#! /usr/bin/wish
wm title . "Remote Desktop Launcher"
frame .top -borderwidth 10
pack .top -side top -fill x
button .top.quit -text Quit -command exit
set but [button .top.run -text "Launch" -command Run]
pack .top.quit .top.run -side right
label .top.l -text Server: -padx 0
entry .top.cmd -width 20 -relief sunken -textvariable server
pack .top.l -side left
pack .top.cmd -side left -fill x -expand true
bind .top.cmd <Return> Run
focus .top.cmd
menubutton .mb -text Server -menu .mb.menu
pack .mb -padx 10 -pady 10
set m [menu .mb.menu -tearoff 1]
$m add radio -label server1 -variable server -value server1.address.edu -command Run
$m add radio -label server2 -variable server -value server2.address.edu -command Run
$m add radio -label server3 -variable server -value server3.address.edu -command Run
$m add radio -label server4 -variable server -value server4.address.edu -command Run
$m add radio -label server5 -variable server -value server5.address.edu -command Run
proc Run { } {
	global server
	exec rdesktop -u <user_name> -p <password> -g 1280x800 -x b $server
}

All you need to do is plugin “real” values for the server and addresses. You can also auto-login by giving values for the username and password (may also want to change the geometry of the window unless you have a big screen).

I also have bash aliases for these, but that’s a different post…

I finally got fed up yesterday with the slow speed at which Eclipse was launching on my Windows box. On my Linux box, it doesn’t take that long to launch (may five or six seconds) compared to my Windows box (around 15 – 20 seconds). I know I have a lot of plugins, but it was getting a little ridiculous. I started poking around and I noticed in the configuration details (Help / About Eclipse SDK / Configuration Details) that the vm that was launching was 1.4. Ok, so there’s one problem. I also noticed that the max memory setting was 256MB (-Xmx256M). Since this box has 2GB of RAM, I figured 256MB is a little on the low side (and note, mucking around with the heap sizes won’t help load times).

The first thing I did was change the shorcut target for Eclipse to be

Now I’m sure that Eclipse will launch with Java 5 and (hopefully) speed things up a bit. Double-click on the short-cut, and sure enough, we’re down to about 8 seconds.

The next thing I wanted to do is increase the default min and max memory settings. In c:\eclipse\eclipse.ini, you’ll see

I changed these to

This increases the minimum memory space to 256M and the maximum to 768M. You can also do this by adding these vmargs to the shortcut target:

If you have a multi-processor computer (and I believe this includes dual-core systems, though I haven’t read the docs on this), you can use some of the new VM ergonomics to self-tune garbage collection by adding this switch:

One last handy parameter is “-showlocation” which shows the current location of your workspace. If you have different workspaces, this is handy.

If you want to read more about some JVM garbage collection (and who doesn’t) here are some helpful links:

• Java SE HotSpot at a Glance
• Garbage Collector Ergonomics
• Tuning Garbage Collection with the 5.0 Java Virtual Machine
• Java Performance Documentation
• A Collection of JVM Options (check out the references at the bottom of the page)