Virtualisation in Linux

Well like all good OSs you can run virtualisation in Linux. Here is a screenshot of a new VM I am setting up with VMWare Workstation Player 12.

The reason why I am using a virtual machine is that Wine isn't quite so perfect and there are going to be ongoing issues with its compatibility problems, like for example with IrfanView. It is more convenient to spin up a VM than to whiz off to another computer to do some stuff.

This Windows VM will be able to use network drives to access the host computer's disks and since Samba is installed on the host and it has 12 GB of memory there should not be any problems.

VirtualBox is another software virtualisation tool you can use with Linux but it isn't quite as good as VMWare.

Lubuntu

Today I have started setting up three of my computers with Lubuntu. This might be increased to four in future, or else maybe the fourth one will run Mint, or be left on Windows 7 - it is mainly used for media playback.

I have chosen to use Lubuntu because I have several old, slow computers that I use for work purposes and they don't need to be too swish. Much of the time they are talking to servers and with remote desktop sessions that can be used to get work done in where apps don't run on Windows, they are ideal for technical administration while making the computer usable with low resources. 

The two computers I use mainly for these purposes are pretty old (one is a Gigabyte G31 and the other is an Intel DG41) and have a maximum of 4 GB of RAM that can be installed in them. Both have a dual display card. Lubuntu supports the AMD card in the G31 out of the box with an open source driver, however I expect the Nvidia card in the DG41 will require configuration to allow booting in the same way as my Mint computer did, before installing the Nvidia binary drivers. 

The G31 got started on first this morning and was a bit of fun - computers this old can be tricky to boot off anything except a CD or DVD - even network boot sometimes can fail, and it certainly doesn't like starting off a pen drive in spite of being able to list it as a boot option. But the installation was straightforward and the setup with installing a few extra apps was pretty straightforward. Remmina, Thunderbird, Opera Browser, Chromium Browser and Firefox Developer Edition are about the extent of it for the type of work I do.

The main issue for the G31 was the order of the screens. In the physical layout which I have for that computer the main display is on the right and the second display on the left. The display config tool that comes with Lubuntu doesn't make it possible to change the main display. There are other tools that could change this but the easy workaround is to add another panel to the second display and configure it to look just like the main one.

The DG41 was an evening project. Once again it could not boot the pen drive. Both computers incidentally have been installed with the 64 bit edition of Lubuntu. The nice little surprise was that with its graphics card which is a Nvidia NV210SL, it worked out of the box with the default driver for both screens. Another useful thing I got done with it was to turn the hibernation on and verify this all worked properly. The icing on the cake was that it was able to recognise the USB printer. So after a couple of hours' work it is all go and that is very good.

UPDATE: Both of my Lubuntu machines work well but Thunderbird uses a lot of memory. Fortunately I was able to get hold of an Intel DQ35JO motherboard for the G31 computer and replace the G31 motherboard. The main thing that an Intel DQ35JO can do that a G31 can't do is that with four memory slots instead of two it can be installed with 8 GB of RAM. The CPU in it is also a later model of the Intel Core2Duo. Another way I got this computer faster was to use a faster HDD to install Lubuntu onto. So I have a better faster Lubuntu computer at one workplace now. The DG41RQ is still in use in the other place and with only 4 GB of RAM is definitely limited but I have other resources I can use there to make up the difference such as a whole server with 8 GB of RAM that can run stuff in VMs.

Multiple Monitors on Linux

One of the features of Linux as with other operating systems is its multiple monitor capability. As with Windows you can have your desktop spread across two or more screens, with different windows showing on different monitors.

Cinnamon in Mint has added the ability to have multiple panels (taskbar equivalent) on each screen and to have them all individually configurable. This is quite a step up from Windows as you can choose each of the elements (applets) individually - a Window List, a Menu, a Launcher and other functions. If the window list applet is put on the individual panels of the secondary monitors then the windows on that monitor automatically appear on the panel instead of on the main monitor's panel. Applications can be directly launched to appear on a particular panel by using the menu and/or launcher on that panel to launch them. There is complete flexibility in where the applets are located on each panel.

