Timothy
Parker Consulting Incorporated
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Terminal emulators for UNIX and Linux Wanna talk about a boring subject? Telnet sessions and terminal emulators are not exactly the
thing of high-tech wows and breakthrough technologies. Still, when you have a bunch of people on Windows platforms
that all need to access UNIX or Linux systems, Windows’ telnet system is
limited and very rudimentary. Enter
these terminal emulation packages, all of which provide many more features and
capabilities than Microsoft’s basic telnet program. To test the terminal emulators, we set up a network with
two SCO servers (one OpenServer and one UnixWare) and two Linux servers (one
RedHat and one Corel), all networked together with 100Base-T Ethernet to ten
Windows platforms. The Windows
machines range from Windows 95, 98 and 2000 Professional through the Windows NT
4.0 Server and Workstation. Each
terminal emulation package was installed on one machine of each kind of
operating system (there were two of each operating system) and used them to
access all the servers. We tested
file transfers, terminal emulation, support for SMB and NFS, and scripting
capabilities where supported. Each
package brings something to the table, although there’s not a great deal to
separate them all feature wise. Attachmate Extra! First impression of Attachmate Extra: nice box, empty
inside. Contents of the box: one
CD-ROM and a license agreement. Second impression of Extra: very good set of
tools in an empty box! We tested
the Enterprise 2000 version of Extra, one of a family of products based on the
same engine. The “2000” in the name is because the product is designed to
run on Windows 2000 Professional and take advantage of the latest version of
Windows and its new features, although backward compatibility to other Windows
versions is included. The Windows 2000 platform adds some support to Enterprise
2000 that is lacking from some other terminal emulators, such as support for
Microsoft Terminal Services and Citrix Metaframe. The lack of a manual is annoying: why can’t companies
spend a few bucks and produce a reasonably good-looking documentation suite for
us? Sure, a lot of things work well
on-line, but we still want a manual! If there’s some feature we didn’t
uncover in this review, it’s because the product menus didn’t lead to it and
the documentation tends to make things hard to find. Extra Enterprise 2000 is a lot like Attachmate’s older
product, Kea! (there are exclamation marks at the end of most of Attachmate’s
product names, but we’ll drop them to avoid confusion).
There’s the standard terminal support for SCO ANSI and a whack of DEC
terminals, but no other vendor’s products (those expecting the classic Wyse 50
are out of luck). File transfer support is for Kermit (as its SuperKermit
incarnation), Xmodem, Ymodem, and Zmodem. FTP is also supported by a client.
Unfortunately, when you start a file transfer session, the terminal software
doesn’t seem to clue into this fact and you have to start the terminal end
manually. This is a bit unusual,
and requires more effort on the user than should be necessary. Attachmate Extra Enterprise 2000 is one of the more
expensive products in our roundup. While this may be worthwhile for those who
need to integrate to Windows 2000 Terminal Server or Citrix Metaframe, for those
working on older Windows platforms, the extra cost is hard to justify
considering the lack of notable features. Century Software TERM Century’s TERM has been around for a long time, and has a
respected reputation for quality and stability. The latest version of TERM is 6.27 and is compatible with
Linux and UNIX. TERM builds quite a
few features into its package, including support for NFS as both a client and
server (which few other packages offer). The
ability to act as an NFS server means that you can share files bidirectionally,
a useful feature in many cases. In addition, both client and server FTP programs
are included, allowing file transfers either way using FTP instead of NFS. TERM supports a good range of terminal types, including
some for mainframe connections like the IBM 3270 and 5250. There’s a long list
of standard terminal emulations, as well, including all the usual terminal
types. A very useful and solid
scripting language is part of the TERM package, and it allows you to map
keystrokes to a single key for triggering whenever you need. This allows you to
set up single-key login and session establishment sequences that automate the
process for user convenience. Keyboards
can be remapped easily, too, allowing for variation between systems. Print sharing is excellent, with both server and client
packages as part of TERM. You can
print on the host’s printers, or have others print on client-connected
printers, as you need. One of the
other notable aspects of TERM is the inclusion of one of the best manuals of all
the products tested, a model of completeness and readability. The ability to run TERM through UNIX and Linux is handy,
especially with the growing popularity of Linux. While most terminal packages will easily establish telnet
sessions with a Linux server, TERM goes a bit further by providing true
bi-directional capabilities with Linux daemons, all while maintaining the
classic UNIX compatibility. Esker Tun Plus Esker (who also own Persoft, manufacturer of SmarTerm) has
been offering Tun Plus for a while, mostly without making a noticeable dent in
the terminal software market (at least from our point of view).
