I'd suggest that you take a look at Caldera's (now SCO, again) Volution Manager. It offers the same features for Unix systems, that M$ SMS offers for Windows. Plus, it can be integrated into larger enterprise management platforms like Unicenter and Tivoli should your needs grow so large. Also, if you are a Compaq/HP shop, Volution Manager integrates with Compaq's Insight Manager which is fabulous for hardware management.
So, based on your previous security record, Mr. Gates, I gleefully award you this multi-million dollar contract for security services. I already feel safer from all those evil hacker dudez.
Honestly, what schmuck would pay Microsoft for security??
Get yourself a battery powered portable radio. Make sure that it is the type that can receive shortwave frequencies and you will never be without a BBC broadcast. The are lots of small cheap portable radios on the market that receive AM/FM/SW/TV and I'd also expect to see satellite portable radios soon but, I can't imagine paying the subcription for such a thing, especially when SW is availalble.
No they can't cope. It's been proven already. Even giants like the BBC and CNN had several moments where they could not handle the load on September 11th.
I'm sure that they have taken steps to improve things in the future but, there is only so much that you can do, or at least do cost effectively. There is no substitute for hardware and bandwidth but, maintaining enough to support the entire planet at one critical moment in time, that may or may not come, is not cost effective.
When the time comes, the news sites will buckle under the load, just as the telephone system does. The best source for news, during times of disaster are television and more so, radio. Even in the most remote places, you can still get radio and with new satellite radio, you can get it anywhere.
First, you don't give enough information in the article for a really good answer. You say that you want to lay a backbone cable but, you don't give details like the distance it has to traverse or the environment it will be in. You also fail to say how many nodes might be directly attached to this backbone. These are important details in the decision process. That said, read on....
I would have to agree with some of the other posts, you should use fibre. The other posts don't say why you should though so, here's why.
First, fibre is not going to be a lot more expensive than good copper. Sure, it is a little more but, the extra cost is worth the benefits. Benefits include increased distance, no interference at all and, most importantly, room to grow.
In laying a fibre cable, even a small one, you don't have a single data path, as you do with Cat 5-7. Even small fible cables usually bundle three or more pairs in the cable. That means that you can VERY easily double or triple your bandwidth in the future by lighting a second pair. Or perhaps you need a completely separate data path for some other service like maybe you want to interconnect a couple of legacy PBXs, or a video conferencing system, or a security system, who knows what.
The next thing is that fibre gives you even more room for growth. Sure GigE is great but, will it meet your needs in the long term. Already 10GigE is a reality and 40GigE is well on it's way. These can easily be implemented in the future, if you have fibre. I doubt however that Cat 5-7 will ever run 10Gig and definitely not 40Gig.
There is also a technology called Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) that uses multiple lambdas or wavelengths on the same fibre pair. Using this technology it is possible to have 64 data paths on a single pair of fibre, that's 128Gbps aggregate bandwidth!!!!! That's all over fibre. With Cat 5-7 though, you will never have more than 1Gbps and only one datapath.
Fibre is definitely the way to go for a backbone solution. I hope this helps.
The problem I have with these reviews and those that are found on Amazon, is that there is no context for the review. Specifically, what's great to you might suck to me. We have no knowledge of the reviewers skill level or experience.
It would be far better if the reviewers would give a little background information about themselves, along with the review.
What is Zenomorph's skill level? How long have they worked in this field? What related hardware and software are they proficient with? What other books on the subject has this person read and what was their opinion of those books? Without this information the review carries no more weight than one from Jon Katz.
Anyway, I had to completely remove my.kde directory, then restarting brought up everything 'new', and it looks nice.
This is the correct behavior for an upgrade. It would really suck if an OS upgrade wiped out your existing configs and preferrences, wouldn't it?
Suppose you had a server with a couple hundred users on it. Over the weekend you upgrade the OS and it resets everyone's desktops and configs. Would you like to be in the support chair on Monday morning?
But from Intel and Matrox. Don't buy from nVidia. Then you'll have your specs and the Linux drivers that follow.
