Thadson's Rantings

EDIT; fixed it, for anyone else here’s what I did…(kate = gedit)

Code:
sudo kate /usr/share/applications/wine-browsedrive.desktop


In
[Desktop Entry]

change

Exec=xdg-open /.wine/dosdevices/c:

or whatever else
to

Exec=xdg-open $HOME/.wine/dosdevices/c:

First of all, if anyone comes across this, I am NOT restarting this blog – I just wanted a place to store this information where I could access it again if I ever needed to do so, and where I could refer others to it.If you have ever tried to access a Ubuntu/Kubuntu Linux system using VNC, and your host computer wasn’t particularly fast, you may have noticed that things slow down considerably – you definitely know you’re accessing the computer remotely, even if the access is via a local network link. You may have heard about FreeNX and decided to try it, but if you are like many folks you may never have gotten it to work (or if it did work, it didn’t work in quite the expected manner).

However, you can install the NX Free Edition server and client from Nomachine and it works great! The problem is that it’s not in the Ubuntu repositories, so many people shy away from it, particularly if they’ve come across any of the bad installation advice that is going around.

In my experience, the installation of the NX Free Edition using the instructions below is a lot easier than the ways that don’t work (that you will find on various web pages), or at least don’t work very well. Here’s how I did it on a Kubuntu (Dapper Drake) box. Before I begin, I must caution you that the bulk of my OS experience is with Windows, and I’m writing this primarly for Windows users that also have a Kubuntu/Ubuntu box. So if I do something in a way other than the way you’d do it, just remember that if you think you’re a Linux expert, you’re not who I’m writing this for.

One other point, note that NX does not work in precisely the same way as VNC – while VNC lets you take control of the current desktop on the target machine, NX lets each login have its own session and desktop. So you could be using your Linux box and let another family member come into it via NX, and each of you would have your own desktop and session.

Please note: These instructions were developed using Kubuntu Drake, and tested on Ubuntu Drake also. A similar setup was attempted under Kubuntu Edgy, which at first failed because the libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2 package had not been previously installed. Even then, my first impression is that NX runs a bit slower under Edgy than it did under Drake, but that may just be my imagination.

1) First, if you have tried to install FreeNX, please uninstall it, along with any other packages you installed solely for the purpose of getting it running. That also applies if you’ve installed any of the Nomachine servers or clients. Search for any NX directories that have been created and delete those (make sure it’s a directory that was actually created during the NX or FreeNX install). This is to clean your system of all traces of the former installation. The same applies to any client software you’ve installed on machines, if it’s not the exact software described below.

2) Using your favorite package installer (such as Adept or Synaptic), install the ssh package and the libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2 package (if these are not already installed on your system). The installation will fail if these packages are not installed.

3) Go to the page at http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=204976 and follow the instructions in the second message in that thread. Just in case that thread is not accessible to you, I will reprint the body of the pertinent message here. In that thread, user jkbrowne wrote:

Ok, I’ve fought with this off and on for a-while, but I finally found the right combination. First of all, forget freeNX. The NoMachine folks have released a “desktop” edition of their latest product called “NX Desktop Server” that is free for personal use (2 users/connections).

Before proceeding, be sure to *completely* remove any previous versions of any of the FreeNX files or libraries. Undo what you have already done, and remove the FreeNXsource URLs from your /etc/apt/sources.list.

———————–
Step 1 – Download
———————–

Download “NX Desktop Server DEB for Linux” from:
http://www.nomachine.com/select-package.php?os=linux&id=1

Download “NX Node DEB for Linux” from:
http://www.nomachine.com/download-node.php?os=linux

Download “NX Client DEB for Linux” from:
http://www.nomachine.com/download-client-linux.php

———————–
Step 2 – Install
———————–

Install the DEB files in this order:

nxclient
nxnode
nxserver

I just right-clicked on them and installed them…use apt-get if you prefer.

Let me interrupt jkbrowne’s instructions for a moment to say that some users may prefer to open a terminal window and use the dpkg command, like this:

sudo dpkg -i file/path/filename.deb

(Of course you’d substitute the actual .deb file path and name for the italicized part. Now back to the instructions…)

So how many of you want to watch quicktime 6 movies?
How about divx?
Want to watch those avi files?

How many of you want to watch basically every movie format out there?
How many of you want to back up your dvds and encode them to any (well
all most) other format?

How many of you want to do it for free and do it in linux?

As ripped from the apt-cache show:
The Ultimate Movie Player For Linux
It plays most mpeg, avi and asf files, supported by many native and
win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VCD, DVD and even DivX movies too. The
another big feature of mplayer is the wide range of supported output
drivers. It works with X11, Xv, DGA, OpenGL, SVGAlib, fbdev, but you can
use SDL (and this way all drivers of SDL) and some lowlevel
card-specific drivers (for Matrox/3dfx/SiS) too! Most of them supports
software or hardware scaling, so you can enjoy movies in fullscreen.

So assuming that this something your interested in and you run debian…

Here is a great quicktime test movie:
http://www.asu.net/bsh/union.mov

First add these lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://marillat.free.fr/ testing main
deb http://marillat.free.fr/ unstable main

Or follow the instructions on his site that say:

deb http://marillat.free.fr/ stable main
deb http://marillat.free.fr/ testing main
deb http://marillat.free.fr/ unstable main
deb-src http://perso.wanadoo.fr/debian/ unstable main

I personally use his testing and unstable.

Then do:

apt-get update

Now install these packages for the best media box around:

apt-get install mplayer-686 mplayer-doc mplayer-fonts qt6codecs
avifile-win32-plugin faad libdivxencore0 libdvdcss0 w32codecs

Now say you want to rip dvds and encode them with as many options as
possible?

apt-get install video-dvdrip subtitleripper

With mplayer you will be able to play these files better than with xine.

Also with mplayer comes gmplayer the graphical version of mplayer,
useful and pretty polished in comparison

mplayer can be used in a framebuffer to watch movies on your console ?

So if you use fb-dev you don’t even need X for movies!

So who needs crossover for movies anymore? Not you ?

Other cool packages are:
lame-extras realplayer zapping

Hope this helps.

(p.s. Christian Marillat is a bad ass!)