I’ve been using VNCViewer from RealVNC under Linux to remote connect to an older machine running windows. Two reasons, I don’t need yet another screen on my desk, and I need windows to adequately test and use the MySQL GUI products, in particular MySQL Workbench.

I never realised there was a better way, particularly over a local network, a command called rdesktop which is capable of natively speaking Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).

$ su -
$ yum install rdesktop

This did only give me version 1.3.1. The current version 1.4.1 available from the rdesktop Website does provide greater commands including the syntax I use.

su -
cd /src
wget

I’ve started now to actively use more of the MySQL GUI products such as MySQL Workbench, MySQL Administrator (http://www.mysql.com/products/tools/administrator/) and MySQL Query Browser (http://www.mysql.com/products/tools/query-browser/) and MySQL Migration Toolkit (http://www.mysql.com/products/tools/migration-toolkit/). I am traditionally a very command line person, and it’s important that these skills are never put on the back burner. For all those budding Developers and DBA’s you need these skills, expecially for any MySQL Certification (http://www.mysql.com/training/certification/).

To indicate my indent, I’ve even created a new blog category specifically for MySQL GUI Products.
As I’ve mentioned previously, Mike Zinner from MySQL AB really impressed me with where the products were going in development. I’m still rather disappointed about the

By now, I’m sure you have all heard about Free VMware Player allowing easy and quick access to see, view and use other OS’s easily. For those Windows users out there, now is your chance to trial MySQL under Linux with no impact to your system, why wait.

See the MySQL Virtual Machine details on the VMware site. On closer inspection this effectively pushes you to the VMware Technology Network (VMTN) page within the MySQL website.

The MySQL guys needs to update their site to reflect new reference to the free player, rather then a trial version of Workstation.