I apologise for any rambling and grammatical errors, I've had a few beers after sitting for two hours in a parent/teacher evening only to see the parents of 6 children!

 

I teach C to A level Computer Science students using telnet sessions to a Linux machine. Using the gcc compiler there are no license problems. This only gives the students a text based front-end which in some ways is not very appealing. Another method to enable each student to have access to an X desktop and use kdevelop via virtual network computing (vnc). SuSE 6.3 has both the client and server in the distribution for Linux. To connect to the Linux server you will have to download the vnc clients for the machines you wish to use as terminals.

Acorn http://www.bigblue.demon.co.uk/VNC.html

Other OS's (including Windows) http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/index.html

 

Once you have a Linux machine on your network with an X server and vnc installed, multiple clients can connect, each with their own desktop.

The process of creating a connection is as follows

1. telnet to the Linux server creating an initial connection.

2. In the terminal window start an X session by entering

    vncserver

3. If this is the first time for this user, a password will be asked for which will be required for the connection of the client. Repeat the password for confirmation. This stage will be skipped if this is not the first connection for that user.

4. The terminal window will then state the display number which will be needed for the user to connect to using the vnc client.

5. Run the vnc client on the the machine the user is working at, it will ask for the server to connect to eg server:2 where server is the name of the server and 2 is the display number for the connection. If this is accepted another box will ask for the password. This was the password entered in the initial set-up for that user.

6. If all goes well, an X desktop will appear with a terminal window. In the window type in the window manager you wish to use eg kwm for KDE.

 

You should now have a KDE desktop in your vnc client window. Most clients have a full screen mode. For the Windows (ugh) client, right click on the icon on the icon bar, it's one of the options.

 

kdevelop, if installed, is one of the menu items from the k panel menu.

 

When a user disconnects the client from the server, the X server and manager remains active. The next connection only requires a new connection using the vnc client to the same server, display number and using the same password.

 

To kill the running vnc server, either kill it specifically (it begins with a big X, I've forgotten the rest at the moment, could be Xvnc?) or reboot the machine. If this is done you start back at the beginning at stage 1 above but dont have to go through stage 3.

 

I suggest if anyone uses this idea with many users then the Linux machine should have a reasonable amount of memory and be quite fast.

 

All that gets sent down the line is screen updates, mouse movements and key presses.

 

Good luck

Bill