August, 2015 - Apostolos Kritikos

Last time I had to do a presentation was during ODI’s Train the Trainer program. One of the options we were given in order to connect to the projector was ClickShare. If you don’t know what ClickShare is, watch this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R-AbOkN_98

In order to use ClickShare you have to plug it to your machine. It works like a USB flash drive so a folder opens and gives you executables for Windows and iOS. Normally you install one of them and you are good to go.

But what happens if you use a Linux machine? Well, you will probably have to use a cable because “this thing does not work well with Linux”. That’s what I was told! But it wasn’t good enough for me 🙂

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So, if you happen to use Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and want to use ClickShare, all you have to do is:

~~go here~~ *
download the Linux launcher
install it to your machine
open the application
plug the dongle

If you are getting steady white light then you are good to go (hit it, it will normally go red and your screen should be up!).

NOTE: According to Barco, they currently support Fedora 20 and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. If you are using a different Linux OS this solution will probably not work but you might find some answers to ~~this official thread~~ **!

* [Update] March 10, 2017: Support for the Linux client has ended as it requires an enormous effort to support all the Linux distributions and their quick updates, while the usage rate of the Linux client was/is very limited. (as published on barco.com)

** [Update] June 13, 2017: Thread www.barco.com/en/mybarco/mysupport/productsupport/knowledgebase?kbid=1191&productid=b21eda55-0837-4478-87f6-68d51b71e405 does not exist any more.

[Update] February 17, 2018

Following this gist, some users say that they successfully installed ClickShare to Linux.

NOTE: I haven’t tried it myself so I can’t guarantee it works!

[Update] June 5, 2019

Searching on an old drive I seem to have found the original .deb file that I had installed when I wrote this article. You can download it here.

CAUTION: This .deb meant for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and was tested back in 2015. The is no guarantee that will work with the current versions of Ubuntu and / or Clickshare. You can try at your own risk.

[Update] November 14, 2019

I requested support from Barco via Twitter. Here’s our discussion!

Hi, support for the Button is not on our roadmap, we recommend using GoogleCast for sharing on Chromebooks
— ClickShare by Barco (@BarcoClickShare) November 14, 2019

Cheers!

So this is how it started…

I was already aware that Windows 10 will be freely given to previous Microsoft Windows users (even pirates!) but I felt it was not such a big deal. All the machines worth spending time to keep up to date are pretty much doing it themselves and for free since they run on linux (Ubuntu).

The only machine I own and runs on Windows is my home desktop and it runs on Windows only because other people have access to it and I value democracy 🙂

So, home PC running Windows 7, opportunity for trying Windows 10 for free… a geek’s got to do what has got to do!

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FYI, the specs of my machine were:

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q8200 @ 2.33GHz 2.34GHz
3,00 GB RAM

The update Golgotha

The core update to Windows 10 went smoothly but once I was prompted to login, Murphy jumped in!

Wireless Mouse / Keyboard inaccessibility: Apparently is a known issue that Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop 700 v2 doesn’t play well with Windows 10 (yet?). I didn’t expect every single device to work out of the box with Windows 10 but I would expect (at least) Microsoft hardware to be compatible 🙁 Anyways I changed to cable mouse / keyboard and proceeded.
My DVD drive was not automatically detected ( o.O ): Thinking back, over time I have used: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7. I cannot remember a single time when a CD / DVD drive wasn’t automatically detected! Well, I guess there’s a first time for everything.
- FIX: Should you face the same problem, this solution worked like charm for me! Don’t forget to restart 😉
After logging in for the first time “special” buttons (start, notifications, search) did not work:
- FIX: Restart (legit: right click to the windows icon and choose restart) a couple of times and everything should be fine.

The One Drive Perk

Along with Windows 10, came the One Drive suggestion. Once you have updated, the one drive application starts automatically with windows and prompts you to login or create an account if you don’t already have one. Initially I thought about skipping the whole thing since the 59 gigs in Dropbox and the 15 gigs in Google Drive are more than enough for me (at least for the time being). However, since a little more free space to the cloud never hurt anybody I decided to enable One Drive as well. I was surprised (positively) to able to subscribe using my Gmail account and not having to create a new one to Microsoft.

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Everything went smoothly and now I have 15 gigs of space that I’ll probably never use 😛

Microsft Office: The unexpected Perk!

After everything was solved I decided that it was time to relax and watch a couple of Gotham episodes! Since I keep the progress of the TV Series I watch on a spreadsheet, initially I went for Libre Office! Then I remembered that I always wanted to give a shot to MS Office 2013 since my last experience was with MS Office 2010. Normally you have to pay but thanks to my academic affiliation, as a PhD candidate with the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, I get to use it for free!

I think academic accounts are also entitled to 1 TB One Drive space for 1 year!

The future!

Up to now, I have seen several pros and cons to Windows 10. I might get back with another post listing them. There’s also an interesting discussion about Windows 10 features & privacy to the following episode of This Week In Tech.

Enjoy!

[Update: SEP 13th, 2015]

After less than a month of using Windows 10 the graphics card’s driver stopped working. I tried to find a compatible driver with no luck so I (guess what?) rolled back to Windows 7 🙂