Of course, if you can't help yourself but, buy nVidia, then know what you are getting into. You won't change nVidia's mind unless they see that they are losing market share to Intel/Matrox in the Linux community.
Sure, technically you are correct. The UI is not the OS.
However, as the saying goes; "Perception is reality." The fact is that for most users and certainly for Apple's tageted users, the UI *IS* the OS. They have no concept of the distinction and their ignorance is furthered by articles like this in the media.
In fairness to these users, they are bombarded with mis-information for so long that the mis-information becomes reality.
I'll bet you call them "cable modems" or "xDSL modems", dispite the fact that they aren't modems at all. But they have been incorrectly categorized for so long that even the manufacturers now go with the flow and label their products as "modems".
I'm not trying to frustrate you. I see where you are coming from on the fragmentation issue and I see where this might be a problem in some cases.
Frankly I want this feature more for servers than anything else, although having it on the workstation is an added bonus. But, in terms of servers they will usually use RAID and mine always use RAID 5. In this case fragmentation is often beneficial.
But, the server arguement is just an excuse. The fact is that if fragmentation is such an issue then this proposed file system should not do fragmentation avoidance as ext2/3 does but, rather perform defragmentation functions with a seperate utility as is the case with M$ file systems. I've got no issues with a CRON job that runs a defragmentation process in the wee hours.
One final note: I can assure you that the Novell guys aren't taking your approach -- only overwriting something when they absolutely have to do so.
This is absolutely exactly what the Novell file system has done since v3.1 and has been maintained in all 9 versions since then, right up to today's Netware 6.0. Granted, I don't know how it's coded but, this is definitely the resulting behavior. No file is overwritten until the disk is physically out of space, or very near it. The only exceptions are those that are explicitly configured to "Purge" immediately. If your disk hasn't run out of space, say a really large disk or a really quiet server, it's possible to Salvage a file from six years ago, even if the server has been rebooted everyday.
I disagree. First, I'd rather see this implemented in ext3 than ext2 for the obvious journaling benefits. Also, I deffinitely do not feel that a performance hit would be noticable. The Novell file system is still BLAZING fast dispite the fact that it is managing hundreds of thousands of deleted files.
The thing is though, that if you have the file system relying on table two but, the user or the applications are only presented with the contents of table one then, the existing benefits of the file system are not impacted. The fragmentation issues would not change as the file system would still control fragmentation, as it does today. That's specifically why I would recommend two file tables rather than simply setting a couple of extra flags in the existing single file table. But, even then it could be done, I just think that a single file table solution would require more computation with every disk access versus the two table method which would use the second table only during writes, deletes, undeletes etc.
Furthermore, security would also be handled since the rights would still be maintained in the lower level table two. The only real difference would be that files marked for deletion would disappear from table one and have an additional flag set in table two. I don't feel that deleting an entry form table one and then setting a single bit in table two would impact performance very much.
Additionally, the question of security with regards to complete deletion would be no worse than today. Using ext2 or ext3 it is not possible to guarantee complete deletion and overwiting of the physical disk. But with the system that I suggest, this would remain the same that it is in ext2/3. As far as the ability to make deleted files undeletable, this can be done with a Purge utility that goes through table two and removes entries with the deletion flag set. This is again the same behavior exhibited in Novell's Salvage solution.
With this method, the only tools that might get broken would be a few that manipulate the file system at very low levels. But, this is the case with almost any different file system. Disk tools that work with ext2 do not work with Rieser unless they are modified to accomodate Rieser. fsck.ext2 isn't any use with Rieser, for that you use fsck.rieser. But, the solution would be completely transparent to all other applications including the likes of rm, mv, unlink() and everything else since these applications and functions would only see table one and all of the table two stuff would be handled by the filesystem itself. I propose ext4.
But, I don't see the point. In the beginning Hurd made sense but, it floundered for so long that it has been eclipsed by Linux and the BSDs.
Without being insulting, I'd just like to ask, what's the point of putting further effort into the Hurd, rather than concentrating on advancing Linux and or the BSDs?
