Hi,
I have to do some incremental development of some test/demo app on my Ubuntu VM box. nano and pico are ok but no where close to notepad++. So, I’m thinking of installing notepad++ for ubuntu, one quick search suggest to use snap to install it, i really hate too many middlemen for everything, is that mandatory?
Thanks.
Notepad++ doesn’t have a linux native version - you’re installing the windows binary, and running it through wine (windows emulator). You probably don’t need to install Snap, but you will need to install wine, plus a whole bunch of windows dlls, plus some X windows libs, before you can download the exe installer and install it into wine… The Snap is just simplifying that for you.
All of these:
Sublime Text
Visual Studio Code
Atom
Brackets
Have linux native binaries. I’d use any one of those before using Wine.
I assume you’ve worked out the GUI part of the equation…i.e. XQuartz on Mac, or XMing on windows, ssh -X to forward X11 connections… (pr putty w/ X11 forwarding),
Or just run tightvncserver on the remote on 127.0.0.1 and use SSH forwarding to tunnel the vnc port through, and run a desktop on VNC - I’ve been known to do that with a minimalist windows manager like icewm.
Or maybe you’re just using the VM console w/ unity or gnome. (probs overkill)
-G
Wow, great to know, I learned just a bit of Unix commands many snows and moons ago… in early non-commercial internet days, telnet to a university to lynx and gopher stuff… setting up web server… stuff…
have touched Unix for so many years… got warm up with it with ubuntu lately…
Hope my need for unix / linux / ubuntu -based text editor would be limited.
for ssl session, my current need is to be able to run web browser like Firefox.
Many thanks Joe.
Ubuntu also has firefox and chrome (and chromium if you’d rather go the “free” route) 
Firefox and chromium are in the Ubuntu repos. For Chrome proper you need to add their APT repo.
https://fossbytes.com/difference-google-chrome-vs-chromium-browser/
I can relate - in college we programmed on Ultra Sparcs - I showed up for lab the first day to get a couple hostnames and just ssh’d from that point on. They taught basic vi because my professor said “Some day you’ll have to interact with a unix box, and the only editor you’ll have is vi” And she was right. But yeah I use nano all the time.
Don’t use ubuntu desktop anymore, though I ran it as my primary at work for like 3 years before switching to Mac. But I run XQuartz on the mac, so when I ssh into servers, I can run GUI apps over the tunnel. (i.e. git gui, gitk, xeyes when bored)
Also have a number of Java apps with Swing UI’s running on servers… For those we run icewm on a tightvnc session that we can connect into. (So the app isn’t headless, it’s just running on DISPLAY=:1, which is only visible when you vnc in)
Yeah, I found vi too cryptic, so, I picked pico…
And yes, I know ubuntu has firefox pre-installed and I use it all the time for my ubuntu vm box.
About ssh session into a server, what’s the easiest way to run Firefox over a session? (not sure about the server’s OS, I could ask). Thanks.
What about Sublime Text,Eclipse,gedit
Funny, Brad and I were just talking about this.
If you’re on a mac, install XQuartz from here https://www.xquartz.org/ and reboot.
Open the terminal of your choice (Which should be iTerm)
ssh -X server
You’ll see the XQuartz icon bounce up on your dock. When you connect to the server, type
echo $DISPLAY
And you’ll see it’s set to something like localhost:10.0 - that’s good. That points to the SSH daemon, which is encrypting your traffic, and dropping it onto your XWindows socket on the mac.
At this point you can run xeyes& and see if little googly eyes appear. (it might not be installed on the server if not) . Or you could try xterm&
You can close the window (which will TERM the process on the server) or do i.e. jobs and then kill %1 to kill that background job.
If those work so will firefox, i.e. just run firefox&
I’m using & to put them in the background, otherwise if you just did firefox, the terminal would just sit there and wait. Which might be a good thing if you just want to have it open and ctrl-C when done - but more likely than not you’re going to want to use the GUI process as a GUI, and the CMD line as a CMD line.
If you’re on linux - you don’t have to install anything. From X windows, open your favorite terminal (xterm, rxvt, gxterminal, konsole) and ssh -X server and follow all the steps above.
If you’re on windows, Xming X Server for Windows - Official Website
In fact on the page it uses plink and firefox as an example use case.
But basically, install XMing, reboot, start xming, configure putty to do X11 forwarding to localhost:0, SSH2, and then when you connect in putty, you can do all the stuff above.
ok, thanks, i’m on windows 10.