The Best Things in Life Are.......Open Source!

Perhaps you have heard this two-word term bandied about on the radio, on TV, and on the internet, but never knew what it meant. So what exactly is this thing, "open source"?

Open source software is software that is not only free, but who's "ingredients" are open to the public. It cannot be owned by any person or organization; rather, it is freely "owned" by the community of computer users that we are all a part of. By keeping the inner workings of the software (the "source code") open to everyone, people are all welcome and encouraged to modify and improve upon that source code. The only stipulation is that if you improve or modify the code, your version of the source code must also be open to the public.

Thus the name "open source", as the source code is open to all for use and modification. It's sort of a groovy, communal approach to software development. Staunch capitalists might scoff at the concept, but it is the reason why great public domain websites such as Wikipedia.org are so successful. We all "own" Wikipedia, and by opening its contents to everyone in the world, we all can expand and refine it for the common good. Maybe hippie ideals finally have found their day in the sun, albeit 40 years later.

At any rate, like Wikipedia, there are great pieces of software out there that just so happen to be open source. Think that a lack of corporate oversight and capital incentive makes for an inferior product? Think again! These days, there are some open source applications that are as good or better than similar commercial software applications.

I'd like to make you aware of several that I've come across. Don't be fooled by the lack of a price tag on any of them. In this day and age, at least on the internet, sometimes the best things in life really are free.

OpenOffice
www.openoffice.org

Open source or not, OpenOffice is the most popular alternative to Microsoft Office, period. Some now even claim that OpenOffice is superior to the Microsoft product (which can retail for as much as $500). The OpenOffice website boasts that OpenOffice is "...simply better software for writing...drawing...spreadsheets...presentations...information."

Regardless of how close it has come to Microsoft Office in terms of functionality, if you can't afford to buy Microsoft Office for home use, you should absolutely install OpenOffice instead. One word of caution, however: while OpenOffice can open many Microsoft Office files at home, you may have difficulty opening OpenOffice files with MS Office applications at work.


Paint.NET
www.getpaint.net

I dedicated an entire Tech Tip to this one last year, actually.


PuTTY
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

My web host let me know about this one a few years back. At the time, I was in need of a Telnet client that uses the SSH protocol. What I ended up with was this suite of tools (including a secure FTP client) that are open-source, clean, and stable. While the FTP client isn't graphical (you'll need to know the text commands), it is handy when you're away from your home computer and need a quick-and-dirty FTP client for file transfers.

From the main page, click Download. Then on the Download page, select the EXE file below "A Windows installer for everything except PuTTYtel". This is the full suite, and the version you want.


Firefox
www.mozilla.org

In last month's "Security Dance" Tech Tip, I mentioned two of the top free web browsers. One of the two, Firefox, is also open source. Spearheaded by The Mozilla Foundation, Firefox is the second most popular browser on the internet (trailing only Internet Explorer). Fans of Firefox rave about its superior security features, improved performance, and rich feature set when compared with Microsoft's ubiquitous browser.


Thunderbird
www.mozilla.org

Also part of the Mozilla Project but lesser known is Thunderbird, an open-source mail client similar to Microsoft Outlook. According to the Mozilla website, Thunderbird boasts "...safe, fast, and easy email, with intelligent spam filters, quick message search, and customizable views." If you are annoyed with Microsoft Outlook Express on your home PC and don't have the money (or the patience) to install the full Microsoft Outlook, consider this app.


Audacity
audacity.sourceforge.net

Ardour
www.ardour.org

Are you a starving musician who wants to record and edit music at home, but doesn't have the scratch to even buy new guitar strings? Or maybe you're a regular schlub who just wants a simple, clean MP3/wave file editor for putting together audio clips for a slideshow?

If you're the former, then Ardour is for you. You are already aware that "digital audio workstation" (DAW) suites like Pro Tools, Cakewalk SONAR, Cubase, and Logic costs hundreds of dollars. Luckily for you, an organization of people has been developing an open source alternative to these industry goliaths for several years now. As DAW suites are extremely sophisticated and hard to duplicate, it is impressive that anyone would attempt to create an open source DAW. I have not had the chance to check out Ardour myself, but from what I've read about it, industry folks are impressed with it. While it may never reach the level of popularity, prestige, or even functionality of Pro Tools, Ardour is absolutely worth a look by anyone who wants to set up a home studio on a budget.

If you're the latter, then you should download a copy of Audacity. This application edits single MP3 and WAV files much the same way Sony's Sound Forge application does. A rich set of features from the simple (cut-and-paste, fade in/fade out) to the more specialized (pitch shifts, normalize, compression, reverbs, wah-wah, flange, etc.) are all available. Using both applications side by side, I have found Audacity to be a stable and fairly intuitive alternative to Sound Forge. Audacity also made CNET's "The 10 Best Downloads of 2007".

EXTRA TIP: If you decide to check out Audacity, after you download and install the application, you will need to install an additional file called "lame_enc.dll". Click here for instructions on downloading and installing this file.


Pidgin
www.pidgin.im

Also listed as one of CNET's "10 Best Downloads of 2007" is this handy app. If you're someone who likes to do instant messaging over the internet with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), ICQ, MSN Messenger, Windows Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, IRC, or one of the litany of other chat clients, you might consider switching to this one. With so many different chat clients and protocols in existence, it may be impossible to get all of your friends onto one platform. Pidgin works with all of them. Simply enter your account information for each of your chat clients and Pidgin lets you chat on all of them at the same time. There are other multi-platform chat apps available on the 'net (Trillian is the one I've used in the past), but this is the first open source application I've seen to offer the same functionality.


