Borderless Windows Xfce 4

Since I've been using my new desktop/server machine with dual monitor support I've been desperately trying to set up a fullscreen VNC connection to Windows XP on one of the monitors and keep the other for a sensible Linux desktop. I very quickly managed to get a 1280x1024 VNC connection to Windows XP but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get the VNC display to work full screen on just one of the monitors, either part of the Windows desktop was off screen because I couldn't fit the window borders and the desktop onto the one screen or I had to resize the window and scrollbars appeared.

Here's some other ideas I tried which failed:

• Fiddling with the window sizes in Gnome in the hope of getting the whole visible area of the Window to overlap with the visible screen area.
• Using the ratpoison window manager - I couldn't get it to place the VNC window on the second monitor
• Using xvncviewer in full screen mode - it just made a 1280x1024 screen in the middle of my two screens with the remaining portions blacked out
• Enabling the Metacity toggle_fullscreen option in Gnome using gconf-tool2 - it just did nothing - apparently a bug in the version I was using.

I'm pleased to say I have found a solution, I've switched to Xfce 4. You simply drag the VNC window to the monitor you want and hit Alt+F11 to full screen it. Works perfectly and is so simple. I now have a workspace for Linux/WindowsXP and one for a dual screen Linux setup. Next I'm going to play with GNU screen which by all accounts sounds quite interesting.

I actually like Xfce generally, it feels quite speedy and has nice drop shadow and transparency effects built in which are fun to play with for 2 minutes before they become irritating and get disabled.

Update: Sadly this looks like it might be a temporary solution because I'm sure I read somewhere that 4.4 will be fully freedesktop.org compliant and therefore not allow fullscreen windows. This would be a disaster so I hope this is a mistake on my part.

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