The Tun Plus CD-ROM is all you get (no manual or supporting documenation)
includes three components. Tun EMUL
is the terminal emulation package, Tun SQL is an ODBC SQL access package, and
Tun NET is a set of networking tools and utilities.
We’ll ignore Tun SQL for this review as most database packages that
support ODBC don’t need this routine at all. Tun EMUL provides a good number of emulations, more than
most packages tested, as well as IBM 3270 and 5250. All the file transfer modes
(Xmodem, Ymodem and Zmodem) are supported, as well as an FTP client.
There’s also support for mainframe connectivity using IBM’s IND$FILE
protocol. The Tun NET package adds support for NFS and SMB, which
allows for bidirectional file transfers, printing, and FTP.
Print sharing works well as LPD/LPR. The system also includes a tar
version that runs under Windows, and can integrate into the Tun NET interface
quite easily for automating backups. Tun NET also includes a TCP/IP stack, but
it’s redundant on any Windows platform from 95 on (and the Tun stack seems a
little slower than Microsoft’s stack). The pricing for Tun Plus is a little on
the high side, making it difficult to see why anyone would choose this package
over some of the others. FacetCorp FacetWin We’ve looked at Facet Corp’s FacetWin in a number of
First Looks before, and use it in-house on our network for access to the UNIX
server. There’s a reason we use
it: FacetWin is solid, reliable, talented, and reasonably priced.
File sharing, for example, is done through Network Neighborhood instead
of a dedicated client, making UNIX to Windows file sharing as easy as Windows to
Windows, handy for new users who haven’t a clue about UNIX systems or FTP. FacetWin installs on both the client machines (Windows) and
on the server (UNIX or Linux). The
server component manages the file and session transfers better than a standard
telnet server would, and adds features like bi-directional printing and file
transfers to the system without using NFS. Oh, and there’s an excellent manual
with FacetWin, too. There’s all the standard terminal types available with
FacetWin, all coupled with a handy ability to create a desktop icon that will
log on to the UNIX or Linux server and take care of all the terminal setup for
you. You can also use these
features to provide an icon that links directly to a UNIX application, launched
in a window transparently to the user. A feature called Windows Watch can
monitor a session and correct terminal problems, as necessary.
Users get cut and paste UNIX to Windows (and vice versa) capabilities
that go beyond the standard telnet type, providing check boxes for many
abilities. Property sheets are associated with every session launched by icon,
allowing system administrators to easily configure printers and file sharing A recent addition to FacetWin is the Internet Modem Server
feature which allows UNIX or Linux modems to be shared by Windows users.
This gives you a nice way to easily pool modems for Internet access. The
entire procedure for a Windows user can be transparent, and the UNIX system
administrator can set everything up in a few minutes.
Sharing resources extends to tape backup devices on the UNIX system,
which can back up PC partitions. An e-mail server can be established that allows
e-mail to be moved between Windows and UNIX systems.
FacetWin is a talented package that we continue to rely on for its
features. Hummingbird Exceed Web Hummingbird’s Exceed has long been a choice for X client
software under Windows because it is as solid as these products come.
Exceed’s latest release is Exceed Web, which adds a whole new twist to
the Exceed product line. Hummingbird has developed a new protocol called Thin X
Protocol (TXP) designed to provide thin client support over slow connections,
including dial-up lines. With Exceed Web, most of the terminal emulations and X
client access features are now based on Java applets, a notable change to the
way we used to do things. The
approach has several advantages right off: speed, size of executables, and
ability to port to platforms. All the access to servers can be through a web
browser now, instead of pop-up terminal windows.
It takes a bit of getting used to, but the approach is novel and will
appeal to users who don’t care if they are connected to a UNIX system or not.
While many probably questioned the wisdom of converting to Java, there’s one
effect we noted right away: the terminal emulations are fast. Responses from the server seem to zip on-screen right away. There’s all the usual X client stuff in Exceed Web, such
as finger, FTP, LPR print-through, IRC, Gopher, and so on.
There’s a standard character terminal emulation window with basic
terminal types (including SCO ANSI). NFS support is part of the package. Exceed Web is one part of a new approach to access for
Hummingbird. Another product, the
JuMP Server, is a modular Windows NT and CORBA-based Web-to-host server that
delivers X Windows and other features to clients. We did play with JuMP, but since it’s not a direct
competitor in this roundup we leave it as a mention here. (But it’s worth
investigating JuMP is you have an NT shop integrating to UNIX hosts!) If you want X11R6 support on a Windows platform, you’ll
be hard pressed to find a better approach than Exceed Web. We loved the old
Exceed, but this changes the game completely.