Perhaps the thing to do would be to use two file tables. The first table would be used normally as it is today. It would represent existing files and provide the correct information regarding space usage etc.
The second table would only be used by the file system and the recovery utilty. The second file table would maintain the information of the files that had been marked for deletion and the file system would consult this table prior to saves so as not to overwrite the files that were marked for deletion.
When the disk becomes full, the file system should consult the second file table and overwrite the oldest file that had been marked for deletion.
Also, the recovery utility could consult the second table, listing the files that were marked for deletion but, still reside on the disk. Files selected for recovery could then be added back to the first, primary file table making them again available for the user.
I'm not sure how Novell does it but, the above method would yield the same behavior as the Novell system.
I know you're kidding, but....
on
Undelete In Linux
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
[x] Trashcan support [X] Easy to use Windowing system - KDE [X] Standard software install system - LSB, Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse [X] Easy to use Windows filesharing - KDE, Samba [ ] Easy support for video files and DVD - No answer [X] Desktop company support - Red Hat, The Kompany
If this feature does in fact make it into.NET Server it will be a good thing.
You're right about Microsoft's "innovation". First Microsoft invented disk quotas for us then they invented this cool directory thingie and now they are inventing Salvage/undelete. Praise be to M$.:-)
Filer is in fact a DOS based frontend utility for managing files on Novell Netware servers. Being a DOS utility, it is obvious that filer is as old as the hills but is still very useful. Filer's functionality has been included in the GUI tools that Novell has developed over the years and is included in the outstanding NWAdmin utility and the less appreciated Console 1 tool. Today, the utility Salvage is even included in the Netware Client and is accessed from a context sensitive menu on the client machine's desktop.
Salvage, the feature's proper name, is a tremendously powerful feature of Netware. Basically, when files are deleted from Netware volumes, they are not truely deleted. They are unlinked or renamed and become invisible to the clients but, the deleted files remain on the Netware volumes. When the Salvage utility is invoked, these files can be displayed, selected and instantly restored.
Deleted files remain on the volume until the volume runs "out of space", at which time the oldest deleted files are automatically purged as necessary to allow space for new files. It is important to note that the space consumed by deleted files is not reflected in any of the client utilities and does not count in disk quotas. This means that from the clients perspective the volume will show that there are 30 Gigs free despite of the fact that the volume is in fact full, due to deleted files.
Another interesting note is that deleted files retain their rights attributes. Files invisible to a certain user cannot be seen or restored by that user if they are deleted. Only users that had the appropriate rights before the file was deleted can manipulate these deleted files.
The deleted files can also be purged manually from individual directories or the entire volume. Purging can also be configured to purge the deleted files immediately which is the recommended configuration of temp directories.
This beloved feature of Netware has always been admired. The user community has always requested it in other OSes but, as yet, the only thing to even come close is an NT/2000 add-on called Network Undelete, from the folks at Executive Software, the same people that brought us Diskeeper. Unfortunately, it's still not quite the same.
Several posts have stated that this should be a simple thing to implement. I cannot speak to the ease or difficulty of implementing this feature. However, one does have to wonder how easy it would really be. Considering that Salavge is such an old feature on Netware, that there have been so many requests for it in other OSes and yet Netware is still the only OS to offer it, one must conclude that it is not really so easy to implement.
If you have found a developer that is willing to try to implement such a feature, I strongly encourage you to get them going, regarless of whether you want to be a test case or not. The community would love and appreciate this feature in Linux and any other OS.
I really like VNC and rely on it heavily but, it does have issues.
While security is not great, I don't see this as a major problem. It is simple enough to tunnel a VNC session which provides more than adequate security. This, however, does increase the bandwidth requirement.
Which brings us to the biggest problem, in my mind, with VNC. It still requires far too much bandwidth. Even TightVNC is still a bandwidth hog.
