[ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu'ing a PC for a friend.

[Jon Spriggs]

On 21 May 2011 17:52, Gordon Burgess-Parker <gbplinux at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21/05/2011 17:39, Jon Spriggs wrote:
>>
>> As I said, the VPN part is more to save having to set up local port
>> forwarding and DynDNS, especially as my Dad is with BT, and their
>> default response with the home hub is "Press the reset button on the
>> side of the router. Does it work now?"
>
> Have you tried TeamViewer? They have a Linux version....
> http://www.teamviewer.com/en/index.aspx

Yes, however, it fails for me in several regards:

1) It's completely non-free software. That's not always a big issue
for me, however, when I'm supporting someone else's machine,
especially someone who I've explained about Software Freedom to, if
they ask me what I'm using to support their machine, I want to be able
to say that I did it all with Free'd Software.

2) The last time I tried it, It requires them to click on something to
make it work, or at the very least, read something out to me over the
phone. Sometimes, I'll get a request, by e-mail, from my Dad at 2am
(he's got a weird sleep pattern) asking if I can take a look at his
machine for him. I'll get the e-mail at 6am, and I might not get to
look at it until 8pm and he may not be around at any of the times I
want to get on to it.

3) You can get OpenVPN clients for all major platforms (Windows,
Linux, Mac and even Android can be encouraged to make it work), and a
VNC viewer is probably, after a telnet client, one of the most
duplicated network applications. :)

Every now and then, I look at X2GO and FreeNX and remind myself that
it's not really doing much more than a tunnel to a method of
displaying X, and that my way works.

Like I said though, there are *very* many ways of skinning the same
cat - the choice comes down to what works for you.
--
Jon "The Nice Guy" Spriggs