FreeBSD Blog April Archive

The program works great except that it won't work in a minimized window. That means I have to set and watch all the websites go by. Boring and hard to get any work done.

I found the solution and its hidden in my two posts about remote desktops and tightvnc.

What I do is start the tightvnc server on my FreeBSD box. Then use the vncviewer to connect to it, it: vncviewer localhost:1

Since I can't get gnome to work on two sessions at once, I bring up kde; startkde. Now I start my screen shot program.

I minimize the vncviewer window and the screen shot program keeps going as the screen shot window is not minimized, only the window I am viewing that in.

tightvnc is quickly installed from the standard FreeBSD ports.

I solved the mouse problem by plugging in a mouse. A second keyboard takes up too much desk space. I found the answer with TightVNC

Download and install it for windows and use the FreeBSD ports to install it on my workstations. Both quick and easy.

Now when I need to use windows on my laptop, I just key in vncviewer 192.168.1.1:0 in a terminal window, enter the password when prompted and now I have a window with Windows that works with my regular monitor, mouse and keyboard.

Now I just have to figure out how to eliminate the need to use any Windows programs, but in the mean time this is the perfect way to use them.

I picked TightVNC. It is a quick and easy download and installation for windows and equally quick and easy to install the FreeBSD port.

Now comes the troubles. It was easy enough to start the server on FreeBSD. I just typed vncserver in a terminal window. Now I run the TightVNC client on windows and it connects. Now we're talking.

Well, not really, it gives me a terminal window under X. This was not even close to what I wanted. I could have accomplished that with less effort under SSH. I wanted my standard desktop session to be shared.

I was unable to get gnome which I use for my desktop to start in the VNC session. I was able to kde to start and run fine. It won't let me run Firefox, but the other browers, Mozilla, Opera and others work fine. Firefox says it is already running.

This isn't quite what I want, though gets me to a better place than using a browser under Windows. Researching things a bit it looks like TightVNC will not share my session but only create new sessions. I find a problem x11vnc that says it will do what I want.

That is also a quick and easy install under the FreeBSD ports, and just as easy to run. x11vnc in a terminal window. It warns you about not having a password and depending on your network connection you need to heed the warning.

Now I connect from my Windows system to session 0 and my desktop is there shared between the two systems. It works every well, except my laptop screen is a little smaller in resolution so there is a lot of scrolls, or rearranging of window sizes.