You mention RDP and X11 in your post. X11 is the absolute worst for bandwidth. Running something as simple as XMMS via X11 consumes up to 11Mbps. That's outrageous!!! RDP is far better than X11 but, it's bandwidth requirements are akin to VNC. RDP frequently consumes between 70Kbps and 200Kbps. Sure, it will work over a 14,400 connection but, given the extra bandwidth, both VNC and RDP will eat it up and on low speed connections it is very slow. In these low bandwidth situations it is even worse than PCAnywhere.
By far, the best protocol that I have seen for remote sessions is Citrix ICA protocol. Provided the bandwidth is available, this protocol will use up to 150Kbps bursts for very high resolution and color depths but, on average ICA uses between 20 and 40Kbps. With tuning such as lower color depth and resolutions and disabling animation ICA will work remarkably well even over a 14,400bps connection.
The difference in performance between ICA and any of the other protocols is phenomenal. High color, high resolution and high performance, plus it supports high security too. ICA has a similar effect on people that broadband does. Meaning that once a dial-up user has used broadband for a little while they cannot stand to use dial-up again, it's just too frustrating. A similar experience occurs when comparing ICA with any of the other protocols. The balzing speed and quality of the ICA session makes you very frustrated when you go to use VNC or the other worse protocols.
Unfortunately, Citrix ICA is proprietary and expensive. While it can be served from both Windows and Unix platforms it is primarily found in Windows environments. It is my hope that the VNC team will be able to come up with something similar to the ICA protocol. That would be awesome!
1. The first rule of Slashdot is to never miss a chance to slam MS and draw attention to its vulnerabilities.
2. Most Slashdot readers run Windows, whether they admit it or not. Many Slashdot readers also administer Windows boxes professionally therefore, such posts are important and informative.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd suggest that you take a look at Caldera's (now SCO, again) Volution Manager. It offers the same features for Unix systems, that M$ SMS offers for Windows. Plus, it can be integrated into larger enterprise management platforms like Unicenter and Tivoli should your needs grow so large. Also, if you are a Compaq/HP shop, Volution Manager integrates with Compaq's Insight Manager which is fabulous for hardware management.
So, based on your previous security record, Mr. Gates, I gleefully award you this multi-million dollar contract for security services. I already feel safer from all those evil hacker dudez.
Honestly, what schmuck would pay Microsoft for security??
Get yourself a battery powered portable radio. Make sure that it is the type that can receive shortwave frequencies and you will never be without a BBC broadcast. The are lots of small cheap portable radios on the market that receive AM/FM/SW/TV and I'd also expect to see satellite portable radios soon but, I can't imagine paying the subcription for such a thing, especially when SW is availalble.
No they can't cope. It's been proven already. Even giants like the BBC and CNN had several moments where they could not handle the load on September 11th.
I'm sure that they have taken steps to improve things in the future but, there is only so much that you can do, or at least do cost effectively. There is no substitute for hardware and bandwidth but, maintaining enough to support the entire planet at one critical moment in time, that may or may not come, is not cost effective.
When the time comes, the news sites will buckle under the load, just as the telephone system does. The best source for news, during times of disaster are television and more so, radio. Even in the most remote places, you can still get radio and with new satellite radio, you can get it anywhere.
First, you don't give enough information in the article for a really good answer. You say that you want to lay a backbone cable but, you don't give details like the distance it has to traverse or the environment it will be in. You also fail to say how many nodes might be directly attached to this backbone. These are important details in the decision process. That said, read on....
I would have to agree with some of the other posts, you should use fibre. The other posts don't say why you should though so, here's why.
First, fibre is not going to be a lot more expensive than good copper. Sure, it is a little more but, the extra cost is worth the benefits. Benefits include increased distance, no interference at all and, most importantly, room to grow.
In laying a fibre cable, even a small one, you don't have a single data path, as you do with Cat 5-7. Even small fible cables usually bundle three or more pairs in the cable. That means that you can VERY easily double or triple your bandwidth in the future by lighting a second pair. Or perhaps you need a completely separate data path for some other service like maybe you want to interconnect a couple of legacy PBXs, or a video conferencing system, or a security system, who knows what.
