OK... I only really do scripting on Linux boxes, but I'm sure I can learn what I need to know about application programming if this is even possible:

I want to be able to save and recall the state of my desktop, including all open applications, and (if possible) all the documents open in those applications. Any Windows programmers here know if that's possible? I hear it's a doddle on a Mac, so if it's not possible I might have to switch to a Mac, which would suck, because LfS doens't run on Macs!!!!

The only solution I'd know would be to trash explorer, autostart Cygwin and use an X desktop where those things work in an instance.

Vain

It sounds to me like what you really want is suspend mode.

Sounds more like the Fast User Switching feature in XP where anything that's open by a particular user is stored while another user logs in locally with a clean desktop and switching back to the first user would bring restore the session exactly as it was. In principle it's probably possible, don't ask me how

I know f'all about programming really but I was thinking it may be possible to use the same APIs or w/e Windows uses for the FUS feature, not necessarily using another user. I dunno, lol

Actually, that sounds like "hibernate" mode. Where Windows writes everything in the RAM to the HDD and shuts down the computer, then writes it back to RAM when you turn it on.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

"Suspend" mode? Isn't that when a windows box throttles back all the hardware due to inactivity? That's not quite what I'm after, no!

Go on, what were you referring to? I've hit a brick wall with this like I do every time I try to find a solution to it.

whar are you after then? i mean, what are you trying to achieve?

You can propably snapshot all programs that are running. As in getting their names and propably also the location of the executable (so you can run them later). The taskmanager does that and I'd guess it can get that information at user-mode, which means there are functions to get that information from the kernel.
But you can't really get any information on what documents these programs have opened. That's the program's stuff and the windows API can't really help you here (I have something about filestreams in my mind, but that's evil hax0ring...). You'd need to 'ask' every single program seperately with a specialized function, which'd be a lot work.

Vain

Sounds as if you're trying to do the same thing as the "Virtual Desktop Manager" for Windows (its a powertoy, which you can get from here http://www.microsoft.com/windo ... owertoys/xppowertoys.mspx). Its basically a very bad copy of the pager feature in most X based Window Managers. Your taskbar will still be full of shit, unlike X based solutions, but it members where all your apps were and can move / minimize, etc.

My only other suggestion would be to use Linux / Solaris / Anything X based (thats not cygwin) full time.

p.s. MacOSX uses the X server as well, so in theory its obviously going to be just as simple

Quote from thisnameistaken :

You might be right. Maybe it's time for me to dump Windows, but that means the expense of requiring an extra computer for playing LFS...

Dual boot?

Quote from thisnameistaken :

I actually have a dual-boot box here with Win98 and Slakware 8.0 on it, but the Slakware installation kinda... doesn't work any more I suppose I could do it again, but I'm due a new PC this summer anyway so I might wait until that arrives and forces me into all the messing about with partitions and so on.

/me mumbles about slack sucking, etc. and debian being the One True Way (TM)

/me numbles about debian sucking, etc. and gentoo being the One True Way (TM)

(Though I believe SuSe to be a great "just came from windows"-distribution.)

Vain

First off, yes Gentoo is nice - if you have a weekend to spend doing the actual compiling required and you really care about the 0.02% speed increase (ironically they're called ricers ).

As for why people are so territorial, I think you'll find that its all a bit of fun more than anything else. With regards to them all being the same, they really arent. To a user they *can* be, but each distro adds their own patches to each item of the stack (not just the kernel), places things in different areas, and has different aims. I could install linux, with BASH or KSH, exim or postfix, KDE or Gnome or Fluxbox. All equally solving the same problems, but behaving differently.

Yes its possible to mount NTFS volumes, if the NTFS module is loaded in the kernel. Just edit your /etc/fstab to automount on boot. Adding something like
will usually suffice, provided that /mnt/ntfs exists, and your hd is /dev/hda3. If you want to manually mount it, the command
run as a root user should work (the utility "sudo" is brilliant for giving users access to certain root level control). Bear in mind that NTFS write support is a little buggy on occasions.

With regards to the shared Mozilla Firefox profiles, I believe that they are totally incompatible. But there are extensions out there to let you sync bookmarks with a shared version. Thunderbird mailboxes are just in mbox format, so you should beable to share them across both Windows and *ix.

In theory I'd say yes, but I've never tried it The easier way would be to just change the storage location (tools > options, or edit > preferences, and change the local directory). No need to use symlinks then (note: I'm assuming Thunderbird on this point).