Enlarging your Desktop

I reactivated my old notebook this evening. It would be still able to handle most of my daily tasks, but its display is not the biggest, and 1 GHz ain't the S-class no more.

Still, I thought it would be cool to use it enhancing my desktop space (another 1024x768 display) and saving rare pixels, once more. I didn't want a keyboard / mouse switch. First of all, it slows down your tasks, plus it's straining to move your hand to the switch every 10 seconds.

My solution is called x2x.

It works in the manner, that you specify a border of your desktop. If one's moving the mouse over this border, x2x redirects every mouse activity and keyboard stroke to a remote X11.

Here are the steps to take:

1. Make sure your remote PC's X11 is listening to tcp. Check if one of the following files contains the string "-nolisten tcp"

- /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc (lowercase "x")
- /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers (uppercase "x")
- /etc/kde3/kdm/Xservers (uppercase "x")

If so, remove this string. X11 has to communicate to enable this feature! Now, start up your X11 + Windowmanager normally. Open a shell, and type (replace controller-ip with the ip of the PC with the mouse and keyboard):

$ xhost [controller-ip]

Final step: Go to your local "controlling PC", start X11, open a shell and type: x2x -to [remote-ip]:0 -north

Now move your mouse over the upper corner of your screen. Suddenly you're controlling the remote PC! Keyboard strokes are now also sent to this machine. Of course, you're not able to move windows between / over the borders, but on the other hand it gives you some extra power, since now I'm able to run my IRC client, XMMS, mPlayer etc. on a seperate machine.

Have a good night,
muesli