Monday, June 28, 2004

VNC: Coolest . . . Software . . . Ever -- 3:07 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Just when I thought I pretty much had been as amazed by the open-source community as I was going to be (what with KDE, OpenOffice, Mozilla, and Linux itself), J.t.Qbe turned me on to some software that blew me away. That software? RealVNC. It allows any Win32, Mac, or *nix computer running their server to be controlled by another Win32, Mac, or *nix computer using their viewer. Setup was ridiculously easy. I tried the server on my kids' Win98 box and could completely control it from my Slack 10 box over the network. Far too cool, and it's free in every sense of the word. Check it out.

The Master comments: I've used TightVNC extensively myself, and it is another great open-source version of the VNC protocol and client. It's also got some sweet server extensions. Either one of these is really good stuff when you need remote control.

J.t.Qbe comments: I like some of TightVNC's features, but for some reason it's slow as molasses over my LAN. I'll have to give it some more time.

This afternoon I had to go over to my sister's to help her with her broadband router setup. I couldn't resist: I set up some port forwarding on my own router and then used VNC from her house to my Linux box at home. It was a bit laggy, but still quite workable--and far better than it was years ago when I used it over a 28K dialup line.

Real to GPL Helix Player -- 2:29 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Real Networks announced that they will be adding the GPL as a licensing option for their Helix Player. No, this doesn't include the RealAudio/Video codecs, but still. I downloaded and installed the RealPlayer beta, which is based on Helix code but includes the Real* codecs. It's pretty impressive. It's light years ahead of the earlier Real8/9 alphas and infinitely less annoying than that awful realOne thingy. Thanks Slashdot. Ars Technica also has an interesting blurb about it.

Sunday, June 27, 2004

WordPerfect Printing Fixed -- 5:23 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well, I figured out what my problem with WordPerfect printing was. Apparently this newer version is too stupid to find CUPS printers (or maybe any printers) on its own. I had to run xwpdest as root and change the Spooler command on WPSpool to point directly at /usr/bin/lpr. Ummmm, yeah. Well, at least it's working now.

Past Two Days' News

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