One Large Virtual Desktop
 

is it possible to have one large virtual desktop environment in KDE or Gnome? if so how?

What do you mean? If you mean remote desktop, think of FreeNX, google it, and search the forums here.

no, I mean desktop (aka workspace)
I have six on one computer

http://www.linux.com/articles/113779

Of course it's possible. Here's how to do it in KDE and Gnome.

What I want to know is it possible to have one virtual desktop that is 2560x800 or wider while my monitors resolution stays at 1280x800.

Multiple monitor, single desktop?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=221174
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/dual-monit...th-nvidia.html

not multiple monitor, single monitor with the ability to pan on a multiple monitor resolution desktop

Just to check... what you want is for X.org to draw on a (say) 2560x800 rectangle, while viewing a 1280x800 rectangle of what's drawn with your one monitor?

That can be done; in fact, that's what compiz does with both desktop cube and desktop wall. It only allows for n-by-m positions of the top left point of the viewed rectangle, though (where n and m are the dimensions of the desktop wall).

By panning, I take it you want to position the viewed rectangle anywhere as long as it's contained within the drawn rectangle. Correct? I think (90% sure) that the X protocol/standard (and the xorg implementation) supports this, but that it's fallen out of fashion, so you'll have to look long for a window manager that uses this feature.

Purely out of curiosity: did you go "hey, it'd be cool if I could [...]", or do you know from experience that this is the way you want the GUI to work? If you have any experience, why do you want this? In your opinion, what is better about this?

Yes

it was "hey, it'd be cool if I could [...]" with some knowledge that it is possible. Why I want it is because I think it would be useful to have dual monitor space on laptops w/o the need for two monitors. It would allow for tools like Gimp to use one screen width for the image and the other half for the tools w/o using hotkeys to change desktops/workspaces.

Twinview, the nVidia support for multiple monitors, actually supports this though I'm not sure if it can be implemented with just one monitor, though I don't see why it wouldn't. It's called panning (as was mentioned earlier in the thread) and if you enable it, it will work with any DE or WM (at least I think so). I think it was designed to handle the situation where you have monitors with different resolution side by side. I, for example, have a 1680x1050 monitor and use twinview with my projector, which is 1260x720. Now, when they share desktop and are aligned side by side this leaves a gap of 330 pixels. By using panning I could have my projector screen 1050 pixels, giving me a 330 pixel scroll. The idea is that the mouse should, when moved from one screen to the other, appear in the 'correct' place, height-wise. I don't use the option myself as my projector is just used for watching movies. Of course, this all presupposes a nVidia card but if you have one, enable twinview and try configure xorg with the panning option and a higher resolution for your one monitor. It should work.

/CZ