Setting MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1 fixed the problem of having multiple profiles running on the Windows desktop at one time, but introduced another problem: clicking on links in external programs brought up profile manager each time. Firefox no longer had a default profile.

My downfall was that I failed to recognize exactly what MOZ_NO_REMOTE did, even though the name should have clued me in. As it turns out, the variable can be set and unset as needed, so a short wrapper script fixes the problem:

set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
"C:Program FilesMozilla Firefoxfirefox.exe" -p Hobbit http://hobbit...
set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=0

Hobbit opens with the appropriate profile, while all other Firefox sessions open with the default profile.

I spent the weekend re-configuring the machines in my home office. My primary workstation now runs Linux (Fedora). The XP station is still running, but it is stripped down to a basic machine. I can access it easily enough through rdesktop when I need to use a Windows app, although that’s only been for Nero so far. All data, our twiki site, and this blog has been moved to a new server.

I’ve been aiming to cut over to Linux as my primary work platform for some time. Almost everything I do now is on open source software, so there was little reason to work within Windows. I rarely have need for the standard office type applications anymore, since most business data is now stored within a wiki. My primary use of a wordprocessor is for writing assignment submissions for CGA courses. Spreadsheets still have their use, but OpenOffice.org Calc should do fine. Should I really need to use MS Office, the corporate notebook still has it.

There are some limitations to Linux though. It’s not quite as polished as Windows is, for example, when network browsing and connecting shares, but most of the issues are small. On the other hand I was impressed to see that the printing worked as soon as I plugged in the Brother MFC-8600 to the USB port. All it required me to do was approve the driver the system had selected as being appropriate. Printing was an area I had expected to have to do some manual configuration.

Microsoft makes some great products. Their operating systems are too popular with the virus and worm authors for my liking right now, but they have come a long way in the last few years. Gone are the days of the daily (or more) reboots to keep a workstation stable. MS Office applications, and particularly Excel, are very powerful - too powerful for the average user. Using a $500 suite of software to type letters and create tables is too expensive, especially when equally useful tools are available in the OSS world.

I’ve setup a dual monitor configuration at the office so that I can have multiple email sessions open, keep an eye on Hobbit, and still see whatever else I happen to be working on at the time. I fully understand why the Batcave has so many screens now.

I’ve configured my desktop to place the static windows on the right hand monitor, freeing the left for current tasks. Since the static windows are just that, I wanted a way to place them in the same place each time I started up for the day. A small .cmd file loads all of the applications, and ZMover (a shareware app) moves them to the desired location. Configuration of ZMover is a breeze. It’s well worth the $10 they ask for it - they’ll be receiving our money shortly.

I like to keep a Firefox window open with Hobbit running in it to see anything that’s happening on the systems. One small hiccup was that I also wanted to turn off the toolbars on that instance of the browser in order to show more in the monitoring window. Since I still want the toolbars visible in other Firefox instances I knew I’d need to have multiple profiles running. This appeared to be an easy task to setup since Firefox can be told which profile to load from the command line (-p <profile>), but that wasn’t the case. Instead Firefox would reuse the profile from any open browser window.

After some searching around I discovered that you need to set the MOZ_NO_REMOTE environment variable to 1 in order to use multiple profiles at the same time. Once I added it to my environment everything worked as desired.