Sunday, May 04, 2008
Parallels, Ubuntu, and Pixelmator (And I Still Didn’t Get Where I Was Going)
Here’s the sequence of events: First, six months ago I bought the MacHeist Bundle II which included Pixelmator. A week or so ago, I bought the MacUpdate Bundle which included Parallels. A few days ago, a freelance client of mine sent a pair of .rdp files to give me access to their servers for a little work that I’m doing for them. All these things came together to create this post.
Which caused a problem.
Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Client for Mac OS X isn’t a particularly good product, as far as I’m concerned, but I couldn’t find another client that might actually open one of those .rdp files. So, last night I tried to find a way to get those things open while doing all of the work on my MacBook--and I’m sure that you geeks can see where this is going.
The MacHeist and MacUpdate bundles proved a fairly cheap way for me to try new software--and I like the idea of supporting shareware developers who put together good software. I bought the MU bundle without ever intending to use the flagship product, Parallels, because I didn’t imagine that I needed to run Windows inside my MacBook--besides which, I have no idea where my Win XP system disk is and I’m afraid it’s somewhere in a big box o’ abandoned technology in the storage unit. Which isn’t particularly helpful at 1:30 in the morning. But the more I struggled to find a Macintosh based solution, the more I started to think that there might be a Linux based solution to my problem.
Hence the quick installation of Parallels last night and a nearly as quick download of NimbleX, a tiny, fast Linux distribution that ran beautifully in Parallels after I spent a good three minutes setting up the virtual machine. What I couldn’t do was figure out how to install NimbleX (which was designed to be run from a USB device or CD) on the virtual hard drive that I had created. For that matter, it wouldn’t even recognize the existence of that virtual drive, wouldn’t save downloaded files, and was clunky to get around when it came to trying to figure out how to install and use its .mo module files in hopes of getting a terminal services client that would open the .rdp files. NimbleX, which ran quick as hell and impressed me with its small footprint, didn’t get me where I wanted to go.
On older computers, I’m betting that something like NimbleX would be appreciated, though.
A much longer download (about 700 megs to NimbleX’s 200 megs) got me the latest Ubuntu distribution. Ubuntu also required about a 3 gig virtual drive compared to the 500 megs I gave to NimbleX. Ubuntu, though, installed like a dream and gave me a much happier path to full screen virtual computing in Parallels than NimbleX had managed. Although it isn’t as polished as I had expected, it’s also much easier to get around and familiarize with than the smaller distro. Even better, it’s build-in Terminal Services Client offered to open up my .rdp files (with just a little nudge).
But it didn’t bring in the encrypted password. Damnit. So it opens with all of the details filled out (and looks, for all the world, like a really nice client), but I don’t have the super secret password to actually get in and do my work. As I said: damnit.
So in the end, I decided to write a post and take a screen cap of the entire thing running inside my Macintosh. So, hitting the command for a screen cap (Command-Shift-3), up popped Snapz Pro X (a brilliant title from one of my favorite small developers, Ambrosia Software, that came in the MacUpdate bundle) to give me a variety of options for the screen cap that I wanted to take to illustrate the post. Nifty. I set the options and took the picture. Once the picture was done, I decided that I wanted to edit out the IP address and other information from the Terminal Services Client to protect the security of my client.
I could open it in Photoshop since I have a legal copy running on this machine, but it seemed a bit much to open up the big app for such a little job. Enter Pixelmator.
Pixelmator is missing many of the features that I need as a guy who deals with preparing press files on a daily basis. It doesn’t have all of the features that I need especially in terms of its color handling. But for something like this, it loads so much faster and does have a wide variety of great tools that it’s worth having on my hard drive just for the small jobs.
All of which got me here (see below), but didn’t get me where I wanted to go.
Click above to make it bigger.
All of which thrills me. I don’t mind paying for software, but I love having so many reasonably priced (and often free) options for some of the things that I do. Not every job requires the huge titles that sell for hundreds of dollars--and, in fact, some of them get done better with leaner, more focused tools.
Comments & Trackbacks
Virtualization is cool and fun. I’ve used Vmware for a couple purposes, and played a bit with Xen as well. There are at least a few more virtualization packages available for Linux, though not with the features of Vmware. I like it for trying out something new that I don’t want to, or can’t install on my main machine, and also for running the 1 or 2 Windows apps that I still use—mainly just 1, though I might mess with installing Corel Photo-Paint sometime.
Not sure what your password issue is. If you open up the Ubuntu package manager, and filter on the strings “rdp” or “rdesk”, you’ll find a couple alternate possibilites for running remote desktops. Maybe one of those will work better. (I run the Kubuntu variant, so I don’t know exactly how the package manager is identified in the Gnome menus.)
Kiss all that good stuff goodbye as Microsoft is working hard to kill off open source models with several very successful strategies. They’ll have the OLPC project assimilated in the next month or two.
Kiss it goodbye? Hardly. If anything, the Free Software / Open Source model and movement is influencing M$ to be more friendly to it, as they realize they’ll have to play nice with Linux in the enterprise, to cite just one example.
Not only that, but Linux continues to get more popular, particularly in the enterprise, but also on the desktop. Granted, it’s presence on the desktop is miniscule, but larger now than it was 10 years ago, for sure.
Which week are we in? Is this a “the evil bastards at Microsoft will crush open source!” week or a “the evil bastards at Microsoft will be crushed by open source!” week? I can never keep it straight, with it changing so frequently…
I love having so many reasonably priced (and often free) options for some of the things that I do
That’s why I come to the bash when you promise me free shots, bro.
Man, the truth really does hurt, doesn’t it?
No, Jed, Microsoft has not become more friendly to Open Source. In fact, their purported efforts to do so are in fact smoke screens. Take a look at Microsoft’s license that is supposed to be open source friendly, which actually contains a patent poison pill term.
Well, you can look at different heads of the hydra, and see it differently. Bill Gates is openly hostile to the GPL, and doesn’t even understand it (at least according to his public statements). Doesn’t mean Linux, and other FOSS software is headed for the dustbin of history.
Jed, look at how Microsoft just bought an ISO std for Microsoft Office - spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the effort of buying off voting members of the standards’ national committees - for the purpose of killing OpenOffice’s ODF standard.
Microsoft’s funding of the SCO attack on Linux paid off in years of FUD.
All techie stuff aside, I just like Macs.
Me too--although I wish I had a really cheap and reasonably good laptop to take with me on some of my trips so that I don’t worry so much about losing the MacBook.
None of which changes the fact that how long has it been since you last commented? Good Lord, it’s been a long time. You should send me an email to let me know what is happening in your life.