable :p Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7aW0lf Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 I use a lot of VMs too and found this post promising (came through watching the episode for deskspace, realising it was not free, going for the "free alternative", checking this post and trying it out) but I have spent way longer than I expected to make it work the way I wanted (probably due to Murphy's laws!): - I have a Vista host and VMWare 6 as moonlit - I wanted to use 3 VMs simultaneously with the cube thing The problem was that, if you only have 1 VMWare open in three desktops and on each of them you display one VM the cube works until you type on one VM, once you type the other desktops show the same VM you just typed on. If you are confused, you can do this by Having VMWare open in one desktop and open the other VMs directly using the vmx file. 3 VMs --> 1 VMWare instance. The way I made it work was to open 1 VMWare instance on each desktop, this is more resource intensive (my laptop almost crashes) so I had to remove a bit of RAM in a couple of VMs. The latter approach involves clicking on the VMWare icon from 3 desktops, you might have problems saying that the VM is in use, blah blah. Just right click on it from the VMWare instance in which you opened it and select "Close", now you can run it from somewhere else. The final slight annoyance I am having is that CTRL+SHIFT is not picked up by XP guests that have VMWare tools installed so you have to CTRL+ALT first, then CTRL+SHIFT. I have mitigated this a bit by changing YODM to change desktops with CTRL+[WINDOWS KEY], so CTRL+ALT and then CTRL+[WINDOWS KEY] is a bit more comfortable (although still not ideal). I hope my research spares somebody confusion and frustration! :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shonen Posted February 8, 2009 Share Posted February 8, 2009 Moonlit that just screams out AWESOME in all its many forms. Great post and I will have a crack at this sometime this week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
h3%5kr3w Posted February 8, 2009 Share Posted February 8, 2009 I use it every day, since I found yod'm a few months ago, I have it everywhere I can get it. I an in win2k3 server class in college right now, and we use Virtual Box for the vm's and the virtual networking of it, and I got everybody on the yod'm 3d bandwagon. It's the perfect 3d 4 desktop solution. -portability -customability -performance -low ram/processor taxing (if at all if you have any type of modern machine) just wish the new versions were free (anybody got some source code?) btw, may I suggest looking at my pic of yod'm 3d? (copy/pasting&desktop printscreening was done here, so no, I did'nt just get yod'm to work this way) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zer0cool Posted February 8, 2009 Share Posted February 8, 2009 Oh my, I always thought YODM was a cheap imitation of Compiz Fusions cube addon. Not that YODM isn't a great feature for wind0wz. I just think that the ease of use and final result of Compiz Fusions cube is SOOO much better, that's just my two cents. If my Wind0wz desktop gets too cluttered I just use a basic desktop manager that gives me four virtual ones. When I used YODM cube it seemed sub-par. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
h3%5kr3w Posted February 8, 2009 Share Posted February 8, 2009 Oh my, I always thought YODM was a cheap imitation of Compiz Fusions cube addon. Not that YODM isn't a great feature for wind0wz. I just think that the ease of use and final result of Compiz Fusions cube is SOOO much better, that's just my two cents. If my Wind0wz desktop gets too cluttered I just use a basic desktop manager that gives me four virtual ones. When I used YODM cube it seemed sub-par. well... yah, it is basicly a ripoff of compiz but for windows. Some people just prefer windows so this is a good thing across the board, and I use yod'm cause I use windows so much more than linux these days but let me tell you why... I am STILL waiting for built in support of my atheros card in my laptop for a linux distro... Once ubuntu jaunty comes out (and is stable) then Im going that way. but the reason why I dont just use a cheap virtual desktop software is cause I have grown so fond of compiz, so it's like having a home away from home so-to-speak. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zer0cool Posted February 8, 2009 Share Posted February 8, 2009 I am STILL waiting for built in support of my atheros card in my laptop for a linux distro... Wow, that is fascinating, I've always had great support for ather0s cards in Linux. The main reason being most ather0s cards have Linux drivers that support packet injection (People want packet injection). If you haven't already, you should go post a thread in the Ubuntu forums about a driver, I have yet to find a wireless card that I couldn't get working in some way with Linux. Custom kernel, ect . . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
h3%5kr3w Posted February 8, 2009 Share Posted February 8, 2009 well.. i CAN get it working, but it's a REAL pain in the ass. It's an ath5k (more specific an ath5002x) and they are just recently letting out the info on it, so there is no built in support in any distros yet, and man.. building drivers for this card from source sucks ass because you not only have to build the drivers *which is easy* but you have to install the wpa2 support to get that working, and everytime that I have tried to install it I get different results (i.e. card wont scan for networks, connects then disconnects constantly, really crappy reception, etc. and it works absolutely fine in windows environments...) Intrepid Ibex shows support for it but the drivers in the repo actually dont work with my series. (this has been a MAJOR issue in the ubuntu community) Mepis is the only distro that works out of the box with it (so far) but I dont like the way it's all setup.. guess i'm just a typical ubuntu user :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zer0cool Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 Mepis is the only distro that works out of the box with it (so far) but I dont like the way it's all setup.. guess i'm just a typical ubuntu user :P Is it KDE you don't like? Gnome is closer to a wind0wz experience, KDE I feel is more genuine. Imo of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vector Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 i use DeskSpace on my windows boxens. if anyone wants the hookup lemmie know Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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