[Bio-linux-dev] Upgrade to Bio-Linux 7 (at last)

[Tony Travis]

On 11/10/12 14:31, Tim Booth wrote:
> [...]
> The Unity desktop really depends on using the 3D capabilities of your
> graphics card and so is really not suitable for NX or remote X in
> general, hence you have to use the Gnome fallback as suggested by Tony,
> or else move to something like Xfce.  [ I'm not sure how
> hard/problematic this could be - not tried it on Ubuntu ].

Hi, Tim.

I've had Unity running under x2go:

   http://www.x2go.org/

This, apparently, is the direction Canonical want Ubuntu to go instead 
of using FreeNX. The snag is that x2go is NOT compatible with NX/FreeNX.

> One thing to bear in mind - and this is useful even if NX desktop is
> working perfectly - if that if a user can cope with the command line,
> they can set the NX Desktop option to "Custom", click "Settings", set
> Options to "Floating Window" and set Application to "gnome-terminal".
> Then instead of a full desktop, a terminal window will appear.  If you
> run a graphical application from that terminal then that will likewise
> appear.  This is faster than a full desktop.

How does that compare with just forwarding X11?

   ssh -CX user at host

To me, the advantage of using a remote NX desktop is that I can work on 
a remote host the same way I would on a local desktop. Launching GUI 
apps from the command-line is how we used to use network transparency. A 
lot of X11 compressing/caching techniques were developed, culminating in 
the NX libraries. These make it practical to use a remote desktop.

>> Users definitely have ssh permissions as
>> per http://nebc.nerc.ac.uk/tools/bio-linux/accessing-bio-linux -
>> interesting list of stuff after recent NX login in auth.log one of
>> which seems to be related to a constant keychain message and the
>> screen-saver lock, which doesn't clear with entering the user's
>> password.
>>
> Not sure what to make of this.  You mean you have the screensaver
> running in the NX desktop window?  I'd just disable it.

I think this might be because a large number of packages 'recommended' 
by ubuntu-desktop are missing. That's what has happended on our server 
install. I'm looking into it, and comparing what Tim's script installed 
with the manifest of the casper filesystem on the Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS 
Desktop iso.

Bye,

   Tony.