Skip to main content

Long Time, No Write

It's been a loooong time since I last wrote. The past several years have seen a huge shift in my career and technical objectives. I've gone from working almost exclusively on code to selling software as a technical sales engineer to now managing a team of technical gurus doing sales worldwide. As a result, my time for tinkering has slowed considerably.

I do want to update everyone by saying that I am now back to Linux after many years stuck in a Windows world for work. My current employer is focused on open source technology and as such encourages us to use Linux and other open source tools in any way we can.

I am now the proud owner of a Dell Laptop that has dual-boot setup for Windows and Ubuntu 18.04. I'll try to write up a post here in the next bit about my experiences so far, but my quick and dirty summary is that you should definitely give it a shot. There are a few hiccups to overcome, but, for the most part, it's been really nice transitioning back.

Until next time...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Black Cursors on Win7/2008 R2 Using rdesktop for Ubuntu 10.04

I recently setup a Win 2008 R2 VM and proceeded to remote connect to it from Ubuntu 10.04. Everything worked perfectly except the mouse cursors were black (and some were corrupt). Solution? Use a newer version of rdesktop that doesn't ship with Ubuntu. There is a handy PPA that can be added using the following command: sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ricolai/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install rdesktop [UPDATE] It appears ricolai may have removed the package from his PPA. To remedy the situation, I've uploaded the working binaries for x64. Sorry, I don't have the x86 any longer. More information on the bug can be found here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/rdesktop/+bug/385974?comments=all

Remote Connection: Free NX vs. VNC

Apparently, there's some debate in the Linux world about remote connections. I've been using VNC for 8 years or so now. It's reliable, but definitely slow. I've found that NoMachine's NX Server (free edition) suits my needs best. It works even better than Windows' Remote Desktop, and of course much better than VNC (which really stinks). In my case, it opens a new session, when I connect to the server, but I think it can be configured to connect to an existing session as well. You might want to give it a try: http://www.nomachine.com/products.php I'll give it a try and get back to you all... UPDATE: I've installed the server on both my laptop and my desktop Ubuntu machines following the instructions found at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FreeNX . The results are astounding! While not identical in terms of functionality to VNC, I personally prefer the results. It's actually closer to an RDP session. I haven't tested the client to the ful...

Mounting VMware VMDK Disks in Ubuntu (Linux)

Took me a while to find the info on this, but it's fairly simple once you piece together all the information out there. First off, I'm not converting this to VirtualBox. I'm simply accessing the HD as though it were mounted on my local file system (Ubuntu). The VMDK image is for a WinXP virtual machine. First off, verify you have vmware-mount on your system. Drop to terminal, type "vmware-mount". You should get info regarding usage. If not, you need to install VMware Server or VMware Workstation (it's bundled with them). When prompted during the install, say 'Yes' to installing the additional tools packages. Not sure which one it's in, but it's there. Sorry, perhaps someone else can clarify this point. Next, navigate to the location of your VMDK and type "vmware-mount -p .vmdk". This will show you a list of mount points within the file (first column). Create /mnt/ using "mkdir /mnt/ " Next, type "sudo vmware-m...