The next thing is that fibre gives you even more room for growth. Sure GigE is great but, will it meet your needs in the long term. Already 10GigE is a reality and 40GigE is well on it's way. These can easily be implemented in the future, if you have fibre. I doubt however that Cat 5-7 will ever run 10Gig and definitely not 40Gig.
There is also a technology called Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) that uses multiple lambdas or wavelengths on the same fibre pair. Using this technology it is possible to have 64 data paths on a single pair of fibre, that's 128Gbps aggregate bandwidth!!!!! That's all over fibre. With Cat 5-7 though, you will never have more than 1Gbps and only one datapath.
Fibre is definitely the way to go for a backbone solution. I hope this helps.
Netware 5 & 6 fully support hyper-threading.
These guys are even better than Red Hat. Their mirrors are kickin and their announcement isn't even Slashdotted, yet. ;^)
The problem I have with these reviews and those that are found on Amazon, is that there is no context for the review. Specifically, what's great to you might suck to me. We have no knowledge of the reviewers skill level or experience.
It would be far better if the reviewers would give a little background information about themselves, along with the review.
What is Zenomorph's skill level? How long have they worked in this field? What related hardware and software are they proficient with? What other books on the subject has this person read and what was their opinion of those books? Without this information the review carries no more weight than one from Jon Katz.
Anyway, I had to completely remove my .kde directory, then restarting brought up everything 'new', and it looks nice.
This is the correct behavior for an upgrade. It would really suck if an OS upgrade wiped out your existing configs and preferrences, wouldn't it?
Suppose you had a server with a couple hundred users on it. Over the weekend you upgrade the OS and it resets everyone's desktops and configs. Would you like to be in the support chair on Monday morning?
The mirrors have been either jammed or not updated since Monday. Now Slashdot posts links on the frontpage. I'll never be able to get the ISOs.
But from Intel and Matrox. Don't buy from nVidia. Then you'll have your specs and the Linux drivers that follow.
Of course, if you can't help yourself but, buy nVidia, then know what you are getting into. You won't change nVidia's mind unless they see that they are losing market share to Intel/Matrox in the Linux community.
Sure, technically you are correct. The UI is not the OS.
However, as the saying goes; "Perception is reality." The fact is that for most users and certainly for Apple's tageted users, the UI *IS* the OS. They have no concept of the distinction and their ignorance is furthered by articles like this in the media.
In fairness to these users, they are bombarded with mis-information for so long that the mis-information becomes reality.
I'll bet you call them "cable modems" or "xDSL modems", dispite the fact that they aren't modems at all. But they have been incorrectly categorized for so long that even the manufacturers now go with the flow and label their products as "modems".
I'm not trying to frustrate you. I see where you are coming from on the fragmentation issue and I see where this might be a problem in some cases.
Frankly I want this feature more for servers than anything else, although having it on the workstation is an added bonus. But, in terms of servers they will usually use RAID and mine always use RAID 5. In this case fragmentation is often beneficial.
But, the server arguement is just an excuse. The fact is that if fragmentation is such an issue then this proposed file system should not do fragmentation avoidance as ext2/3 does but, rather perform defragmentation functions with a seperate utility as is the case with M$ file systems. I've got no issues with a CRON job that runs a defragmentation process in the wee hours.
One final note: I can assure you that the Novell guys aren't taking your approach -- only overwriting something when they absolutely have to do so.
This is absolutely exactly what the Novell file system has done since v3.1 and has been maintained in all 9 versions since then, right up to today's Netware 6.0. Granted, I don't know how it's coded but, this is definitely the resulting behavior. No file is overwritten until the disk is physically out of space, or very near it. The only exceptions are those that are explicitly configured to "Purge" immediately. If your disk hasn't run out of space, say a really large disk or a really quiet server, it's possible to Salvage a file from six years ago, even if the server has been rebooted everyday.
I have seen a trend in closing arcades in many areas of the country. To my knowledge none of these areas have any such laws regarding the games.
The reason for the decline of arcades in your area may have something to do with your laws but, I think that the answer lies elsewhere.