SmoothWall
www.smoothwall.org

Here's an interesting idea: take an old PC that you're not using anymore, even if it's an old Pentium II, and turn it into a robust hardware firewall to protect your entire home network. Sounds like a good idea if the firewall software is $80. Sounds like a great idea if the software is open source! Kudos once again to CNET for the great tip.


Linux
www.knoppix.org
www.ubuntu.com
www.fedoraproject.org
www.opensuse.org

Last but certainly not least is the most famous open source software of them all, and the biggest threat to Microsoft's operating system (OS) monopoly: Linux. Those who like Linux love it. Those who dislike Linux tend to compare it and its predecessor Unix to the homophone of Unix. Switching from Windows to Linux is a practical, philosophical, and even cultural change akin to converting from Christianity to Buddhism. Not only will you be disconnecting yourself from most of the applications and system tools that you and almost everyone else uses daily, but you are effectively choosing to limit your support base to a relatively small number of people who actually know and understand how it works.

But nobody says you can't dabble in the Zen world of Linux in your spare time even if you're a slave to Windows during the work week. After all, Linux doesn't cost anything to download or install. If you have multiple PCs at home, why not install Linux on one of them and see what all the excitement is about? In fact, erasing an old, plodding Windows PC and installing a fresh copy of Linux on it might breathe new life into it. Some versions of Linux (referred to as "distributions") run substantially faster than Windows, and can make an antiquated PC run nearly as fast as a brand-new one does on Windows Vista.

There are many different distributions of Linux available. I included four of the most common in the links above.

Knoppix is the best for a total newbie who simply wants to see what Linux looks like. What's unique about the Knoppix distribution is that you can get it as a bootable "operating-system-on-a-CD-ROM". Simply create your own Knoppix CD, then boot your computer off of it to load the Knoppix Linux OS into memory. When you're done, pop the CD out of the drive and reboot. You can explore a full-blown version of Linux right on your own computer without installing it or changing anything on your hard drive!

When you're ready to reformat a computer and do a fresh operating system install, consider one of the other three: Fedora, openSUSE, or Ubuntu. Each distribution has its own pros and cons; only the most devout Linux-heads will be able to elucidate the differences for you. But hey: you can't learn how to swim unless you get in the water! If you take the plunge with one of these three, at least you'll know you're working with one of the most popular versions of Linux available.

For SysAds: Deploying Enterprise Vault

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in a related Tech Tip, I was recently charged with leading the rollout of Symantec's Enterprise Vault to all 4,210 Outlook users in my organization. One of the first things I noticed when taking on the project is that there doesn't seem to be a simple "how-to" guide for actually deploying Enterprise Vault to a base of active users. (At least not one I could find after spending some effort searching the internet.)

After much work, this is the procedure that we came up with.  Keep in mind that almost none of our users were running Cached Exchange Mode, a prerequisite for EV, prior to the rollout.  Here it is, for those of you who may be looking to roll out this system to your company or organization...

~~~~~

How to Roll Out Symantec Enterprise Vault

1.
Make sure all of your clients have at least MS Office Service Pack 2 installed.

2.
Create two user-based group policy objects called “Enable Cached Exchange Mode” and “Disable AutoArchive”.

The first one should look like this.

Note that this GPO calls a login script.  You can find a version of this script here, including an excellent explanation of what it does and how to use it.

The second one should look like this.

Once you have these GPOs set up, apply them to your user accounts.

3.
Try to give as much time as possible between steps 2 and 3.  You need to ensure everyone gets the Enable Cached Exchange Mode policy before hitting them with the next policy.  (See Notes section below for more info on this.)

Once everyone is running Cached Exchange Mode, create a computer-based GPO called “Install EV 2007 Client Exts”.  It should look something like this.

Once it is set up , apply this GPO to the appropriate computers.

4.
Ensure Use mailbox store defaults is checked off under the "Exchange General" tab in Active Directory for each of your users.

If you have a lot of users with non-standard mailbox sizes, use this handy tool to make bulk changes.  I like it.  Actually, it's a nice tool for making all sorts of bulk changes to Active Directory objects.  But I have verified that it does work specifically for the "Use mailbox store defaults" switch.

Also, if you're unsure which of your users have non-standard mailbox limits, here's a handy script we found.  According to its author, it "lists all mailboxes that have their limits changed to bypass store defaults (mDBUseDefaults=FALSE), and lists the 3 attributes above if present."

5.
After all the client extensions are installed, add the user to the security group set up in Active Directory specifically for your Enterprise Vault users.  (You would have created this security group when you first installed EV on your Exchange server.)  This lets the message server know that this user needs to be “vaulted”. The account will get added to EV sometime in the next 24 hours, depending on what you specified in your EV installation.


Notes 

• If any clients aren't on Cached Mode when you install the Outlook Client Extension on them, their Outlook will stop working. They will get an error message when starting up Outlook, then the application will close. If this happens, you will have to manually set up Cached Mode for them to fix the problem: go to Control Panel, select Mail, click on E-mail Accounts, click Next >>, click Change..., and select Cached Exchange Mode.
• Make sure your users know they can’t use the Archive feature of Outlook anymore. AutoArchive will now be shut off, but if they try to manually archive messages that are already archived by EV, they will be unable to open those messages.