Well done, Hummingbird! J River ICE.TCP Pro I have a soft spot for J River’s ICE series of products.
Ten years ago as I was managing a slew of Xenix and UNIX systems, ICE.TEN
provided a clean way for DOS and early Windows systems to easily access the UNIX
servers. The product was easy to
use, required minimal user training, and worked flawlessly.
I’ve used ICE.TCP since then on my production network, upgrading as
needed, and it still works flawlessly. ICE.TCP
Pro Version 5 is the latest release and bundles all the features of the ICE line
into one product. ICE.TCP Pro has a slew of terminal supported, including
several color models and bitmapped Wyse 160s. International character sets are
supported. File transfer capabilities are hidden for the most part, using a
drag-and-drop window to handle the file transfers in backgrounds without
operator interference. Anonymous
logins can be performed automatically, too.
Printing support is through LPD and LPR. It all sounds pretty standard, right? ICE.TCP Pro does
throw some flashy features at you, though. There’s automated network
installation from any Windows machine, allowing default setups and user
configurations without all the users getting involved (great for system
administrators). There’s Web browser support with the ability to embed
hyperlinks in the ICE.TCP Pro windows, as well as default telnet setups. And
there’s a macro capability which allows keystrokes to be recorded and played
back. While ICE.TCP Pro may not have the glitz and feature-rich
list some other products do have, we noted two things in our testing.
ICE.TCP Pro worked perfectly, and it’s priced to make it an attractive
option to the other packages. JSB Multiview 2000 JSB Multiview is a well-known and respected terminal
emulation package. It has been reviewed in several versions in these pages
before. The 2000 edition (Version 5
to most people) adds a few new features. The 2000 version adds support for
Windows 2000 Terminal Server as well as Citrix Metaframe, and a Web install
facility for larger installations. The last version of Multiview we tested added a bunch of
terminal emulations and the ability to customize windows for legacy UNIX
applications. In the First Look of
that product, we remarked that this feature could breath new life into old
applications by making a UNIX legacy application look like it was designed for
Windows. These features still stand
out as a strong point for Multiview. File transfers are with Kermit and Zmodem, and a drag-and-drop FTP client is part of the package. Multiview is one of the few products with support for SMB (although NFS support is lacking). Pass-through printing is very good and the support for SMB means that a Windows printer can be shared with other UNIX users as if it was a regular UNIX device. If you leave off the legacy application redesign
capability, JSB MultiView 2000 is a solid terminal emulation package.
With the legacy application toolkit, it becomes a much more valuable
product, allowing leveraging of all your applications (assuming you have the
energy and desire to do so). NetManage Rumba Rumba is a complete product line now offered by NetManage
(of TCP/IP stack fame from the pre-Windows 95 days). There are versions of Rumba for many purposes, including
connecting to mainframes, VAX, AS/400, and so on. We tested Rumba 2000 Office Edition, which is intended to
grant server access to Windows platforms. In
some ways, Rumba is more than we needed because it provides support for many
different platforms other than UNIX and Linux. Rumba provides a drag-and-drop file transfer utility which
employs FTP in the background, but there are no other file transfer options for
UNIX or Linux transfers. If you
happen to be connecting to an AS/400, VAX, or mainframe, there are batch file
transfers built in. Printer pass-through is good, with a preview mode to allow
you to ensure the print request will look good on paper, but there’s no way to
alter it inside the preview utility. There’s
also no sharing capability inherent in Rumba. One of the strong points of Rumba is for application
developers who want to create access from Windows to other target servers.
The support of most APIs allows a programmer to embed all kinds of links
within a Rumba-based applet to access server-based databases or other
applications. Database support is
very good. Our overall impression of Rumba was that we were using a
fraction of its capabilities access only UNIX and Linux.
That said, the product wasn’t as clean and easy to use as the other
character-based terminal emulators in this roundup. At $400 (additional costs
for the Citrix supported version) it’s a little expensive, too. Persoft SmarTerm Persoft’s SmarTerm has been around for a few years but
has a fairly low visibility for most users.
The SmarTerm family is made up of six different products, all with
different target markets (and prices) in mind.
Some of the family are specific to a platform, such as a Citrix-compatible
version, an IBM 3270/5250 version, and an X server.
SmarTerm Essential is the basic model in the series and provides
character emulation for UNIX and Linux servers. The number of supported terminals is reasonable: there’s
the SCO ANSI and Wyse 50, a DEC VT420, and then IBM 3270 and 5250 as well as a
set of VT emulations. SmarTerm fairs better than some packages with file
transfers through a drag-and-drop FTP client, Kermit, and Xmodem, Ymodem and
Zmodem implementations. Character support is not Unicode, but there is support
for four language sets (English, French, German and Spanish) as well as ISO
Latin. One of the key aspects of SmarTerm is the Toolbox, which
includes a macro language, keystroke recorder, and debugger for scripts.