I disagree. First, I'd rather see this implemented in ext3 than ext2 for the obvious journaling benefits. Also, I deffinitely do not feel that a performance hit would be noticable. The Novell file system is still BLAZING fast dispite the fact that it is managing hundreds of thousands of deleted files.
The thing is though, that if you have the file system relying on table two but, the user or the applications are only presented with the contents of table one then, the existing benefits of the file system are not impacted. The fragmentation issues would not change as the file system would still control fragmentation, as it does today. That's specifically why I would recommend two file tables rather than simply setting a couple of extra flags in the existing single file table. But, even then it could be done, I just think that a single file table solution would require more computation with every disk access versus the two table method which would use the second table only during writes, deletes, undeletes etc.
Furthermore, security would also be handled since the rights would still be maintained in the lower level table two. The only real difference would be that files marked for deletion would disappear from table one and have an additional flag set in table two. I don't feel that deleting an entry form table one and then setting a single bit in table two would impact performance very much.
Additionally, the question of security with regards to complete deletion would be no worse than today. Using ext2 or ext3 it is not possible to guarantee complete deletion and overwiting of the physical disk. But with the system that I suggest, this would remain the same that it is in ext2/3. As far as the ability to make deleted files undeletable, this can be done with a Purge utility that goes through table two and removes entries with the deletion flag set. This is again the same behavior exhibited in Novell's Salvage solution.
With this method, the only tools that might get broken would be a few that manipulate the file system at very low levels. But, this is the case with almost any different file system. Disk tools that work with ext2 do not work with Rieser unless they are modified to accomodate Rieser. fsck.ext2 isn't any use with Rieser, for that you use fsck.rieser. But, the solution would be completely transparent to all other applications including the likes of rm, mv, unlink() and everything else since these applications and functions would only see table one and all of the table two stuff would be handled by the filesystem itself. I propose ext4.
It brought the net to the masses.
But, I don't see the point. In the beginning Hurd made sense but, it floundered for so long that it has been eclipsed by Linux and the BSDs.
Without being insulting, I'd just like to ask, what's the point of putting further effort into the Hurd, rather than concentrating on advancing Linux and or the BSDs?
I think that you are on to the right solution.
Perhaps the thing to do would be to use two file tables. The first table would be used normally as it is today. It would represent existing files and provide the correct information regarding space usage etc.
The second table would only be used by the file system and the recovery utilty. The second file table would maintain the information of the files that had been marked for deletion and the file system would consult this table prior to saves so as not to overwrite the files that were marked for deletion.
When the disk becomes full, the file system should consult the second file table and overwrite the oldest file that had been marked for deletion.
Also, the recovery utility could consult the second table, listing the files that were marked for deletion but, still reside on the disk. Files selected for recovery could then be added back to the first, primary file table making them again available for the user.
I'm not sure how Novell does it but, the above method would yield the same behavior as the Novell system.
[x] Trashcan support
[X] Easy to use Windowing system - KDE
[X] Standard software install system - LSB, Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse
[X] Easy to use Windows filesharing - KDE, Samba
[ ] Easy support for video files and DVD - No answer
[X] Desktop company support - Red Hat, The Kompany
If this feature does in fact make it into .NET Server it will be a good thing.
:-)
You're right about Microsoft's "innovation". First Microsoft invented disk quotas for us then they invented this cool directory thingie and now they are inventing Salvage/undelete. Praise be to M$.
Filer is in fact a DOS based frontend utility for managing files on Novell Netware servers. Being a DOS utility, it is obvious that filer is as old as the hills but is still very useful. Filer's functionality has been included in the GUI tools that Novell has developed over the years and is included in the outstanding NWAdmin utility and the less appreciated Console 1 tool. Today, the utility Salvage is even included in the Netware Client and is accessed from a context sensitive menu on the client machine's desktop.
