So when I read leftyfb’s blog about TeamViewer and saw he spoke of it favorably, I thought I would give it a try as well.

What I currently use

There are two general scenarios where I need to remote in: those where I need a GUI and those where I don’t. I doubt I will surprise you by saying I use SSH in the latter case and there are SSH clients a-plenty for whatever platform you desire.

The former case is not quite so simple; when you need a GUI your choices aren’t so clear anymore. Part of the problem for me is that I need a solution that:

• is cross-platform (at least on the client side)
• performs well over crappy bandwidth
• is fast to bring up (as I might remote in and out several times during the day)
• isn’t demanding on the host machine (so I can just leave it running even if I’m not going to use it)

Lately, I have been using NoMachine NX on the client side and FreeNX on the server side. I’m largely happy with this setup – I only have one complaint – so it’s going to be a tough sell to get me to move to another solution.

I’ll walk through the various factors that are important to me and judge them against my current solution!

Let’s go!

Setting it all up

Setting up TeamViewer is simple – just download and install the package. It really couldn’t be simpler because the server/client are together.

It’s true that you don’t have to fiddle with the firewall, but since I have to do that anyway for SSH, I don’t really consider it a factor. YMMV.

Judgement: It’s been so long since I set up SSH / NX that I can’t recall any special difficulty on it. I do remember being a little confused on the server/client being seperate the very first time I ran into it, and I seriously can’t imagine how it could get any easier that it is with TeamViewer.

Slight edge to TeamViewer.

Connecting

Just run the program and you’ll see how simple it is:

You get an ID and a Password to give out to the client to connect.

This bothers me a bit because I assume the ID and password are generated and stored somewhere by TeamViewer, and at least the initial connection must be made with their assistance. That’s a definite privacy concern, and, to their credit, TeamViewer extensively acknowledges with a 7 page PDF on security.

Compare this to the NoMachine NX client connection (on a Windows box):

Still pretty darn simple, although you have to accept the SSH key the first time you log in.

Judgement: This is pretty much a wash. Both are dead simple from the client side and the information required is equivalent. You either give a 9 digit number and 4 digit password for TeamViewer, or you give a URL and username / password (and possibly port) for NX.

I slightly favor NX here because it runs over SSH and while TeamViewer seems to have good policies on security and privacy, I feel there’s still a slightly greater risk in the model.

Slight edge to the current method here.

Connected

Big differences here and this is what may or may not seal the deal for you. The basic issue is that NX is a “view remote desktop” application, and TeamViewer is a “share a remote desktop” application.

This is immediately visible when you compare the results of a remote connection:

NoMachine NX Connection

TeamViewer Connection

So, apart from the immediate color depth issue (which can be adjusted if you “optimize for quality” in TeamViewer) you will notice that NX only presents the remote desktop while TeamViewer adds a toolbar across the top.

TeamViewer Toolbar

Since this is what sets TeamViewer apart, it is worth a more detailed look. The toolbar offers several additional functions, some of which you may find quite useful.

The big one here for me is File Transfer, which brings up a file transfer dialog (a la FTP) to move files between the machines. This is a very nice feature because under NX when I want to transfer files I have to move them via GMail or Google Docs or fire up a SCP client or something.

So, super big plus on file transfers built in.

There’s some ways to “optimize” or otherwise modify the view – handy to have I guess, but I’ve never needed to adjust the NX connection, so this isn’t really of value to me.

There’s some audio/video tools as well – you can set up chat or even VoIP. I don’t need this, because there’s no one on the distant end, but this is really where TeamViewer is starting to spread its wings – if I were in need of communicating to a remote user while I viewed their desktop, this would be killer.

So, although I don’t need it – if you do, chat and VoIP built in has got to be a major win.

You can “switch sides” so that your local desktop comes up on the remote side (as if they had remoted into you) – another feature that I don’t personally need, but could be very useful to someone else.

There are a couple of other extras: you can record (I’m not clear on what) and it will save whatever it is that you have recorded into a TeamViewer Session file. There’s also a VPN option under the Extras, but that was all greyed out for me. Perhaps it is an option only in the pay version? I don’t know.

Odds and Ends

If you define cross-platform as Linux/Windows/Mac you are good on either system. TeamViewer adds an iPhone client which is pretty nifty if you need it.

TeamViewer is not-exactly-native. It runs on top of Wine – you don’t need to know that, it sets it all up and is included without mention in the download and install.

Performance is roughly equal. My home internet is a crappy DSL connection, and both systems perform acceptably. NoMachine seems a little better, but doesn’t always update the view.

The funny thing here is that in order to fire up TeamViewer I needed to NX in to launch the client! Because the system uses a GUI and gives you a 9 digit-number and 4-digit password, if you don’t set it up ahead of time and write down this information, you can’t get in! (I didn’t see a way to achieve this from the command line) Nothing you can’t prepare for, but worth noting.

NX creates a new X session, TeamViewer runs in the current X session.

TeamViewer can be run totally from a USB stick – there is a TeamViewer Portable version for download. NoMachine NX wants to install onto the host machine.

The free version (at least) opens up a web page when you close it to advertise and get you to sign up to a newsletter.

Under TeamViewer, your 9 digit connection number stays the same, the 4 digit-password changes every time.

