Glish: Getting Started
Having a graphical user interface is fantastically helpful on Linode. Perfect for testing out Linux services or seeing what your product looks like on a Linux environment, you can find quite a lot of use with Glish.
If you haven’t worked with Glish yet, please give the installation blog a look through for the installation steps.
Glish Screen
If you read my last blog, I covered how to install and run xfce4 on your server, which grants you the ability to interact with your files without a command line (mostly without it, at least).
You’ll be interacting with your desktop from within Glish, but keep in mind the buttons along the browser’s top edge, as they will directly control your server’s status without you having to switch to the Linode Manager.
Starting from the left, you have your power button. It toggles between on and off. If your Glish screen is blank, but you know your server is running, try hitting this button.
Second from the left is the reboot button, which is self explanatory. However, sometimes the terminal won’t come back up, which will necessitate your hitting the power button to see the screen.
At the far right, the ctrl+alt+del button will shut your server down if used while you’re in the command line (without powering it off).
Occasionally upon restarting the server, the terminal sign-in text will flicker repeatedly. Give it a few minutes and this should resolve itself, supplying a solid login text.
In XFCE4
You are free to install and use services as needed. You can do this by starting in your terminal. Clicking “applications,” the upper left link, grants you a list of options.
These options let you launch the terminal to start installing any needed services. You can install the services as you would normally on the command line, using your package manager (i.e., sudo apt-get install pidgen). Here are some recommended apps:
An instant messaging service, this will grant you the ability to connect and speak across multiple chat services.
A text editor app. Gedit works similarly to Nano, Vi and Emacs, but unlike them, it can be invoked without a terminal (think WordPad for Windows).
One of the best terminals available, this allows you to make multiple screens and drag and drop them around as you’d like.
Renowned and popular, Firefox is a snappy and reliable web browser.
You are free to install any other services needed, but it’s prudent to keep in mind that the servers do not contain graphics cards or sound cards. It’s best to keep graphic-intensive demands to a minimum. You can even try to install the Gnome desktop environment, but my tests have shown its graphical nature slows performance.
If you need to return to the original terminal (You could just use the terminal on the desktop to perform everything), you would click the applications link and select “log out.” Verify by clicking ‘log out’ on the second window that comes up, and you’ll find that XFCE4 has closed itself. You can start the desktop again with the command, startxfce4.