Users can create hot spots in their windows, as well as create buttons
and new palettes. Mouse support
within a character window is good and most aspects of the system can be remapped
as you need. The IBM emulation
features are a strong point of the package, but for SCO and Linux character
emulation that’s not necessary. SmarTerm worked fine in our tests, although
the entire package seemed unremarkable somehow. Rasmussen Software AnzioWin Despite its presence in the market for a couple of years
now, Rasmussen Software’s Anzio and AnzioWin still are relatively unknown to
most users. That’s a shame,
because there’s a lot in the package, especially considering its price.
There’s a ton of features, some of which will remain hidden for most
users until they delve through the manual and encounter a mention, whereupon the
old “That’s a good idea” comment is likely to happen, again and again.
If there’s a sleeper in the group of products we reviewed, this is it. Anzio is a family of products for PCs, of which two (Anzio
Lite and AnzioWin) were supplied. AnzioWin
is the main product, with Anzio Lite a limited-functionality release.
We did most of our testing with AnzioWin, although a quick run-through
with Anzio Lite shows that it may well suit many user’s needs (especially at
its almost-shareware price). Installation is routine, and a nice feature is
Anzio works on every Windows platform we tested from the usual Windows 95/98
through to Windows 2000 as well as Windows NT 4.0 (it will also run on OS/2).
The most commonly used terminal emulation modes will be SCO ANSI and DEC VT100,
but there are quite a few more available including an enhanced emulation based
on VT220s with full color support and a wide combination of function keys (48 in
total). Pass-through printing is a nice touch, well implemented.
The Print Wizard accepts an incoming stream and processes it for any
Windows printer. Automatic reformatting for Windows printers means that
characters that used to be printed off the edge of a page (or just not printed
at all) can now be printed properly. Implemented
as a DLL, the Print Wizard is a slick piece of code.
It even allows MAPI printing to support redirection to Windows fax
devices, for example. File transfer capabilities are limited to Kermit, Zmodem,
and two Anzio-supplied utilities called ITX and I-system (which are simple
uploads). If there’s one unexpected feature that stood out in our
testing, it’s the support for non-Roman character sets.
We happened to be testing a version of Linux written in Mandarin Chinese
during the tests, and Anzio displayed the characters perfectly (according to our
Chinese-speaking user, anyway). There’s
support for a very wide range of other characters, as well, including Cyrillic
and Greek (as well as Unicode). It’s not just foreign character support
on-screen that’s impressive, but the ability to remap all the prompts and
menus that accompany Anzio to these character sets, too, making it an immersive
experience. If there’s a downside to Anzio it’s the manual, which
is good but not great. It is a
spiral bound affair lacking any graphical snap to it, more like a reference
manual from twenty years ago that a slick product expected in today’s
software. Still, it’s a small
concession. We liked Anzio – a
lot. Starnet X-Win32 Starnet’s X-Win32 is a relative unknown in the X server
and client business against the two powerhouses of Hummingbird and WRQ.
That having been said, it’s a shame that more people don’t look at
X-Win32 because there’s a lot to like at a price that competes favorably with
the other X packages, especially if you don’t need some of the extra features
bundled in with the others. Let’s start with some of the features of X-Win32. Version
5.0 is the latest release (and the version we tested after downloading from the
Starnet Web site). X-Win32 ran fine on all our Windows clients, including
Windows 2000, and connected to the four target X servers without hassle.
If there’s one thing noticeable about X-Win32 straight away, it’s the
speed. The package loads and
connects faster than any other X client we’ve tested.
The user interface takes a few moments to learn but it’s not a major
curve to surmount. Separate profiles for each user on a Windows system are a
nice feature. There’s a trade-off with X-Win32, of course.
The company decided to focus on the X client side of the package and
ignore features like file transfers and telnet support.
The argument Starnet presents is that these capabilities are all
available in other software, especially when SMB is in use, and therefore
building in those capabilities to X-Win32 would slow the product down, increase
its cost, and generally not be used too much.
We’re not sure we go along with the analysis, but it’s an interesting
approach. At $200, X-Win32 competes with most of the character-based
systems, let alone the X systems. It
certainly is less expensive than the other X packages we tested.
