Need some help on getting a GUI for Linux | The Coffeehouse

magicalclick

I have a school project working on Linux machine remotely through Putty (SSH) connection. The console world is so painful. I have to traverse folders in console mode, it is so painful. Is there a way to get a GUI like Explore? If I can edit (code) a file without using console mode is already much better. Coding on nodepad is already bad, and I have to do this in console mode, WTH. I really don't think I can deal with this kind of develope envirnment.

Is this the rest of the world doing researchs? My creativity and performance is vastly reduced by this kind of dev envirnment.

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

Of course there are. Gnome and KDE both come with their own file managers. There's numerous editors, and also full IDEs that run on Linux such as Eclipse.

Getting this stuff to work over SSH might be possible (with X forwarding), but it will be slow, ugly and rather painful. Better to develop on you client machine (which could run Linux, or Windows if your app is crossplatform or you could test using Cygwin in some scenarios) and then deploy to the remote machine for final verification of the code.

ManipUni
Proving QQ for 5 years!

Make Linux a VNC server...

DCMonkey
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey will destroy you!

See if mc (Midnight Commander) is on the machine. It's a relatively decent console based old-school 2 column file manager.

I think emacs has a file manager mode too, but I was always a vi man myself.

Maddus Mattus
Do, or do not. There is no try. - Yoda

EXPORT DISPLAY {your IP here} and run X-Win32 under Windows Smiley

spivonious

In reply to DCMonkey

#Oct 21st @ 11:25 PM

lol, so Linux users copied Norton Commander? Is there any original software written for Linux?

CannotResolveSymbol
{insert caption here}

In reply to Sven Groot

#Oct 21st @ 11:04 PM

X11 tunnelling over SSH works fine over a local network (it's like sitting at the console over gigabit)-- that's actually how I work on a daily basis; Eclipse or jEdit running on the remote machine to which I'm connected over SSH. Install Cygwin's X11 packages (easiest to just install the whole category), start X11 from the start menu, and do ssh -Y username@hostname from the terminal window that appears and you should be able to run graphical applications and have them appear on your local machine.

If you're not on the local network (as in, you're trying to connect over the web) you'll want to use something like XRDP (an RDP server for X11), VNC, or NX. X11 doesn't use a ton of bandwidth itself, but it produces a lot of back-and-forth traffic and therefore runs pretty poorly on a high-latency connection.

On the subject of graphical file managers, either nautilus or konqueror will give you an experience closer to what you're used to. Once you've gotten a graphical connection to your linux box, you'll most likely be able to run one of the two by name (if Gnome or KDE are installed). If you're using VNC or RDP, you should have a destkop visible with one of them already running.

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Oct 22nd @ 7:49 AM

Oh I know how to do X forwarding. Last time I used it though, the fonts looked horrible (this was using Cygwin as the X11 server on the Windows side). Not sure if that has improved, or if I was doing something wrong at the time, or whatever.

CannotResolveSymbol
{insert caption here}

In reply to Sven Groot

#Oct 22nd @ 7:56 AM

I wasn't giving you the instructions; I put that there for magicalclick's benefit.

Fonts depend on the client application. If you're using a GTK or QT application, fonts should be antialiased and look pretty nice (Eclipse falls into this category).

Cygwin's X11 server does suck, though... my biggest complaint is that it somehow manages to screw up compositing even with the DWM on (this is a bigger problem on 7 than Vista because of its heavier reliance on window thumbnails). Unfortunately, there's not anything better for Windows (which is a large part of why I'm using a Mac at work rather than Win7).

obrienslalom
(2 2 2 3) *3 | 3 3 3

I would say that if you're in college, it's not a bad idea to have some Linux experience under your belt. If I were you, I would just install a VM with some Linux Distro. Chances are you are just SSH'ing into the university farm so that you can test your code. Either way, the terminals in Linux are normally much easier to use than cygwin or putty for X forwarding. I wouldn't say this necessary for just one proejct, however, if this is something that's going to be recurring, it's probably worth it.

Bass
www.spreadfirefox.com/5years/

I personally like Ubuntu a lot. There is a new version of Ubuntu coming out in a week. Ubuntu desktop edition has a desktop environment preinstalled, it's called Gnome. There are plenty of good Gnome-friendly IDEs and text editors you can utilize.

Erisan

In reply to Bass

#Oct 22nd @ 10:08 AM

Additional to that with GNOME (or KDE) you can use any software transparent over the network. In GNOME just log to server by using SSH (Nautilus: Connect to Server...) and GNOME shows the remote "folder" as a local folder and you can modify the files which ever software you find the best.

[ side note: Forget Ubuntu Wink , Fedora 12 will be released in the end of the next month (Beta version) ]

magicalclick

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Oct 22nd @ 7:49 AM

Thank you for the help. I am not entirely sure what should I do. I can't do anything to the Linux machine, except compile the text the code from command line. How does it work? If I am out of network, first I run VNC to get the right, and then I am not sure what's next. How would I be able to see files graphically on Windows machine? Do I then, use the X11 in combination of VNC?

When I am out of network, I putty to a in-network machine (probably a linux, I don't know, it is completely hidden from me), and then, I use SSH command from there to get to the actual linux machine. What should I do in this case? VNC to actual linux machine to make myself in the network and X11 to get the GUI?