Citrix Receiver on Ubuntu 14.04

Woohoo, got my new work laptop today, a Lenovo Thinkpad T430.

I didn't even boot into Windows, just stuck the Ubuntu CD in and installed 14.04 64 bit.

I now have it pretty much set up the way I like it, but Citrix Receiver (of all things!) gave me some troubles and I thought I'd better document what I did for next time I decide to re-install.

Firstly, the Ubuntu Wiki page on installing ICA Client is very good. It can be found at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CitrixICAClientHowTo and there is even a section on installing Citrix Receiver 12.1 on 64 bit 14.04. It is a great shame that Citrix have created a .deb which will not install, and which needs to be fixed and repackaged before it is useable, but the instructions are simple to follow, and it installed correctly when I followed them.

The the next gotcha hit. Open XenDesktop, and it opens full screen. Even when Windowed mode is selected in the ICA Client configuration. That's a problem right there, as there is no simple way of getting back to your Ubuntu Desktop, other than using some extra key combos or logging off the XenDesktop. Neither of these make for an easy or productive work experience.

I asked around on the net and found very little help, except in the Citrix community forums, where one guy suggested I set the desired Horizontal and Vertical resolution globally. This worked, and I thought I'd document it here too, if only for my own use in the future.

The file I edited to force the resolutions I wanted was:

/opt/Citrix/ICAClient/config/All_Regions.ini

and the values I changed were from

DesiredHRES=*
DesiredVRES=*

to

DesiredHRES=1024
DesiredVRES=768

This means that when I open my XenDesktop now, it opens in a window 1024x768 which I can then maximise like any other window. This means I can put the maximised XenDesktop window in one workspace and my other stuff in the other 3 workspaces and easily flick back and forth between them.

Et voila! Productivity restored!

Nexus 7, Bluetooth devices and useful Apps

Ok, so anyone who knows me will know I'm a happy Android user, and the Nexus 7 has only cemented this position. All I want to do today is share some of the things I have done to make the Nexus more useful and work even better for me. I hope these notes may help you as well.

The first thing I would recommend is getting a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, if you are likely to be doing much in the way of text entering (like blogging or coding for example). I got both, and they really make a difference when using the tablet as a content creating device. They also make the Citrix Receiver and my XenDesktop work really well when I'm on call and need to be able to check things quickly. It won't replace my laptop, but means I don't have to have it on all the time.
Pairing the tablet and the keyboard and mouse was painless, and to borrow a phrase from our fruit loving brethern, "it just works".

Now, I very rarely feel the need to buy apps for a mobile platform, whether it was Apple previously or Android now, the free versions usually are fine for me, but I have bought "Pro" versions of some Android apps, because they really are that good. As a result, I'd heartily recommend the following apps from the Play Store:

• ezPDF Reader Pro - This is easily the best PDF reader I've used for pretty much any platform, and using it on the tablet is great for annotating PDFs, making notes in margins etc. It also has some support for epub ebooks, so definitely worth the few pounds I paid for it.
• DroidEdit Pro - A very neat text editor with syntax highlighting for many different scripting languages as well as html etc. The reason I paid for the pro version was that it supported direct Dropbox access, which I find very useful.
• External Keyboard Helper Pro - I'm using this to make sure that the Bluetooth keyboard is recognised as an en-gb keyboard rather than the default en-us that Android uses. It also allows custom keymaps to be added and to map keys to specific functions, which can be helpful.
• Hacker's Keyboard - A soft keyboard which is much better than the Android stock ones. This app is free, but my soft keyboard of choice when I'm not using the BT keyboard.

The other really good thing about the Play Store is that when I bought each app, I was able to use it on all my Android devices, they were not tied to one device or another. This meant that I was able to pair the Bluetooth keyboard with my HTC Desire S work phone and use External Keyboard Helper to set it to en-gb and send text messages using the keyboard. I know, geeky and probably pointless, but it's nice to do it if you can, right?