At this stage in time I have a menu and a launcher on each panel (and the launchers are all different from each other) but only one system tray and one workspace switcher. The menu and launcher on the secondary monitors appear closest to the primary monitor. All this is completely configurable.

Sharing resources between Windows and Linux computers

Since I have two main computers and one runs Windows while the other runs Linux, there are inevitably going to be some ways in which I will try to share resources between the two computers. Linux of course comes with Samba preinstalled to allow shared folders to be accessible to Windows. One of the key issues has been that the Canon download software for my cameras doesn't have a Linux edition so I have decided after a bit of experimentation that the Windows computer will be the one that has the download software on it and where the cameras will be connected to a USB cable for this purpose. There will be a full set of photos kept on this computer that will be synchronised automatically to the Linux computer for use there. That may change eventually to having the Windows computer keep the only set of the photos if I can figure out how to connect to it from Linux; so far I haven't been able to do this successfully.

Another issue is the backup which has also been running in the past from the Windows computer, which accessed the computer that is now running Linux over the network to back its files up. Since I can use Samba to set up file shares on the Linux computer then it should be possible to share all of my Home folder and then continue to use Cobian Backup on the Windows computer to do the backups just as I have been doing them already.

In other things: I have been able to get the latest version of Remmina installed and done a lot of remote access stuff with it. The clipboard seems to work better in the 1.2 release. I also had a look at antivirus software. Although it may not be necessary for Linux itself, it is useful to have when sharing stuff with Windows computers. After looking at a few options I settled on the free edition of Sophos Antivirus as being the best choice and have installed it.

UPDATE: Well after playing with the settings on the Windows computer I was able to get the Linux computer to connect to its shared pictures folder from Nemo, the Mint file manager. I am not sure if it was a case-sensitivity problem or with the Windows Live user account I tried to use first. When I capitalised all the letters of the Windows computer name and used a local account it worked.

The main issue is does it get put in as a local path? Well, in fact, it does. This is not immediately apparent. In fact, it will appear as /run/user/1000/gvfs/smb-share... where smb-share is followed by the path to the share. It turns out I can do most things with files accessed through that path, for example IrfanView running under Wine can scan and rename and so on. So at the moment the idea is to see how I go accessing my photos from the Windows computer over the network which will save from having to maintain two separate copies on two computers with synchronisation. Ideally it would be preferable if Nemo could map into something that was easier to remember but we will see how that goes for now. At least I have been able to get Wine to map that to a drive letter for IrfanView to make it easier to use in there.

So over the next few days I will be testing that out, and if that works, the Windows computer will hold all the photos and not the Linux computer, but it will be just as easy on the Linux computer to access them, even if it means I have to have two computers on for some of the time.

Irfanview on Wine

With any computer system there is a point reached where the software you like is on a different platform and you have to find some workaround. Various types of virtualisation are common workarounds. Wine is a type of virtualisation that allows some software packages designed for Windows to be run under Linux.

Well, IrfanView can be run under Wine, but you have to make sure you download the Zip version of the software package because the installer uses MFC42.dll which is a Windows component. Installing Wine is straightfoward using the PPA from WineHQ as described here.

Extract the Zip archive into a folder and copy it to Wine's Program Files or Program Files (x86) folder (/home/username/.wine/drive_c). I found that simply starting it with the wine command worked first time and no other fiddles were necessary.

The shortcut icon seems to be a tricky issue with Wine as you have to extract icons from the software package. There are some tools such as icoutils that will help with this. In the case of IrfanView, icoutils wasn't able to get any icons out of the exe file. I can probably get the icon from Windows.

Of course another option to Wine is to use a native Linux package. XnViewer is a possibility; I don't know about any other packages that might be available.