Summary

TeamViewer is impressive – performance on par with the best remote desktop solution I am aware of (FreeNX), very simple to set up, and a set of helpful tools for remote collaboration / troubleshooting.

Whether it makes sense for you will depend on your reasons for remoting in. Even if you are like me and not concerned with a user on the distant end, the file transfer thing is still quite attractive.

However, if you are looking for a way to help remote troubleshoot a user, TeamViewer should be at the top of a very short list!

I know I do, and I hate it. Every site has some slightly different set of rules for what constitutes an acceptable password (length, mix of alphanumerics, etc.) and frequently they have additional “security questions” or other bits of info that you need to maintain alongside the username/password. And you can’t ever always get the same username at all these place either.

Enter password managers – and enter the one that I care about, KeePassX:

KeePassX: Edit Entry(Screenshot from the KeePassX website)

Feature Set

I tried several password managers before settling on KeePassX. It wasn’t a hard choice because only KeePassX offered me the set of features that I was looking for in a password manager:

• Generate passwords according to specified criteria
• Cross-platform
• Free Software (Prefer GPL)
• Toggle password visibility in application
• Allow notes for each account
• Easy search of all accounts

Generating Passwords

There are simply so many sites that you need to create an account on that it is easy to fall into the trap of being lazy and using the same or similar username / password combination across multiple sites.

Since KeePassX can quickly generate passwords according to a quite flexible set of criteria, it nicely mitigates this danger:

KeePassX: Generate Password

As you can see from the screenshot, you will probably be able to meet all or most of the password requirements laid upon you.

Once you get into the habit of using KeePassX, it’s actually quite simple to use 12+ character passwords even on the most trivial sites. 

Of course, you don’t have to use KeePassX to generate passwords, you can enter them in directly as well.

Cross-Platform

If you move around a bit, and especially if you work on multiple architectures, it’s very nice to have KeePassX on a USB drive in different formats. You can run it on all major platforms and easily access your password database.

And, since it is Free Software there are several programs that can use your database even on platforms where KeePassX hasn’t yet been ported (like the iPhone). Huzzah!

This does raise the issue of having multiple copies of your password database floating around. You might do well to adopt a “master” location that is the only one that gets any adds or edits to help prevent “missing” passwords.

Notes for each account

Another wonderfully annoying feature are the “security questions” that an increasing number of sites require. Or the additional information like Account Number or whatever else is needed in conjunction with a standard Username / Password pair.

KeePassX allows free-form commenting on each account. I don’t know what the size limitations are for a comment entry, but I have a few that are quite lengthy and haven’t ran into any problems there.

Other small and neat things

KeePassX has several other small and nice touches that ease use (some of which I rely on, some of which I don’t have much need for): you can toggle visibility on the usernames and passwords. It is easy to copy the username and/or the password to the clipboard, to be pasted into the awaiting text control. It’s quite fast in all areas of operation. You can “group” passwords as you like. You can quickly search. You can set an “active” period for passwords. You can export to text file. And so on.

Summary

I really like KeePassX and it fills my needs well. The only complaint I have is that I wish you could set a “master” database to replicate/sync to, because I still sometimes add or edit an account on my “travelling” copy. It’s never more than a minor inconvenience to patch things up, but I have to complain about something.

I’d also be interested in hearing if you have a password management solution that you think is preferable or comparable to KeePassX.

That being said, I was running into quite a few strange problems with KTorrent, the default bittorrent client. The number one problem was the vast majority of new torrents I added would have a status of “stalled” and rarely change to a normal downloading situation. This is apparently a known bug in KTorrent. I didn’t always experience this problem – KTorrent worked fine for several months -  but once it started happening it seemed to “stick”, and made KTorrent virtually unusable for me.

So, after trying (but failing) to resolve the bug,  I set out to find an alternative!

In the past, under XFCE, I really liked Deluge. A very solid and feature-rich client with a responsive dev team. However, this time I wanted to find a QT based client.

After a bit of searching, I ran across qBittorrent. Here are the things that were important to me that qBittorrent delivered on:

• Free Software
• QT-based
• Optional Web Interface for torrent control
• Optional Minimize to tray
• Stop/Start All Torrents easily
• Under active development

After using qBittorrent for several weeks now, I can only find one thing to complain about: You can’t seem to view/preview individual files in a torrent. One of things I often want to do is to look at a file in a torrent that is complete, even though the entire torrent is not complete.

Some clients make this very easy, and you can view (or even prioritize) files inside a torrent. I can’t find that functionality in qBittorrent.

This is a fairly serious shortcoming – not severe enough to reject qBittorrent over – but it is certainly something I would like to see added and certainly something I miss.

One thing that I don’t miss, but others might: the queue controls are not as fine-grained as in some clients. Personally, even though I would consider myself a fairly heavy torrent user, I’ve never really found such detailed control necessary. I felt like I should mention it though, because someone out there might like setting up scheduled queues or the like.

Special kudos go to the web interface which is very clean and responsive and is the best such interface I have dealt with.

If you are in the market for a new bittorrent client, especially once based in QT – I highly recommend giving qBittorrent a look. It’s a solid and reliable client with well implemented features and under active development so chances are good it will continue to improve!