VMware View 3.1 & VMware View Open Client 3.1

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VMware has released VMware View 3.1 on the 27th May 2009 and VMware View Open Client 3.1 on June 5th.

The only part that the open source client is missing is the USB redirection part. This missing USB features will be available for Linux clients only thru the ThinClient images that Third-party will release for their respective ThinClients (like HP for the HP gt7725), but this will not be out immediately.

Hello,

We’ve managed to shake a few more bugs out of the Beta release, which
means it’s time to announce that VMware View Open Client 3.1 is now
ready for general use.

This release includes many small bug fixes, as well as a few new features:

* Smart Card authentication support (see README.txt for details)
* Ctrl-Alt-Del will bring up a dialog letting you disconnect from
hung or unresponsive desktops
* Improved support for multiple monitors (see README.txt for details)
* A few UI improvements
* Internationalization support (using GNU gettext)
* Sound forwarding enabled by default
* Ability to specify more options to pass along to rdesktop
* Support for USB device forwarding (when additional USB software is installed)

Unfortunately, we are not able to open source the USB support, and
therefore cannot host those files on our Google Code site. We are
working on making them available on vmware.com; hopefully they will
make it there some day. In the mean time, we appreciate your
patience.

More information can be found in the README.txt file included in each
downloaded package.

Packages for RPM and Debian-based distributions, as well as binary and
source tarballs, can be downloaded from the Google Code site:

http://code.google.com/p/vmware-view-open-client/downloads/list?q=3.1.0-GA

Please report any issues you find to:

http://code.google.com/p/vmware-view-open-client/issues/list

Thanks and Let’s Go Pens,

Your View Open Client Team

VMware View Open Client 2.1.1 (Test Build 153227) released

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The team writing the VMware View Open Client has released a new test version of the 2.1.1 client. This client fixes a few issues about library linking and some other fixes. The team announced that the client should build fine on Linux 64-bit systems as well as Mac OS X platforms.

I can confirm that it runs great on my Fedora 10 (x86-64). I just compiled the source code and connected 10 minutes later to a VirtualMachine running in a VMware View infrastructure on the other side of the world (Asia).

I had to add a single configure switch during my installation.

./configure –with-boost-libdir=/usr/lib64

And that’s all. You can connect to the VMware View Open Client group on Google code to retrieve the latest version.

Cisco, EMC and VMware, a menage a trois ?

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This is my own speculation, because I’m not privy to any information from either companies, but only based on blog conjecture and various infos…

Will Cisco buy EMC (who owns a majority of the VMware stock), or will Cisco buy VMware of EMC . With Cisco’s project California (Compute Blades) due to come out shortly, the tension is building up…

EMC must know that VMware is a great financial asset to it’s future, yet EMC might rather sell VMware for a good value rather than taking the risk of being bought itself by Cisco, and so losing it’s independance.

“Specs of the new blades servers that surface on website and blogs: include Intel Core i7 processors, 192GB Memory, PCI Express connectivity (providing access to Cisco Unified Fabric Architecture with direct communication between the blades and the storage servers” Source InternetNews

Duplo Train Track

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This past saturday, we spend some time building our first Duplo Train Track. Sure I’m taking over a bit, but my daughter enjoyed participating during the early phase, and seing the end result. She’s also great at playing Godzilla…

It was also a first in this weekend. Capturing a video from the Duplo locomotive (The Sony DSC-T30 just fits on the locomotive) and uploading the result on YouTube.

Picked up my new car

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Here is a official picture of the new Dacia Logan MCV 1.6 16v (104ch) that I picked up earlier today.

The car is smooth, and has a lot of space.

Dacia Logan MCV 1.6 16v 104ch (Phase 2)

Installing Adobe Flash on Fedora 10 (x86-64)

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There are two ways to install support for Adobe Flash in you’re Fedora 10 (x86-64) system.You can install the i386 version of the release Adobe Flash Player (latest is flash-plugin.i386 0:10.0.15.3-release) or the alpha release of the Adobe Flash Player in x86-64 (latest is libflashplayer-10.0.d21.1.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz)

Here I will provide the solution for both versions.

One using a yum repos channel to the Adobe website, or by downloading directly the .rpm file.

