Peter Glaeser » Linux

TeamViewer Remote Control

Peter Glaeser — Tue, 11 May 2010 14:30:18 +0000

Have you ever wanted to control a remote computer? Then you have probably messed with VNC-based programs in the past. But the problem is that VNC is usually tied to a very specific port. And if you are behind a router or firewall you need to configure that device to allow you access to the computer. All really complicated, especially if you’ve never heard of HTTP ports and such.

TeamViewer solves all of these problems. It’s remote desktop software available for Windows, Mac, Linux and iPhone. All you need to do is start the software and enter the TeamViewer ID of the remote machine and a pre-defined password. TeamViewer does the rest. No more worries about port configurations and possible video drivers interfering. For non-commercial use it’s absolutely free and a must for every geek.

Download: http://www.teamviewer.com (no affiliate link)

No more Windows

Peter Glaeser — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:13:13 +0000

The last day of 2009 will also be the last day of me using Microsoft Windows. This is a quick farewell to an operating system I’ve been using for 19 years. Over time it became worse and worse. Today I would describe Windows as vulnerable, slow and over-engineered. And no, Windows 7 doesn’t do it for me either.

For about a year the only reason for me to use Windows is iTunes and iPod/iPhone. Most of my other tasks could get done easily by a Mac or a free Linux distribution. Tomorrow I’m going to bury Windows and use the free disk space for my existing Ubuntu installation. For development and office work I’m switching over to Ubuntu, multimedia and iPhone stuff will be done on a Mac.

I Love Ubuntu

Peter Glaeser — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 06:00:36 +0000

I’ve been using Ubuntu Linux on my netbook for a while now. The user experience has been great. It runs much faster and my hard-drive is never busy without me doing anyhting. So I decided to equip all of our office desktop computers with Ubuntu too. You’re not seeing one single Windows machine around here. In the next weeks and months I might be adding a few posts on how to make the most out of your Ubuntu installation.

My new Asus EEE PC 900A

Peter Glaeser — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:56:38 +0000

If you’re a geek and you’re looking for a small netbook for traveling, here is my favorite: I’ve recently bought an Asus EEE PC 900A on Amazon for 278 euros including shipping. And no, I’m not going to post any affiliate links here.

What I like about my new toy is it’s size: Here you can see that it’s less than half of the size of my old 15.4-inch laptop:

I chose the Linux version because I don’t need Windows for surfing on the web or writing a few documents. I’ve played with Ubuntu for a long time now and absolutely love it. Also I’m in process of getting rid of Windows completely. More on that in a future post.

The pre-installed Xandros Linux sucks. It’s actually capable of doing a lot for you. But the user interface is really for dummies. It took me two minutes to realize that I had to kill it. I downloaded the newest Ubuntu on my USB memory stick and put it on the EEE. The netbook has 1 GB of RAM and an 8 GB solid state disk, something like an internal USB stick. These days you don’t really need more than this to do online work.

I had to connect the EEE PC to my LAN so that it could download a bunch of updates which also got my wireless internet connection working. So within half an hour I had a full Ubuntu Linux netbook. Here is a screenshot (literally) showing Gnome and Firefox: