Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

linux

VMware View Open Client, test it!

· ·

I think by now most of you have read Mike D’s scoop on the “VMware View Open Client“. If not here’s  a outtake from the press release:

VMware View Open Client is available under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 (LGPL v 2.1) and is accessible from http://code.google.com/p/vmware-view-open-client/. Some of the features included in this release support secure tunneling using SSL, two factor authentication with RSA SecurID, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Thin Client Add-On RPM package and a full command line interface. Support for the source code distribution is available through the VMware View Open Client community at: http://code.google.com/p/vmware-view-open-client/.

I’ve just downloaded the PRM and installed it on OpenSuse 11.1 without a problem:

Now I would need to request a virtual desktop so I can actually use the client. 🙂

Cool Linux tool: Blueproximity

· ·

One of my former colleagues pointed me out to this very cool tool: Blueproximity. In short what it does, automatically lock your screen when a bluetooth device is outside of given boundaries.

Not only can you lock your pc, but you can also unlock it or kick off any script you like. It should be possible to do the following: Lock PC, set Pidgin messenger to away, mute audio… The list is endless. Read the extensive Ubuntu how to here. Thanks Patrick for sharing.

VMware Workstation, Ubuntu and Unity

· ·

I’ve been trying to get Unity working for VMware Workstation on Ubuntu. I had one PC working and one that wasn’t working. Both ran Ubuntu 8.10, but one with 32bits and the other with the 64bits version. So I expected this to be the problem. After a close examination of the VMware Workstation setup I noticed that the one that didn’t work had the following line in /etc/vmware/config:

xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true

This was added manually so I could still use key combo’s like “ctrl-alt-ins”. But on the machine that does have a working Unity mode I implemented the second option described in this blog post.

So I decided to also implement this on my 64bit Ubuntu 8.10 workstation. After restarting VMware workstation this was the result:


Windows Event Viewer running on Ubuntu 8.10 in Unity mode…

Firefox title bar missing in Ubuntu

· ·

Just had a weird problem with the firefox title bar that wasn’t appearing in Ubuntu 8.10. A quick search on google revealed that a “F11” to enable full screen and a “F11” again to disable full screen was a workaround. But I don’t want to do 2 x F11 every time I start firefox. So I kept trying. For some weird reason the following combination worked:

  • 2 x F11 to show the title bar again
  • Resize the browser just a bit smaller than your window
  • Click on maximize

Problem fixed.

VMware Workstation 6.5.1 has just been released

· ·

VMware Workstation 6.5.1 has just been released, so start your engines and download:

With this release of VMware Workstation, the following new features and support have been added:

  • Japanese localization — A localized version of Workstation is now available in Japanese for Windows hosts.
    Note: Technical Support services for Workstation are currently delivered in English. Japanese-speaking support engineers are available in a limited capacity during the operating hours of the local support center. For more information, see VMware local language support.
  • Smart card support for Linux guests — Smart cards are now experimentally supported with Linux guests.
  • Unity mode on Linux guests — Although support for Unity mode on Linux guests is still experimental, repainting of application windows is much improved.
  • 3-D graphics — Additional improvements have been made to improve 3-D performance on Windows XP guests.

I will be testing Unity Mode on Ubuntu tonight, so expect a couple screenshots to appear! The full release notes can be found here.