A few more details and some clean up

The ladies at the front desk quickly noted that the 10 key pad wasnt working.  I chased this around and around, looking at keyboard mapping, and googling my heart out.   Finally a clue..  It seemed that some had better luck with x11rdp running the show rather than xdrp.  

Found that it wasnt in the normal ubuntu repositories, but a wickedly good programmer had a script available to load, and compile x11rdp along with a configuration gui for the user accounts to choose which gui they would each load.  Bottom line...  It just plain works.  I sent him a nice donation via paypal.  X11rdp. Seems to have made the login and log out processes rock solid.

Ubuntu itself also had a little problem with some false error reporting, un related to all this, but some good references let me change a config flag, and now that annoyance is gone.... It was popping up occasionally and ruining the desktop session.  

No cookbook yet..  But for those who feel they have to try...   Ubuntu 12.04.  Wine 1.5.   Must run x11rdp. Must have samba and especially the smbfs services loaded.   Turn off oplocks on your samba share.  If you dont, then the windows avimark sessions get blown out of the water, while the linux wine sessions soldier on.  Samba share needs to have default user forced to guest.   The easiest way to set up your samba share is to download and use the debian package of Webmin.  Webmin gives you a very nice interface for looking at and tweaking all of your setup.   I am not much for memorizing command line stuff.

Each log in session needs its own user account.  Each account needs a .xsession file in its home directory to tell which gui loads..  The x11drp auto script from scarygliders.net and the gui config utility will get you there quicker.   Setting user accounts and groups and passwords is much easier with webmin as well.



Now its off to week 2 of a windows light office.

Well we made it through over a week of running Avimark on Linux.   Tweaked and optimized  some settings, but it ran all week.  Architecture was Ubuntu 12.4 server 3 ghz quad processor, 4 gig memory, 500 gig raid mirror.

Set up our normal windows workstations (5 out of the 12 available) and ran rdp sessions logged into the server, and ran Avimark under wine.

With the settings all figured out, it peacefully coexisted with the other stations running Avimark under windows off of the linux server.

You tube video here  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzl-ggFZINE

This runs scary fast, and was very stable all week. 

 AVIMARK on IPOD via RDP on LINUX

Remoter pro (a 10 buck app) makes it a joy with the translucent keyboard and trackpad.

 BIG NEWS for Avimark users.

So it is that I have spent the last 3 weeks of spare time figuring out the next step in computing upgrades for the office.  With the impending death of Windows xp next spring ( or at least the end of active microsoft support)  has me looking at what's next

I loaded a demo copy of Window server 2008, thinking I'd try out terminal services.  I was able to get it running, but the terminology, and plethora of settings was not trivial.  I also started thinking about linux again

I've run 2 offices on linux servers for years, but all the work stations are various flavors of Windows running Avimark practice management software.

Several years back.  I tried Avimark in linux using the Wine application loader.  It kinda worked.

Big news.. this time with Ubuntu 12.04 and Wine 1.5xx it worked.  I spent much of the last 3 weeks figuring out the settings to give me an optimal Avimark setup.

I also have accomplished stable terminal sessions via Remote Desktop Protocol.

It may not seem like much, but running terminal sessions is as fast as running Terminal services on a Microsoft 2008 server.

The cost savings will be very significant.   Nothing says updates in Avimark won't break this, but the gamers keep the Wine team on their toes

Since the server is doing all the heavy lifting, I can use my ageing fleet of windows computers as terminals and get a significant speed boost.  Upgrades can be incremental instead of all at once. 

A significant plus, is that I can log in on my ipad via a secure tunnel, as well as use it over the wireless in the office.  This also solves the problem of trying to use notebooks on a wireless network.  As many can attest, it was slow, and it was unstable.

I went live on 5 terminals in the office this week, and after tweaking settings, it all works.  It can peacefully coexist with other stations running on windows.

The only thing I had to give up was the real time spell checker. (direct screen writes blanked the child screens like notes and mcr)  The spell checker  can be left on, but the auto correct while typing has to be turned off.   Stay tuned.