Category Archives: Linux

Using Remote Desktop in Mint 13 Maya

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For various reasons, I use Remote Desktop Control a lot.

Yesterday I upgraded a PC to Mint 13 and went to active remote access. There was no sign of any Desktop Sharing Preferences.

I searched the Net and found more queries than answers as apparently this is a major problem that affects both 32 and 64 bit versions. However by combining several solutions I eventually made one that worked.

I started by creating an entry in my main menu –

Running this will load the Desktop Sharing Preferences. Allow sharing and chose the rest of your preferences. This sets the default so there is no need to run this again unless you wish to change preferences at a future date.

The Vino server is now running but it still will refuse access. To fix this, I created a new entry in Startup Applications (you’ll find the latter in Control Center)

Vino2

The Command is /usr/lib/vino/vino-server –sm-disable

Next time, and every time after the machine is booted up, Desktop Sharing will be enabled and running.

Running Tweetdeck on Linux Mint 13 MATE

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I am not one of Twitter’s greatest fans. However I do have a couple of accounts and occasionally I like to keep an eye on them.

My Twitter interface of choice is Tweetdeck, and for the last while I have been having some problems. My original problem was that Tweetdeck requires Adobe Air, but Adobe don’t support Air for Linux any more. I eventually sorted that one out and life was quiet for a while.

Six months ago I started using MATE as my desktop of preference and once again I ran into problems with Tweetdeck. It refused to work on MATE but was quite happy if I logged in using Gnome. I posted a query on this on the Mint Forums and the reply was that Tweetdeck only runs on Gnome or KDE.

I like challenges and can be quite stubborn when it comes to sorting little problems. I have upgraded to Mint 13 MATE version and my challenge was to get Tweetdeck running as a normal application.

I decided that one way to do it would be to run Tweetdeck in Windows 7, running in VirtualBox. I already had the latter set up so I installed Tweetdeck and tried to log in. No go. Possibly there was some way or fixing that, but I didn’t fancy firing up VirtualBox just to see a few Tweets anyway.

My next idea was to install Wine and to install Tweetdeck using that. Success at last.

Tweetdeck was now running very nicely, but I had a new problem – I had to drill down to “/home/user/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Twitter/TweetDeck” to run the programme. Painful! I decided to add it as an Application in my Menu. The command I used was “wine /home/user/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Twitter/TweetDeck/TweetDeck.exe”. That failed. It reported that there were files it couldn’t find. So obviously it had to be run from within the Wine drive.

The solution is simplicity itself.

I created a small shell script that would be run by my Menu entry….

cd “/home/user/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Twitter/TweetDeck”
wine TweetDeck.exe

I saved it as “TweetDeck.sh” in my Home folder (and of course made it executable) and ran that as an Application from my Menu.

Problem solved.

Linux Mint 13 (Maya)

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

Once again, Linux has scored top marks.

A couple of weeks ago, Linux Mint 13 RC came on line.  I tried it out in VirtualBox and liked what I saw.  As a result I installed it on my main system.

I immediately came across two problems.  One was that I had retained my Home partition and the existing configuration files screwed up Mint 13 and the other was that I wasn’t able to install several of my favourite programmes, due to missing libraries.

I reinstalled Mint 12, but kept a version of 13 within VirtualBox.

A few days ago, I revisited my virtual Mint 13 and found that the missing libraries were now present so on Tuesday I decided to scrap 12 and move up.

The process was pure simplicity.

I took a full backup of my Home folder (including all hidden files and folders).  I took a backup of my software repositories (using Y-PPA Manager.  An excellent little programme).  I could have taken a backup of my software list, but decided to forgo that, as I didn’t want to reinstall all my old programmes.

Installation of Mint 13 was the usual simple affair, but this time around, I formatted all partitions for a clean install.

Once installed, I restored my backup of the repositories and set to loading in my favourite software.  For each programme, I restored its corresponding configuration from backup.  For example, for Firefox, I restored “.mozilla”, for Filezilla I restored “.filezilla” and so on.

