[snozolli]

Windows didn't even get multiple desktops until Windows 10.

I believe that it has always supported multiple desktops since the introduction of the NT kernel. There just wasn't any UI provided in the OS for switching. I used a Microsoft PowerToy to switch between desktops, I think all the way back to NT 4.0.

[masfuerte]

I just checked in the 2003 Platform SDK and desktop support was added in Windows NT 3.51, which came out in 1995.

[toast0]

I think there was a PowerToy for virtual desktops for Windows 95? And alternate shells like litestep could do it too. Maybe that was Win98?

[lproven]

> I used a Microsoft PowerToy to switch between desktops, I think all the way back to NT 4.0.

Sure, yes, me too. And there were 3rd party add-ons like 9Desks:

https://www.hexagora.com/en_dw_9desks.asp

But the thing is that they were significantly crippled, because the OS didn't know about them. So there was no way to move a window from one vdesktop to another.

And for me, that is perhaps the principle use case. I start some app, realise it will take ages, so I move it aside to a vdesktop so it can keep working but doesn't get in my way.

Without that functionality then you need to plan ahead, and you simply cannot always do that. My go-to example made me about £150. A non-techie consultancy client of mine ran Office XP. He wanted the service pack. MS offered it on CD, as it was back when broadband internet was very new.

So when he got it, I went there and installed it for him.

Step 1: it's a CD. It's only about 25% full. Microsoft, in its infinite idiocy, makes step 1 of the installer to copy the compressed files to hard disk, and then decompress them.

IT IS ON A CD. Why ship them compressed at all? Because some idiot of a manager stuck the download version on a CD and didn't think to ship the decompressed files when on a medium with the space.

Second, once decompressed, it starts to install. A progress bar gets to the end... and then resets to the start again.

SEVEN TIMES.

You know the real reason progress bars disappeared, replaced by throbbers? Because of poorly-implemented crap like this: programmers found they were too much like hard work.

I sat there and watched the damned thing work for an hour and 45 minutes, and I charged my client for it, because that was my job and my living.

You do not always know if running a tool is going to take 2 minutes or 2 hours. You can't always pre-plan and think "this will take ages so I will start it on a secondary vdesktop where it will be out of the way, and I will flip screens and check occasionally."

You don't know. You can't know. And so you need the ability to move something out of the way.

Secondly, because these things were hacks, some programs insist on only running on the "real" primary display. Some will open there even if you're on a vdesktop when you run them. Sometimes you run it 2 or 3 times because you have no sign this is happening -- the OS can't flip you back because this is outside of OS control.

Yes it was there. Yes it worked in a minimal sense. No, it often was not much use at all.