I'd like to be able to access my desktop from my Eee PC. Windows XP resides on my desktop while I'm using Ubuntu on my other computer. Is there any way to do this? I mainly just want to be able to stream music.
Don't know if it will suit your streaming needs unless you pay for it but https://secure.logmein.com/ has a free web based vnc that will work cross platform with just about any browser. I've been using it for several months so far and its quite convenient when I have my laptop on campus to access my desktop or to troubleshoot the parents computer back home.
This looks really cool, but I don't know if I want something web-based. If there's nothing else then this would probably work fine; I just want to see what my other options are. If you can't tell I don't know much about remote-access software or how it works.
well the log me in software is built on top of Hamachi which is an interesting piece of software by itself. It'll let you play LAN games over the internet, access remote files etc. From what I remember its much easier than setting up a vnc. If you set whatever music program you have on your desktop to share it should be just as easy to stream your music as if you were on a lan. I haven't used it for some years but you might want to look into it if you don't find anything else.
I've heard of Hamachi, but honestly I'm starting to think that it would just be easier to set up a LAN. I'll work on it tomorrow when I'm not busy entertaining really annoying girls.
It all depends on your needs... - if you need control of the system through GUI then setup VNC. - If you just need files from the computer install samba (for windows network shares) or hamachi.
This puts it into perspective a bit better. I'm pretty sure I installed samba on this computer last night, but it doesn't look like I'll have any time to play with it today, either. I have an art project due on Wednesday, on top of everything else. Thanks for your help guys. I won't be able to put any of this to use for a few days, but I appreciate it.
UltraVNC, maybe? Does that have a Linux viewer? Or you could use SSH instead of VNC.... If you just want to play music, can't you just set up permissions on the Windows box and access it over the network? That would be the easiest route, surely? Personally, I'd probably go for an external network drive for easy cross-compatability.
If an external network drive involves buying specific hardware then that's out. I'm flat broke. I tried installing samba but apparently the Ubuntu repository is broken. Does samba only work over a LAN or would I be able to access my desktop if, say, I were on campus? I'm also looking into VNC. The more I think about it, the more I realize I'd like to access more than just music from my desktop, but I figure that just involves flagging directories as "shared." I don't need direct access to my Windows box, just the files.
Look into Orb, I hear it's good but never used it so I don't have much opinion; could work better than samba. http://www.orb.com/en
What's your exact setup? Which machine are you using to listen to music? Are both of your computers in the same room, and are on the same LAN? Samba is most definitely what you want if you just want to access files on one machine, and play them in a player in another. Be warned though that samba is also known to suck cock compared to more "native" protocols (NFS for Unix, whatever the fuck Windows uses). Samba basically converters from one to the other, and as such, there's overhead involved. I run Amarok on my Linux box, but I store my MP3s on an older Linux box. At 50GB, whenever I would scan the collection, the application would hang. I tried the same setup running them from a NAS device (Which supports microsoft's protocol). Mapping it as a samba share gave even worse results. Put everything back on the Unix machine and made an NFS share, and have never looked back.
