virtual desktop: In the GUI environment, the virtual desktop is the thing you see on the screen when no other applications are open. You may have icons, a taskbar, and other similar things on it.

In some cases the virtual desktop is bigger than the actual screen and there is a means to navigate to other portions of the desktop. Sometimes this is accomplished by using the mouse to to move to other areas. Sometimes it is accomplished by treating different portions of the desktop as different virtual desktops that can be reached by some other method of navigation. Several window managers that allow this show an array (2x2 or bigger) corresponding to the number of virtual desktops available.

In those cases, you can navigate to those other desktops by clicking in the appropriate cell of the array.

Contributors

• RandyKramer - 05 Feb 2002
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