The version of 13 I installed was the MATE one and it is running perfectly.  All my old programmes are running smoothly and it may just be my imagination, but the whole system seems a lot faster.

The whole process took a couple of hours, but most of that was taken up with copying files to and from my backup drive.

I can’t help but wonder how long the process would have taken within Windows, between loading the system and then tracking down all the installation disks, licence keys and the rest?

A couple of days?

Taking a backward step

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I took a regressive step yesterday.

I scrapped Linux Mint 12 (Lisa) in favour of Linux Mint 11 (Katya).

Once again, I was amazed at the simplicity of the move.  While selecting the sectors for the installation, I simply told it not to format my Home sector.  As a result, I lost nothing and my precautionary backup wasn’t needed.

So why scrap the latest version in favour of an older one?  The answer is that I was having too many problems which in fairness I should probably blame on the laptop and not the software.  Most of my programmes were noticeably slower, with some abysmally so.  As laptops go this isn’t a bad one.  It has a dual core AMD Athlon processor with 4Gb of memory so it’s a fairly nippy machine.  I suspect that its graphics just wasn’t up to the mark when it came to Gnome 3.  But even using Mate or Cinnamon didn’t help.

So now I’m back on Katya and everything is flying along.  I had one mysterious problem in Lisa where I couldn’t detect my network scanner.  It’s a wireless HP Officejet J4680, and while Lisa picked it up straight away as a printer, the only way I could scan was to bring the laptop to the unit and connect via USB.  One of the very first things I did after the reinstall was to check this problem, and there was the scanner ready for use!

My only problem now is that I got somewhat used to the layout and functionality of Gnome 3, and now I have to relearn where everything is.

I suppose in time I will stop looking for the clock in the top right-hand corner of the screen?

Essential Linux Software

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

In the last couple of days, for various reasons I have completely reinstalled Linux on this machine.

One of the great joys of Linux is the ease with which a reinstall can be done. A Windows reinstall is a slow process and when it is complete there is the tedious and lengthy process of reinstalling all the software, if you can find all the disks and the licence codes. Even then, the chances are you have lost all your settings for the various programmes and you have to customise them all over again.

With Linux, it is a simple matter of restoring your Home directory from backup and that’s that.

However there are still some programmes that have to be reinstalled. There is no fear of having no CDs or licence codes as they are already available on the Net. The problem (if you can call it a problem) is remembering which programmes to install. For that reason, I have made a little list as a reminder to myself in the future. I have called this “Essential Linux Software” but that just means it is essential for me.

First on my list is VirtualBox. This is essential not only for testing other flavours of Linux but also for running Windows for the odd programmes that won’t run on Linux. Naturally I will have kept all my virtual machines intact in my /home backup!

I have to include Filezilla despite its small problems.

Another one I like is Alacarte. which is a nice little program for tidying and editing the Menu.

I am a great fan of Audacity. However, to record off the soundcard I also have to install pavucontrol.

Skype is another essential, and again all it’s settings and history can be restored from the /home backup.

Another programme that isn’t exactly essential but is just too good to miss is Google Earth.

For my browsing and mail I like to use the absolute latest versions of Firefox and Thunderbird and therefore use the nightly builds (called respectively Nightly and Earlybird). As I have both installed directly in my /home directory they are automatically installed from backup.

All the above can be installed directly by using Synaptic Package Manager or Software Manager. There is one little programme that I like which has to be manually installed. That is Grub Customizer. Installation of this requires a wee bit of Terminal typing. The lines are –

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install grub-customizer

The one feature of this little programme is that apart from being a good Grub editor, it can set Grub to load to the last used OS. On a dual boot machine with Windows, this is very handy as for example Windows may need to reboot after an update. In a normal Grub, Windows will try to reboot into Windows, but will actually end up in Linux, if that’s the default OS.

Occasionally I like to delve into the strange world of Twitter. For this I use Tweetdeck which requires Adobe Air. The latter is simple to install once you know how!

I’m sure there are one or two I have missed. I’ll add them at a later date if necessary.

Any other suggestions?