SMS style message to Linux user?

[MkIII_Supra]

I am not sure if this is the correct forum. I have an elderly lady set up with OpenSuSE 11.0 at home and I am using SSH to remote admin her PC. I need her to shut Evolution down but I don't know how to send her a message (other than e-mail) like in Windows.

I have used the Windows SMS to pop messages up for users (long time ago... I actually forgot how to do it on Windows...) and need to know if there is a way to do it with Linux. So far I haven't been able to find anything that remotely resembles what I want to do.

So how do I send a message that will pop up a dialog on the users PC screen so I can tell them what to do? Keep in mind this is an 80+ year old woman that understands very basic computing so it all has to be initiated from my side and getting her to open a konsole is out of the question.

We are both running OpenSuSE 11.0 with KDE 3.5.9

[Calipso]

maybe pop up some messages using zenity? You may need to specify the DISPLAY but could do the trick.

http://linux.byexamples.com/archives/259/a-complete-zenity-dialog-examples-1/

zenity --info --text "Close Evolution Please."

[klackenfus]

Why not call her on the phone and ask her to shut it down? If that conversation leads to her not knowing how to shut it down, tell her you'll do it and then find the PID through ps -ef|grep evolution and then kill the process? Sorry, I'm old school.

[TheCatMan]

Xmessage should work and might already be installed.

If she has Samba running you could try Linpopup - it does the same job as Windows' 'net send' and 'Win pop-up.' I haven't used it for years, but Sourceforge and Freshmeat both have versions available.

[mrrangerman43]

Here (http://linux-issues.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-to-send-remote-xmessage-to-desktop.html) is a link that shows you how to use xmessage. Make sure you export DISPLAY, you shouldn't need to install anything take a look at the man page for window sizing.