Use your Android phone to control your Linux machine

 Use your Android phone to control your Linux machine

 If you watch lot of videos on your big computer monitor by sitting at some distance away from screen, it becomes a pain to get up each time and change the videos. Sometimes i wished I had a remote control for my computer. I  found that i could use a tool called WiFi Mouse to operate my computer remotely from my phone. This post is about how i could successfully configure and use WiFi Mouse. I am using WiFi mouse on an Android phone, but according to WiFi Mouse website Apple products like Iphone and Ipad are also supported. Using WiFi Mouse i could use my phone as mouse as well as keyboard for my computer. The user interface of  WiFi Mouse is pretty intuitive and easy to use. The only issue i found is that it is not supporting letters in CAPS when using keyboard mode on the App.

Steps to configure Android phone as remote control / remote mouse for your Linux machine

• Ensure that both the computer and phone are connected to the same network. My phone is on wifi and Linux system is connected to the LAN port on the same router. The router must always be "ON" for using the tool.
  
• Download WiFi Mouse App on your Android phone.  
• Install Mouse Server on Linux machine. My machine architecture is  64 bit and i use openSUSE and hence I downloaded and installed this rpm. You can check about Linux architecture using this post. You can create a local repo and install rpms using this post.
  
• Restart the Linux machine to ensure that Mouse Server has started up .
• Open  TCP port 1978 on the Linux Firewall. Check out this post for opening firewall.
• Now open the Wifi Mouse App on your phone. It will automatically show your computer / Linux machine if the Mouse Server is already running.
  

Default Screen when you open in WiFi Mouse on phone.

Denied Access Error if Firewall is not configured Correctly

(Failed to Connect:localhost)

Screenshot of WiFi Mouse After Successfully connecting to Linux Machine 

Note:- Solution tested on openSUSE Leap 15.2, GNOME SHELL VERSION 3.34.4

Distro Comparison using forum Stats

 I hit upon a idea about comparing the various Linux distros based on forum statistics. I visited the forums of various popular distros (openSUSE, Fedora, Debian, Mint, Arch, Ubuntu) and then collected the stats displayed on the forums home page.

Raw Data

 The first step involved collecting raw data about the number of registered members in each forum and other stuff like number of threads , no of active users etc: I couldn't find active users statistics for all forums and each distro preferred to use a different bulletin board software. I collected screenshots of the stats too as shown below.

Distro	Mint
Url	forums.linuxmint.com
Members	81833
Threads	108243

Distro	Arch
Url	bbs.archlinux.org
Members	44823
Threads	148545

Distro	Debian
Url	forums.debian.net
Members	132589
Threads	69950

Distro	Fedora
Url	fedoraforum.org
Members	139147
Threads	267719

Distro	Ubuntu
Url	ubuntuforums.org
Members	1762103
Threads	1906499

Distro	openSUSE
Url	forums.opensuse.org
Members	71137
Threads	175115

Number Crunching

Registered Users :- The number of users in each forum may be taken as some sort of rudimentary proof of popularity of a distro. Ubuntu takes the first place which should not surprise anyone. Fedora and Debian are neck and neck and both of them take the next two places.

Distro	Members
Ubuntu	1762103
Fedora	139147
Debian	132589
Mint	81833
openSUSE	71137
Arch	44823

No of Threads :-  This set of stats threw up a few surprises. openSUSE took third place in the list. I guess old threads were archived by some of the forums.

Distro	Threads
Ubuntu	1906499
Fedora	267719
openSUSE	175115
Arch	148545
Mint	108243
Debian	69950

No of Threads per member :- I think this stat should tell as to whether the distro is able to sustain interest with its users over  longer periods of time. We find that Ubuntu does poorly in this regard.  May be unity had a role to play in this. Arch and openSUSE seem to paying more attention to their much smaller communities than some of the more popular distros.

Distro	Members	Threads	Mem Vs Thr (Thr/Mem)
Arch	44823	148545	3.3140352051
openSUSE	71137	175115	2.46165849
Fedora	139147	267719	1.9240012361
Mint	81833	108243	1.3227304388
Ubuntu	1762103	1906499	1.0819452665
Debian	132589	69950	0.5275701604

Conclusion:- It is not enough that a distro is popular . It should pay heed to the needs of its community. All the stats presented are subjective and should be taken with a pinch of salt as many of the distros have been known to conduct day to day discussions on IRC and mailing lists too. It is not being taken into account here :-)