Well, there’s no more need for me to create scripts to simplify the process of setting up seamless virtualization through RDP. The latest version of VirtualBox, version 1.50, adds preliminary seamless virtualization support. It suppresses the desktop background, leaving the start menu and the windows. This method is much faster than RDP, which uses your network connection to handle the interface. I experimented with this new feature quite a bit. Screenshots below.
Microsoft Word 2007 works!
Compiz seems to play nicely with it.
Despite my slow processor, PowerPoint 2007 seems to run fairly smoothly. I haven’t tried adding large graphics yet, though.
The scale plugin shows that the entire virtual machine (including the start menu) is treated as one window. That’s a small bug.
Back to normal.
There are a few small bugs, though. First of all, the entire virtual machine is treated as one window, so individual windows don’t appear on the taskbar, yet. The VirtualBox team will need to write some hooks to capture each individual window. I’m interested to see how that turns out. Also, it’s not yet compatible with TwinView; I can only move windows around on my first screen. For some reason, my clipboard gets a bit corrupted when the shared clipboard mode is bidirectional. Setting it to “Host -> Guest” seems to resolve the problem.
Apparently, DirectDraw support was also added. I haven’t really tested it yet, though.
I can’t wait until they add support for message passing. That way, I can open up documents in the virtual machine right from my host environment.
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