For years, I’ve used Thunderbird as my email client. I like having a local copy of my email that I can read offline when necessary. Backup is as simple as an rsync. I’ve even migrated my usage back and forth from Windows to Ubuntu and even to Mac OSX, again all it took was an rsync. All I have ever had to worry about is to specify --modify-window when targetting Windows.
I now use gmail for open mailing lists, and Lotus Notes for work email (and, for the moment, html-wg business, but that’s only until I can get that changed). But all all times I only had one machine at a time which was the primary machine I used for personal e-mail.
The EEE has changed that. I now use the EEE quite frequently for casual surfing, and a desktop machine when I am focused on a task. Of course, I could set up dovecot and fetchmail, but I haven’t worked out how I want to deal with travel.
Meanwhile, even though it is rarely used that way these days, X11 was originally designed for remote access to displays. And while I haven’t used it that way in years, it still very much does.
The first line rather rudely terminates any thunderbird windows that are running on the desktop. I don’t know of a more graceful way to accomplish this. The second grants permission for the remote machine to open up windows on this one. The final one actually launches thunderbird in the background, routing all the X windows interactions back to this machine.
Copying the icon from /usr/share/pixmaps/thunderbird.png on the desktop to my EEE, and a moment in alacarte and I can launch this with a simple mouse click.
Somewhat related items: the Eee I use is now $229 and in stock at the local Best Buy store; and not quite as related, but I found this video amusing [via Florian Jensen].
I would love a solution for suspendable X sessions, similar to what rfb/vnc offers. So that I could hijack my running app from one machine to another, and not loose it when the connection is flaky, etc.
I’m also using a EeePC (901 here), but it is more like my primary machine. Given the amounts of public transport commuting I’m doing, it is very productive using it in the bus/tube, unconnected or using cell connection via bluetooth and my N70. The EeePC can project video for my classes too, and all in all I carry 1 kg instead of the 4 I used to carry with my old laptop... For email I use evolution + imap, but I’m hitting a stupid bug where evolution won’t download complex mime messages, so I can’t read html email while unconnected :(
I found Emacs GNUS in nnimap mode to be the best client for casual mobile IMAP browsing on the eee. It will show you a message list of the most recent messages on the server (where you are prompted for the number to fetch), and let you download specific messages as you read them. It is very much like using webmail, except you can choose to locally cache specific messages. It also handles the limited screen size well.
Did you test that that xhost line is actually necessary? I admit I can’t be bothered to check, but I think it’s required only when you want to allow direct X11 connections, not for SSH-tunnelled ones.
Also, the arguments to ssh get executed (more or less) via “sh -c”, so you can actually pass a whole one-liner shell script:
“;” would work better than “&&”. I suspect, but haven’t verified, that there might be a timing issue
I was originally going to propose
killall thunderbird-bin ; sleep 1 ; thunderbird
but then I noticed the handy -w switch in killall’s man page, which addresses both of your concerns.
I’d swear that I had problems that the xhost command solved
Unlikely: as far as both the X server and the X client are concerned, a SSH-tunnelled connection is from and to localhost, respectively, so any xhost-granted permissions for direct connections should be irrelevant.
Surely someone, somewhere has worked on moving or placing windows on “nearby” screens - screens not attached to the computer on which the program is running - in a somewhat transparent fashion.
Synergy is kind of the inverse of the use-case. I can see hardwiring one or two old computers (small Shuttle boxes) to two or four big panels. The old boxes have plenty of graphics horsepower, but not quite enough CPU or memory for running Eclipse (and all my usual tools).
My laptop has plenty of CPU, memory, and disk - but only one 17" screen. Using the big panels (when in the room) without a lot of re-wiring would be nice.
In fact - I would bet this use-case becomes more common - given the dropping prices for large panels. You have a laptop to carry around, and fixed large screens (at home and work?) that you might like to use on occasion.
Given the huge notch in the price curve for TV-resolution screens (1920x1080), we might seen a resurge of interest in low-pixel-count fonts and UIs (at least for programmers).
Back in the day, there was an X11 proxy named “xmove” which provided something like screen for X. It probably still works, but is ancient and doesn’t support some of the new X hotness (like render, etc.)
However, now there’s xpra, which is sort of like its successor (functionality-wise, although it is implemented differently): [link]
It’s still in beta, but works well, according to the author.
You could run certain apps through xpra, such as Thunderbird, and connect to it via xpra through either your workstation (where I imagine it would be running) or your EEE.
Note: I have not tried either, but plan on checking out xpra soonish... it looks very useful.
I have an IMAP server specifically for the task of archiving mail that ought not live on my public mailserver. It’s set up to use the maildir and I’ve got some scripts that sort old mail into folders by month and such, plus an indexed searching solution that seems to work just fine for finding older messages.
Thus, I can run as many different IMAP clients as I desire and all of them will see the same version of reality. And I don’t worry about having to go through weird things like you did with killing Thunderbird.