If you can live without the bells and whistles that WRQ and Hummingbird
package in, then X-Win32 may be a worthy investment for your system. WRQ Reflection-X Along with Hummingbird, WRQ has the X market pretty well
sewn up. WRQ’s Reflection X has a
well-deserved reputation for stability and quality. For this review, we received
a time-limited demo disk that WRQ makes available to anyone who wants to test
their software, but it comes with no documentation or support.
We reverted to a full bundled package we had on hand for the tests (same
release as the demo). Support for multiple protocols allow connection to UNIX
(through TCP/IP), and DEC machines (through DECnet) a little easier, but both
can’t be used at once. Reflection X is the primary X product, with other versions
adding some extra features like NFS support and some TCP/IP utilities.
Reflection X works just fine as an X client, and there’s some neat
features added to the package. One of our favorites is a roaming user profile that lets a
user’s preferences be retained for an X session regardless of which machine
the user is on. There’s also inherent multiple-monitor support which we found
handy with Windows versions that allow multiple monitors. The terminal emulations are very good and diverse, and
there’s graphical versions of most TCP/IP utilities available for users who
don’t know how (or don’t want to) use the command line.
That’s no big deal, really, but it’s a nice touch for users.
Reflection X has been optimized for use over dial-up lines, too, which makes
this often painfully slow experience not too bad (although still aggravating for
the most part). Defining custom X application interfaces is easy with a
wizard, and a performance monitor helps get the best behavior from your
connection and system. We did have
a couple of lock-ups on our Windows 98 and Windows 2000 clients, although not on
Windows 95 or NT. The exact cause
of the lockups wasn’t determined, and they occurred at different times and
activities, which means it’s not likely to be caused by the server end. We had
to reboot the clients to reset the system and reload Reflection X.
Like Hummingbird’s Exceed, Reflection X is not an inexpensive package,
but it does bundle everything an X user could desire. Wrap-up Each package accessed all the servers without problems, and
there were no faults in any of the terminal emulations (we tried SCO ANSI, Wyse
50 where available, and DEC VT100 on each). There was no point in measuring
performance of these packages, as there was only marginal differences with all
our attempted measurements. Choosing
a terminal emulation package based on performance is not a valid criteria. So how do you choose?
Two ways: purely on price, and on additional features.
There are several packages that seem to be priced much higher than the
rest, all without offering any significant reason to spend the extra money.
For those, you can basically write them out of the equation unless you
have a vested interest in the companies and their software.
On pure price, it’s hard to beat Rasmussen’s Anzio Lite at $25.
It will give you all the features you need for terminal emulation with no
down sides. Additional features are a funny thing: what appeals to one
user will be of no interest to another. For
those who want to make legacy UNIX applications look fancy, both MultiView and
FacetWin provide excellent tools for making the old character based applications
look a little newer. For
flexibility in client-server SMB support, Century’s TERM is a good package. If
you need X client abilities, Hummingbird’s Exceed Web is remarkable, edging
out WRQ. For the price-conscious, Starnet’s X-Win32 is a good value but lacks
some important features. So which package gets the coveted Top of the World?
An underdog in many ways, Rasmussen’s Anzio impressed us with the
price, toolset, features, and overall value.
If you don’t need MultiView or FacetWin’s extra features (both
packages are standouts in the feature department), Anzio would be our choice . Attachmate Extra! Summary: Solid product but unremarkable.
Windows 2000 support very good, but price a little high if you don’t
need these features. TERM Summary: Linux and UNIX compatibility, bi-directional printing, NFS, and FTP, and a solid package as well. Tun Plus
FacetWin Summary: Server-based component adds bi-directional printing, file sharing, internet connection sharing and more. Windows interface is excellent, with quick-design icon property sheets to simplify user’s lives. Exceed Web Summary: X clients to the max! Fastest X software we’ve ever seen, in a surprisingly nimble and small Java applet package. ICE.TCP Pro Summary: Very good terminal support, network installation,
and drag-and-drop file transfers at a reasonable price. Multiview 2000 Summary: Workman-like terminal emulation and file transfers
are just the gloss for the legacy application redesign capability.
Also handy is SMB support. Rumba 2000 Office Summary: Expensive character-based terminal emulator, but
very good developer toolkit for application access and great for mainframes,
VAXs, and other larger systems. SmarTerm Summary: Good terminal support, file transfers, and
scripting abilities. For IBM emulations, this is an excellent package.
For SCO UNIX and Linux, it doesn’t distinguish itself from the rest. AnzioLite $25 Summary: Surprisingly complete and flexible software, great
print-through capability, and support for many character sets. X-Win32 Summary: Inexpensive X client package that is fast, but
lacks file sharing and telnet capabilities. Reflection X Summary: A complete X client/server package in one, with
very good performance over dial-up lines. A
few lockups soured our testing.
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