1) Preparing the Mozilla Plugins & needed libraries

  1. mkdir -p /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
  2. yum install nspluginwrapper.{i386,x86_64} pulseaudio-lib.i386

2a) Using the yum adobe-linux-i386.repo channel

  1. sudo –
  2. rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
  3. rpm –import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux
  4. yum install flash-plugin

2b) Using the flash-plugin-10.0.15.3-release.i386.rpm without the adobe yum channel

http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/flash-plugin-10.0.15.3-release.i386.rpm

3) Mozilla Plugin Config & Restart

  1. mozilla-plugin-config -i -g -v

restart firefox and enjoy ;)

tip: if you experience any problems with the sound, install alsa-plugins-pulseaudio, restart firefox and try again:

  1. yum install alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i386

let me know how it goes…

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/libflashplayer-10.0.d21.1.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz

Ordered a new car… a Dacia Logan MCV 1.6

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It was time. I needed it.

My old car was not fit to pass the Polution and Safety tests in Octobre 2008, so I had to sell it. I used to have a Nissan Terrano (1990), which was not the most environment friendly of cars, but it was cheap for me, as that car didn’t cost me much in price and repairs.

For the past 9 weeks, I’ve been driving the company spare car, a Peugeot 306 HDI. But I was waiting and bidding my time.

Today I official signed the paper work for a new car, a Dacia Logan MCV 1.6 16v (104ch) (7 seats). Which should be delivered next week.

More Duplo for Kaylee…

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Well it’s Christmas and my daughter has receive some more Duplo. I found this large barrel with 215 pieces. They are mostly standard Duplo Bricks 2 x 4 in various colors.

I start seeing some evolution in her handling of the Duplo bricks. We are way past the stage where she comes in and destroys everything. She is building them up in stacks and adding more and more pieces. The way she pushes the new blocks onto the others, shows how her dexterity is improving. Right, I know, I’m a parent and I see these new movements for the first time in my child, so I’m impressed 🙂

She also got a Duplo franchized “Thomas the Train” set, now we just need to get her some train tracks and she should be off…

Sager 9262 & NVIDIA Quadro FX3700m & NVIDIA Linux Binary Driver performance issue.

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Okay, this is probably not only effective for the Sager 9262 and the Quadro FX3700m, but this is the only platform that I have right now where I can identify and reproduce the problem. I hope some other Sager 9262 and/or 9800M GTX users using Linux can also validate this issue.

The problem stems from the feature PowerMizer which allows the graphic card to scale it’s performance. The Quadro FX3700M (1024MB) (550MHz/799MHz) that shipped in my Sager 9262 last week has four Performance Levels with scaling NV Clock and Memory Clock.

  • 0 200MHz & 100MHz
  • 1 275MHz & 301MHz
  • 2 383MHz & 301MHz
  • 3 550MHz & 799MHz

Unfortunately with the latest 177.82 or 180.11 (Beta) Linux (x86-64) Binary Drivers, I cannot get the card running above Performance Level 1. Actually I’m using a script found at the nvnews forums to artificially keep the graphic card running at Higher Performance. There are also multiple posts in the Phoronix forums about this issue.

Here is a screenshot of my nvidia-settings and the performance level of the FX3700m while running OpenGL benchmarks. As you see it’s stuck at Performance Level 1.

So right now, due to the nvidia binary drivers NOT supporting the PowerMizer feature, I’m able to only use less than 50% of the performance of my graphic card. This is a very expensive setback for someone that invested in an expensive nvidia 9800M GTX or FX3700M graphic card.

I’m lucky that I’m not rendering on this laptop, and that I can wait for nvidia to get their act together and supply proper PowerMizer drivers.

Erik

Sager 9262 arrived.

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Sager 9262The Sager 9262 arrived in the office, I will pick it up later today to give it a go and test that the hardware is in good condition and the screen does not show dead pixels.

It only took XoticPC and Sager 9 days to purchase the laptop, make the wire transfer, build to specs, test and validate the screen and send  the laptop by UPs from the United States to Switzerland.

And the first CD-ROM I booted on this brand new system is the memtest+ 2.10 tool. I’m very impressed by the speed of the main Memory.

L1 Cache : 32K 39806 MB/s
L2 Cache : 6144K 18472 MB/s
L3 Cache : none
Memory : 8190M 3632 MB/s

In comparison my D900K is running at 1440 MB/s for it’s main memory.