What is the NX server?

The NX server and client application is developed by the Italian company NoMachine and provides a way to efficiently and securely access X-server based GUIs.

It compresses the X-server rendered screens and enables the client to access it via SSH. Thus making it possible to even access your remote linux server using an dial-up internet connection conveniently.

Is it expensive?

You can download and use the NX server and client for free. The free version is restricted to 2 concurrent client connections at the same time. If you need to set it up for more users you’d need to buy a license.

How do I get started?

If you use Ubuntu or Debian, you need to download the nxserver, nxnode and nxclient DEB packages and install them.

Download all 3 deb packages which suite your distribution (x86 or x64 packages are available) to your server from here:

http://www.nomachine.com/download.php

Now first install the nxclient package and then the nxnode and last but not least the nxserver. Make sure to meet the dependencies.

The packages get installed in the directory: /usr/NX/

After you installed all three packages you just have to start the nxserver by typing:

 sudo /usr/NX/bin/nxserver --start

Basically you’re done now! That was easy, right?

Now it’s time to install the nxclient on your client machine and set up the connection using the wizard which appears when you start the client for the first time.

If you have any questions regarding further settings just comment on this post!

Average users…

Most of the people nowadays turn on their computers and just start to browse the Internet to read news, update their Facebook status or check their emails. They don’t really care about how things work. But then, someday, they run into a problem. Some application doesn’t start anymore or suddenly something looks different and they start to panic.

Due to the fact that an average computer user doesn’t know and maybe doesn’t want to bother with the basic structures behind applications or even an operating system they often seek help from expensive IT experts who charge a lot of money for a simple task or just a quick change of some rogue setting.

Click on more to read on…

People are not aware that there are nice remote assistant tools available for free. I know that, because I use those tools almost daily to support customers at my daytime job and after I log in on their computers I often hear things like: “Oh my mouse is moving! This is so weird!”. The first few times I seriously had to suppress one or the other giggle, but then I realized that more people should be aware of those tools. So here’s a quick overview of the most common tools.

VNC – the classic remote support tool

Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is one of the oldest remote support tools around. It’s available for a lot of platforms and consists of a server application and a client (or “viewer”). Many companys’ IT people install the VNC server on their clients to be able to quickly check what’s going wrong at a user’s computer without the need of running through the whole building to see that the user just needs to tick a certain check box in some application.

The downside of VNC is that it is relatively slow and it is not using encryption by default. So the main usage field is on a local network.

If you want to read more about VNC take a look at the official homepage.

TeamViewer – free for private use, encrypted and easy to use

TeamViewer is a bit different. Basically you download the software from the TeamViewer website, install or just run it and you’re good to help out your buddy or family member to solve that annoying computer issue they might have.

The person you want to connect to needs to give you a 12-digit ID number and a 4 digit password which his or her TeamViewer application is displaying. Then, after he or she allows you to take over his desktop, you’re good to go.

TeamViewer supports Windows, Linux and OS X operating systems and even works on the iPhone or iPad.

However please note that if you want to use it professionally you will have to get a license.

Find out more about or try TeamViewer on the official website.

You need to make tutorial videos to teach your new colleagues how to work with a certain application. Now you could create training documents and have some long or boring training session to teach them stuff they often don’t get after the training anyways.

The other option would be to just record step-by-step tutorials of your application. Your new colleagues would just copy over some training videos and watch them to see how to use that new software right.

The solution

Exactly for this reason, and probably because of my lazyness, I found a very nice free application called “Wink” coded by Debugmode.

Here’s the description from the official Wink website:

That sounds great, right? It is! You can just download it, install it (Windows or Linux with GTK 2.4 or higher) and create great looking flash videos of how you perform a certain action you want to show to your friends or colleagues. The tool itself has a pretty straight forward user interface which allows you to create a professional looking tutorial video. Either you capture your whole screen, a predefined area or a custom area of your screen.

But you can do much more than just record your desktop. You can add a voice recording to your video, add text comments, draw shapes, add weblinks links, etc. This tool is really advanced when it comes down to features. Also, editing your recording frame by frame can by done easily.

You can download this piece of software goodness by clicking on the Wink logo:

I really hope you’ll enjoy this tool as much as I did