Subject: From: Date:

PC Extender Ingo Pakleppa 06 Sep 2003 15:36:41 -0700

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Hi Mark,

I'm not sure this will get through to the list since I don't recall
which email address I used to subscribe (I have hundreds as a spam
protection measure!) but I have a similar situation.

First, exactly what do you want to have in the living room? Another PC?
Or just a keyboard, mouse and monitor? In the latter case, your options
are fairly limited to something like a KVM extender, as you suggest, or
Microsoft's tablet PCs are supposed to provide similar functionality (at
a very high price and for Windows only, of course).

The easiest solution is probably to get another PC, a laptop may be
appropriate for portability, or a cheap $200 Walmart PC if you want to
do it cheaply, or of course any PC that you may already have sitting
around somewhere. It doesn't matter if that has Windows or Linux.
Establish a network (wireless or not, but if you do use wireless, please
remember to turn on 128-bit encryption. Still not very secure, but
better than nothing!) between your laptop and the office PC. Then run
VNC server on your office PC, and a VNC client on your laptop. VNC is
roughly the same as the better-known PCAnywhere, but is free software.
You can get it at http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/

Not a hardware solution as you specified, of course, but still supports
both Windows and Linux on either system, since VNC is cross-platform.
The one restriction is: it won't work in Linux text mode; it requires X
Windows to work.

This would give you full interoperability, as if you were sitting in
front of the computer.

I actually don't use VNC, among other reasons because I removed X
windows from my server to save room on the hard disk (and also because
any unnecessary package on a server is an unnecessary potential security
hole). I just use ssh (on Windows, I use putty as ssh client). SSH can
even forward limited X windows.

Ingo

On Fri, 2003-09-05 at 17:47, ecs-digest-help@netbloc.com wrote:

> From: Mark Gilmore <mark@markgilmore.net>
> To: ecsl@netbloc.com, ecs@netbloc.com
> Subject: PC extender
> Date: 05 Sep 2003 17:46:30 -0700
> 
> Hi guys,
> Looking for some sage advice:
> I need a low-cost way to allow me to work in the living
> room without moving my office PCs.
> Wireless and portability are not mandatory.
> But I need a hardware-only solution, as I will be using both Win & Linux.
> The $300 "KVM Extender" (http://www.networktechinc.com/press-extenders.html)
> looks like it will do the trick.
> But are there any better ideas out there ? :-).
> Thanks,
> 
> Mark Gilmore
> http://OmnipotenceSoftware.com

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