Salvage, the feature's proper name, is a tremendously powerful feature of Netware. Basically, when files are deleted from Netware volumes, they are not truely deleted. They are unlinked or renamed and become invisible to the clients but, the deleted files remain on the Netware volumes. When the Salvage utility is invoked, these files can be displayed, selected and instantly restored.
Deleted files remain on the volume until the volume runs "out of space", at which time the oldest deleted files are automatically purged as necessary to allow space for new files. It is important to note that the space consumed by deleted files is not reflected in any of the client utilities and does not count in disk quotas. This means that from the clients perspective the volume will show that there are 30 Gigs free despite of the fact that the volume is in fact full, due to deleted files.
Another interesting note is that deleted files retain their rights attributes. Files invisible to a certain user cannot be seen or restored by that user if they are deleted. Only users that had the appropriate rights before the file was deleted can manipulate these deleted files.
The deleted files can also be purged manually from individual directories or the entire volume. Purging can also be configured to purge the deleted files immediately which is the recommended configuration of temp directories.
This beloved feature of Netware has always been admired. The user community has always requested it in other OSes but, as yet, the only thing to even come close is an NT/2000 add-on called Network Undelete, from the folks at Executive Software, the same people that brought us Diskeeper. Unfortunately, it's still not quite the same.
Several posts have stated that this should be a simple thing to implement. I cannot speak to the ease or difficulty of implementing this feature. However, one does have to wonder how easy it would really be. Considering that Salavge is such an old feature on Netware, that there have been so many requests for it in other OSes and yet Netware is still the only OS to offer it, one must conclude that it is not really so easy to implement.
If you have found a developer that is willing to try to implement such a feature, I strongly encourage you to get them going, regarless of whether you want to be a test case or not. The community would love and appreciate this feature in Linux and any other OS.
I really like VNC and rely on it heavily but, it does have issues.
While security is not great, I don't see this as a major problem. It is simple enough to tunnel a VNC session which provides more than adequate security. This, however, does increase the bandwidth requirement.
Which brings us to the biggest problem, in my mind, with VNC. It still requires far too much bandwidth. Even TightVNC is still a bandwidth hog.
You mention RDP and X11 in your post. X11 is the absolute worst for bandwidth. Running something as simple as XMMS via X11 consumes up to 11Mbps. That's outrageous!!! RDP is far better than X11 but, it's bandwidth requirements are akin to VNC. RDP frequently consumes between 70Kbps and 200Kbps. Sure, it will work over a 14,400 connection but, given the extra bandwidth, both VNC and RDP will eat it up and on low speed connections it is very slow. In these low bandwidth situations it is even worse than PCAnywhere.
By far, the best protocol that I have seen for remote sessions is Citrix ICA protocol. Provided the bandwidth is available, this protocol will use up to 150Kbps bursts for very high resolution and color depths but, on average ICA uses between 20 and 40Kbps. With tuning such as lower color depth and resolutions and disabling animation ICA will work remarkably well even over a 14,400bps connection.
The difference in performance between ICA and any of the other protocols is phenomenal. High color, high resolution and high performance, plus it supports high security too. ICA has a similar effect on people that broadband does. Meaning that once a dial-up user has used broadband for a little while they cannot stand to use dial-up again, it's just too frustrating. A similar experience occurs when comparing ICA with any of the other protocols. The balzing speed and quality of the ICA session makes you very frustrated when you go to use VNC or the other worse protocols.
Unfortunately, Citrix ICA is proprietary and expensive. While it can be served from both Windows and Unix platforms it is primarily found in Windows environments. It is my hope that the VNC team will be able to come up with something similar to the ICA protocol. That would be awesome!
This will be number 54 if they officially issue a bulletin.
1. The first rule of Slashdot is to never miss a chance to slam MS and draw attention to its vulnerabilities.
2. Most Slashdot readers run Windows, whether they admit it or not. Many Slashdot readers also administer Windows boxes professionally therefore, such posts are important and informative.
IIRC PPTP was not available on NT 4.0 unless you installed the later released RRAS (Routing and Remote Access Server).
I would expect RRAS to also be vulnerable but, there won't be a patch for it due to discontinued support.