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Xming provides an implementation of the X Windows System (X11 server) for Microsoft Windows.  Its useful when needing to use a GUI application on a remote server that doesn’t provide remote desktop access.

Installing Xming

Installing Xming on Windows is easy; download the binary file and follow the installation wizard.

To configure Xming run XLaunch from the Start Menu, otherwise run Xming to start up the application.

When started an icon would appear on the taskbar.

Configure X11 Forwarding in PuTTY

Before establishing and SSH connection go to Connection -> SSH -> X11 in the configuration window and check the “Enable X11 forwarding” box.

PuTTY X11 Forwarding

After SSH connection has been established any GUI application can be run by executing it from the command prompt e.g. the Thunar file manager for Xubuntu

Running Thunar in Windows with Xming

More detail information can be found here.

Prior to Xubuntu 8.10 I used SMB for FUSE for networking browsing.  However, after upgrading to 8.10 I found that I would get an error: <b>Transport endpoint is not connected</b> everytime I try to copy a file to my Windows desktop using Thunar.  Apparently, this is a known bug with fusesmb, therefore after searching for an alternative solution I found pyNeighborhood.

Installing pyNeighborhood

$ apt-get install pyneighborhood

Configuring pyNeighborhood

Setup the directory which is to be mounted

$ cd /media
$ mkdir network
$ chmod 777 network

From the panel bar of Xfce select “Application”, “Network”, and “pyNeighborhood”

Select “Edit”, and “Preferences”
Under the “General” tab, enter the “Mount folder:” e.g. /media/network

Under the “File Managers” tab, remove the entry xterm -e mc, and add /usr/bin/thunar as the file manager

Adding a Mountpoint

In the pyNeighborhood under the “Network” tab, right click “Groups” to scan your network groups

Right click the network group found to scan the machines in the selected network

Right click the machine to add it to the right panel

Expand the machine, and right click on a shared folder to mount it

Ubuntu 8.10 ships with Network Manager 0.7, which comes with many features.  Unfortunately, I had a difficult time trying to assign a static IP to my computer as it would get lost after each restart.  I wasn’t the only one with this problem and here’s how it’s done:

Right click on the “Network Manager” icon and select “Edit Connections…”
Delete any “Auto” settings, and click “Add”

Network Manager

Click on the “IPv4 Settings” tab, and enter your network information.
Make sure you check the “System setting” checkbox.  Click “OK” when done

Network Manager IPv4 Settings

To analyze my disk usage on my Windows computer I use TreeSize Free. But TreeSize doesn’t work on my Xubuntu system. To help me analyze disk usage on my Xubuntu system I use a graphic tool called Baobab. Baobab runs in any Gnome envirnoment, but will also work Xubuntu’s Xfce environment and is bundled in the gnome-utils package.

Install the gnome-utils package

$ apt-get install gnome-utils

Then add Baobab to the desktop Panel.

• Right click on the Panel
• Add New Item
• Select launcher
• For the icon enter /usr/share/icons/hicolor/24x24/apps/baobab.png
• For Command enter /usr/bin/baobab

I run my Xubuntu computer 24/7 a day, therefore it’s a good idea to be able to monitor the CPU and hard drive temperature. Not looking for something complicated, I decided to install an applet on the Xfce4 panel. The first hardware sensors applet I found was the xfce4-sensors-plugin package, however I didn’t find the graphics very appealing, therefore I decided to use the sensors-applet which displays hardware sensors readings in the Gnonme panel.

To get the sensors-applet working on the xfce4 panel, I had to install xfce4-xfapplet-plugin which allows Gnome applets to be plugged into the Xfce4 panel. If you have hddtemp (a utility to monitor the temperature of your hard drive) you can also display the readings in sensors-applet as well.

$ apt-get install xfce4-xfapplet-plugin

$ apt-get install hddtemp

$ apt-get install sensors-applet