For Windows 2000/XP systems, most software will be installed and removed through group policies. This means that the Systems Management Group can assign software to a computer or a group of computers and when the system is rebooted, the software will be installed. The system needs to have plenty of disk space for the software installation.
If you need a particular package, enter an assist request and provide an account number that can be used to purchase the software. If the software is freely available or if we have a site license for it, then it can be installed within a manner of minutes. Otherwise, after a purchase requisition has been processed, the software can be assigned to your system. You will need to reboot your system to install the software.
After the software is installed, log into the system and run the software. It will do another mini-install which will install files in your profile. For laptop users, it is very important to make sure you run the software so the mini-install occurs before you remove the system from the network. Below is what the installation looks like:
Available software is listed below, along with brief descriptions.
Hummingbird Exceed is an X-Windows package that allows you to access the UNIX systems via X-Windows. It also gives you access to X-Windows applications. There are other network utilities included such as a telnet application and an FTP application. When this software is installed several things will be configured for you. On the Desktop, there will be an icon called Hummingbird Neighborhood. If you double-click on that icon, then there will be an FTP session configured, telnet sessions to starburst (for BI-tech) and Xterminals to several UNIX systems in MMM. VMWare systems will not have Exceed installed. For information on using Exceed, see Chapter 7.
PuTTY is currently not deployed through the group policy feature. This is a freeware secure shell (SSH) program. It is used mainly outside the security perimeter to connect to the Gatekeeper system, which in turn allows you to connect to the MMM systems. For more information on using PuTTY, see Chapter 7.
WS_FTP light edition is an FTP program that is installed on many of the VMWare systems. It is an easy-to-use GUI FTP Utility. It is recommended that you use this program instead of the command line FTP utility that comes bundled with Windows. For more information on using WS_FTP, see Chapter 7.
The two e-mail programs being used in MMM include Eudora and Netscape Messenger. These two programs are POP e-mail clients and can download your e-mail from the MMM e-mail server. For more information on configuring Eudora and Netscape Messenger, see Chapter 6 of the MMM UNIX Computing Guide.
Meeting Maker is the calendar software adopted by UCAR. The Meeting Maker server is maintained by Finance & Administration while the client software is maintained by MMM. For more information, see Chapter 14 of the MMM UNIX Computing Guide.
Microsoft Office 2000 Professional contains Word (word processor), Excel (spreadsheet), PowerPoint (presentation software) and Access (database). Microsoft Word has become an unofficial standard for documents. PowerPoint is very popular to use with infocus projectors to give presentations.
StarOffice is similar to Microsoft Office. It is also available on Linux and Solaris systems for interoperability. StarOffice contains word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software.
FileMaker Pro is another database application (besides Microsoft Access).
Acrobat Reader is used to view PDF files (Portable Document Format).
Adobe Acrobat is used to create and view PDF files. It also includes Adobe Distiller which allows you to convert Postscript files into PDF files.
Adobe FrameMaker is authoring and publishing software. It is also available on the UNIX systems.
Adobe Illustrator is vector graphics software.
Adobe PhotoShop is used to edit images.
Internet Explorer and Netscape are available for web browsers. Netscape can also be used as an e-mail program. Internet Explorer is not deployed through group policy at this time.
Macromedia Dreamweaver is an HTML editor for designing and managing web sites and html pages.
IDL, the Interactive Data Language, by Research Systems, is the ideal software for data analysis, and visualization. We have a site license for IDL, but it may take a few days to obtain an individual license.
Mathematica by Wolfram Research is used for mathematical calculations. We currently use a license from SCD.
TeX is a typesetting system intended for the creation of manuscripts, especially those containing a lot of mathematics. PC-TeX is a PC-based TeX processing software.
Ghostview and Ghostscript are used to view postscript files.
Norton AntiVirus software is used to prevent our systems from getting infected by computer viruses. For information on using Norton AntiVirus, see Chapter 6 .
Roxio Easy CD Creator is currently not installed via the Group Policy feature. For information about how to use Roxio, refer to Chapter 9.
WinZip
A zip file is a file that contains one or more files compressed in the ZIP file format. WinZip is used to extract and create zip files.
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Last Modified: 22-Jan-2003