VirtualBox Extended Display for Ubuntu Users

I’ve been virtualizing Ubuntu 12.04 for a couple of years, it works for me and gives me the best of best of Windowns and Linux for both design and development. It really is an affordable solution if you think about it and yes you can extend both displays. You can also clone, duplicate and mirror them if you like depending on your situation.

I’ve been using two displays in Windows for as long as I can think back, ever since laptops had standard VGA ports built into them (and that was a while back). Numerous displays help my workflow and productivity and I can’t imagine working without them, it’s an awkward feeling staring into just one peripheral.

I usually run Windows on one screen while a parallel Linux on the other, but sometimes I just want Linux as an my entire extended desktop when I’m working on more development centric tasks, learning or bansging out code for the browser - I can easily hit refresh with either the mouse or a couple of keyboard strokes.

##Settings in Virtuabox
To get yourself setup is really easy. Open Virtuabox and hit:

settings > display.

Choose however many monitors you want and then start the VM. Once inside Linux
hit:

user (top right corner for ubuntu 12.04) > displays

and just edit displays to your required preference by dragging them around. I presonally like the extendend desktop so that both displays become a canvas for my wordspaces.