VNC?

[firebyrd10]

I've never gotten desktop sharing to work cross platform......

oh well I installed Real VNC anyway.

[A. Jorge Garcia]

j.drake: Sorry to let you down, but I'm not big on variants. I have no idea what Steve Evan's Shogi or cranes are! The only chess variants I've tried are BugHouse and FischerRandom.

Maybe you can help me. I'm looking for a linux client where two people can play standard chess over a LAN real-time with a clock. I tried xboard, but it only lets you play a chess engine or other people or FICS. I tried eboard which adds P2P play, but its buggy and crashes alot. Now I'm trying VNC with xboard and this works fine, except that you only get a chess clock when playing an engine or FICS.... I'm a bit frustrated, maybe you can tell?

c123: We have a classroom LAN of 25 PCs all running KNOPPIX from hdd (knoppix-installer as debian 20031119). One PC is set up as the print server and file server where my students login remotely and save their work via X server or sshd. Does that make a difference?

TIA,
AJG

[j.drake]

OK, thanks, AJ. I used to work in an office with the biggest chess dork I've ever met. He was always looking for people to play chess with, except that he really loved the asian variants. I was one of the few people who consented to be taught. Now I'm hooked too. Unfortunately, he moved away to parts unknown, and I'm probably one of the few people in Texas who know what Shogi (Japanese chess) or Xiang Qi (Chinese chess) are, much less how to play them (well, OK, there is his ex-wife, but that would be rather awkward now, wouldn't it)? So, I play against the computer, which I prefer anyway. Steve Evans wrote a freeware program for W$ with most of the Shogi variants built in. It's a great interface, but has a weak engine.

http://trout.customer.netspace.net.au/

Anyway, just so you won't think I was speaking gibberish, tori shogi (bird chess) is my favorite, and the various pieces are named after birds (phoenix =king, eagle, falcon, crane, etc.). The cool thing about shogi (most variants, anyway) is that when you capture an opposing piece, you can "drop" it on the board as your own piece in any location (for the most part) you choose. The pieces are not colored; they are arrow-shaped flat tiles, and you can tell whose piece is whose by the direction the arrowhead is pointing (IOW, my pieces would point toward you, and vice versa). The other unique thing about most variants of shogi is that the pieces are able to promote if they penetrate deeply enough into the opponent's territory. Promotion is indicated by turning the tile over.

Cannot help you with the linux stuff. I am still a newbie, and I'm holding back waiting for the interface to develop a bit more (e.g., ability to work with NTFS - I'm hoping the Knoppix 3.4, when it's released will take care of that, and I'm also waiting for a better interface to facilitate DVD burning)..

[A. Jorge Garcia]

OK, asian chess, now I understand!

You know, that must be where BugHouse came from. In BugHouse you play in teams of 2 against 2 (4 chess boards). If you're playing White, your teammate is playing Black. So, when you capture a Black peice you give it to your teammate who may place it on his board (and visa-versa).

Regards,
AJG

[c123]

c123: We have a classroom LAN of 25 PCs all running KNOPPIX from hdd (knoppix-installer as debian 20031119). One PC is set up as the print server and file server where my students login remotely and save their work via X server or sshd. Does that make a difference?

TIA,
AJG

Do you want to see your students' desktops, or do you want to show them yours? Desktop Sharing does not seem to be working (according to a few quick tests this evening and a bug report on the KDE site) in KDE 3.2.1, but I remember it working fine in the version of Knoppix you are using (I had it installed at one time).

If you are interested in seeing your students' desktops, do you want your students to have to "invite you" or do you want to be able to see their desktop at any moment?

[A. Jorge Garcia]

I'd like to be able to see their desktop whenever I want. Also, it would be nice if they could see mine when I wanted as well. BTW, I can't seem to get KDE desktop sharing to work on this version of KNOPPIX either. It timesout too soon and I don't see a way to change the timeout....

Thanx,
AJG

[c123]

when I had it working with the version you have installed, I had a mixed network (one knoppix and one windows machine). Never tried it with two knoppix machines (would like to, but I doubt I'll get the time).

an alternative to KDE Desktop Sharing is to use the latest beta of RealVNC 4.0 which has the capability of sharing a desktop. To do this though, you would need to install it on every machine... I've no idea how you auto-update 15-30 Debian desptops at a time :( (a case of building your own .deb and getting your students to install the package in class?)

Once installed, you would set up the VNC server with a passowrd, and then (I imagine) write a script so that VNC is started each time X is started (such scripts can be found googling). You would need to find a way to stop your students from killing VNC (saying that I don't know if they would be able to kill VNC without killing X at the same time...).

I'd like to help you out more, but I don't have that much time and I'm too inexeperienced I'm afraid. What I would suggest though is subscribing to the RealVNC mailing list (I get the digest), and checking out the archives. Haven't been able to read the digests for a while now, but I remember VNC class-room questions popping up quite regularly.

If I see anything/try anything, I'll post here and/or PM you.

Have fun!

[c123]

The developer in charge of 'Desktop Sharing' has fixed the bug, it will be in KDE 3.2.2 (available sometime this month I get the impression)

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=77412

WRT RealVNC 4.0b4 (that I refer to in anothe rpost), I think I know the problem now (good old RealVNC mailing list) and will try the suggested solution tonight.

[A. Jorge Garcia]

The bug you refer is accessing display :0?

TIA,
AJG

[c123]

Yes. [edit] Let me qualify that - the bug is with KDE Desktop Sharing in KDE 3.2.1, and Desktop Sharing *is* sharing the (root) display :0.

BTW got RealVNC 4.0b4 working a couple of weeks ago, very nice :)

[ instructions are in another thread in installs ]