Hosted Virtual Desktops (HVDs) offer organizations a way to scale staff productivity without the traditional CAPEX overhead that comes with purchasing computers in bulk. However, with so many vendors available, picking the right HVD platform can be challenging. Below are some of the best HVD solutions we’ve tested, and what they’re best suited for. The […]
The Best HVD Solutions
Secure Workspace for Remote Work
Remote work is on the rise, but so are cyber threats and risk of mismanagement. Below, we’ll break down some key steps administrators can take to improve both security and staff efficiency for their remote work workspaces, as well as touch on some proven management platforms, to make remote management much easier. Why Security Matters […]
XFig from Source vs. Xaw3d
I discussed compiling XFree86 from source in my article XFree86 4.1.0 from Source. One problem if you nuke all associated RPMs, is that the Athena Widget Set is included in the XFree86 distribution. This is in xc/lib/Xaw of the XFree86 source tree. What is a Widget Set? Well, this is the style of buttons and […]
LindowsOS 3.0 Review
*The* significant point about LindowsOS is that you can buy preconfigured systems at Wal-Mart. Further, the systems are *cheap*. $199 for a PC with an OS installed. For GNU/Linux to be widely embraced as a desktop that is accessible by everyone, this is what needs to happen. We wondered just how easily Lindows was to […]
KDE 2.2.1 from Source
[[LFS Note: the following was from a Redhat 7.1 perspective. It may or may not work well on an LFS system. For LFS, use the LFS hint to install zlib-1.1.3, jpegsrc.v6b, libpng-1.0.12, lcms-1.07, libmng-1.0.3, tiff-v3.5.5, qt 2.3.1 (change -system-mng to -system-libmng), Openssh (LFS HINT) , lesstif-0.93.9. I added: pcre-3.4, audiofile-0.2.2, libxml-1.8.16, libxml2-2.4.5. After you get […]
Getting Rid of Plain Bash Prompts
Are you tired of looking at an ugly bash prompt like this?: -bash-2.05b$ Well, if you add this line to your .bash_profile: export PS1=’\[\033[01;31m\]\h \[\033[01;34m\]\W \$ \[\033[00m\]’ You will get a red hostname (up to the first .) and a blue current working directory: servername directory $ For more info, see the prompting section of […]
Nuking Cookies w/ Netscape or Mozilla on *nix desktops
Storing cookies on workstations has both privacy and security issues associated with it. Generally, we like to nuke our cookie files. There is way too much information stored in them and created during web surfing. I (Agatha) visited a site I’d never seen before and was prompted by name to donate money to the site […]
Free Program That Prints Clipboard Text
We ran into an interesting problem with PuTTY. PuTTY doesn’t have a print-screen function. We looked around for an application that would simply print the clipboard. True, you could do something like ctrl-v, ctrl-p in notepad, but then you have to change focus, which is distruptive. With PuTTY, you simply highlight text with the left […]
GNUCash 1.6.3/LFS
I posted some earlier stories in the NetAdminTools Desktop area about struggling with GNUCash. I did eventually build up an LFS system, which I’m writing and posting this article from. There is some good information on the LFS site about getting various combinations of software running on LFS in the hints area. In particular, the […]
Using Dynamic Backgrounds With KDE
In this article I showed how to update the background of an X desktop with various text status dumps. I have been using IceWM because it has always been the most stable window manager. It was also useful when bringing up an OS from source, as IceWM can be compiled quickly. KDE has a lot […]
Using the MMC to disable Windows Messenger
We have not found a way to easily disable the Windows Messenger service on XP via the application. You can use the MMC (Microsoft Management Console) to do this, though. Select start–>run, enter mmc, and click OK. Select Add/Remove Snap-in, Add, Group Policy, Add, Local Computer, Finish. Here is a graphic of the appropriate part […]
Firefox Passes 25 Million Mark
Firefox has enjoyed 25 million downloads in 99 days. We have been using Firefox here at NetAdminTools for the last couple of months, and are very impressed. For more info, see this article. We have to celebrate with a nice image from factorycity.net: The popup blocker works well, and the rendering is beautiful, at least […]
XP Pro ACPI, XP task scheduler issues, and a C twist
There are a variety of issues surrounding ACPI on XP workstations. XP is tied very tightly in to ACPI. The immediate result is, by default, Microsoft’s support for ACPI saves the world a lot of electricity. That is, the information economy kills a lot less wildlife and puts less toxins in the air that we […]
Setting the Gnome Desktop Background With a Script
You can use these two commands to set the Gnome desktop background: gconftool-2 -t str –set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename /path/pic.png gconftool-2 -t str –set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_options “centered” This will put the picture in the center. If you want to fill the background with the picture use stretched.
Dynamically updating desktop background with text
Ever wish you could dynamically update the background image of your desktop? Here is a perl script that takes an existing background, finds out the current stock/index prices, and adds the prices to the image. Just put it in your crontab. You could just as easily put ping response times for various servers on your […]
Using Ldconfig To Set Library Locations
Gozer needs libgiblib to work right. I like to install strange libraries like this into /usr/local/lib. I put all of the source into /usr/local/src that isn’t part of the main RPM system. Even when I compiled and installed giblib, though, it wouldn’t work right: [usr-1@srv-1 ~]$ gozer gozer: error while loading shared libraries: libgiblib.so.1: cannot […]
What to do when your user’s hard drive dies
One of the most likely parts to fail on a typical workstation is the hard drive. The user powers on in the morning, and the BIOS screams “Unable to Boot!”. Now, much work can often be done via the web, or at least, the user won’t freak as much if they can at least access […]
Reading RSS Feeds with Outlook 2007
Outlook 2007 has the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds. Just scroll down to the RSS Feeds folder under Personal Folders, click on the RSS Feeds. Right click on RSS Feeds. Choose Add a New RSS Feed. Enter the location of the RSS feed into the box: Here is what the NetAdminTools.com RSS feed looks […]
Windows XP Service Pack 1
Windows XP Service Pack 1 is out and available here. We had better luck with the network install. The network install is a lot larger; however, the update wizard that was supposed to download just what our workstation needed timed out when contacting the server. A retry started the whole download again. A straight download […]
Rotating a Video with Mencoder
If you import a rotated video off of your phone or other device, here is a quick command to rotate it 90 degrees: mencoder -vf rotate=1 -o hx.avi -oac pcm -ovc lavc hx.mo Some more details are in How to rotate an AVI or MPEG file taken in Portrait.
