By Fredrik Brattstig @virtualbrat
18th October 2022
IGEL is just about to release a new Rolling Release firmware, and this time it is a BIG update!
The release webinar for the
IGEL Community (https://www.igelcommunity.com)
presented by IGEL’s Sebastian Perusat and Christian Werner can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niuos5G2iH0
Let’s categorize the news!
Azure Virtual Desktop / Windows 365
Microsoft Teams offloading stability improvements
A lot of work has been put into optimizing the optimization of Microsoft Teams in AVD/Windows365. With the current version that is implemented in this firmware, you can expect greater stability, and enhanced video experience. With this version, the below image represents quite well the quality of video streams that you can expect:
General User Experience improvements
There have also been great improvements in audio and video playback within the session. You can now enjoy watching video material with great playback quality. You can also enjoy crisp audio and video playback enjoying your favorite youtube clips or Spotify playback in AVD / Windows 365 sessions! It has been validated by multiple customers that the new version greatly increases the User Experience. By the way, IGEL has now implemented a new version numbering for the AVD client, and the current version will be “igelrdp3 version 1.1.0”. (You can check the currently running version by opening a terminal and issuing the command /services/avd/bin/igelrdp3 -v)
Universal Virtual Webcam
A new and unique feature has been added to IGEL OS, which allows you to create a general overlay of your webcam, which applies a selection of wallpapers or background blur to the WebCam feed. With this universal tool, you can now enjoy Background Blurring or virtual background to ANY webcam feed, in ANY Unified Communications app, even if that app specifically doesn’t support this.
If you want to use the Universal Virtual Webcam feature, simply just enable the feature (IGEL Setup->System->Firmware Customization->Features->Virtual Background for Webcam) and then configure your settings in IGEL Setup->System->Registry->multimedia->virtual_background
Citrix Workspace App 2207
Citrix Workspace App has been updated to version 2207 and has added the features of Citrix App Protection and Composite USB Redirection.
Citrix App Protection enhances the protection against KeyLoggers and Screen captures of sensitive data. Keyloggers will only see encrypted keystrokes and give no useful output. The protection for screen captures will just show a blank window in the area of the protected application
Composite USB redirection allows you to split composite USB devices. This is very useful if you have devices, like dictation devices for instance. In certain cases, you want to separate what parts of the USB device stay on the local IGEL OS endpoint and what parts are forwarded. With a dictation device as an example, those generally consist of multiple USB devices Audio Input/Output, Mouse trackball, and control buttons. With the Composite USB redirection, you can choose to only forward the control buttons to the remote session and leave the Audio Input/Output and the mouse trackball in the local operating system. This gives a nice split of the different hardware types in the dictation device and allows you to select the more optimized Audio and Mouse channels in the HDX protocol while forwarding the buttons to the remote session using USB redirection.
Additionally, the Support for e911 calls is implemented, which gives the possibility to do Emergency calls via Microsoft Teams.
VMWare Horizon 2206
Screensharing with Offloaded Microsoft Teams is now possible and support for composite devices is in there too.
HP Anywhere PCoIP 2207
This is an interesting addon. IGEL has for a long time had Teradici PCoIP client integrated into IGEL OS, we were even the first thin client operating system to the market to support Teradici PCoIP Ultra with our own UD3 and UD7 thin client hardware. Since Teradici was acquired by HP, the merge of Teradici PCoIP and HP ZCentral Remote Boost is now a fact. With this newly implemented client, both those connections are integrated into the HP Anywhere PCoIP 2207 client. I will put them in the test bench ASAP!
Additional features and updates in this firmware!
- Kernel Update to 5.17 – Enabling addressing a broader range of hardware
- Updated DisplayLink driver to 5.6.1, enhancing the support for docking stations based on DisplayLink technology
- Firefox Browser updated to 91.13
- Chromium Browser updated to 105
- Zoom VDI plugins are updated! Choose from 5.11.2, 5.10.6, and 5.8.4 based on your infrastructure needs
- Cisco Webex Meetings VDI is updated! Choose from 42.2.10.7, 42.6.8.5, and 41.12.5.12 based on your infrastructure needs
- Cisco JVDI 14.1.2 and Cisco WebEx VDI 42.8.0 is also included.
- deviceTRUST Client extension 21.1.300
- EPOS Connect 7.2.0
- HPLIP Printer 3.22.6
- Ericom PowerTerm 14.0.3
- Fabulatech Scanner for Remote 3.0.1.0
- Thales / Safenet 10.8.1013
We also added official support for the DELL Optiplex 3000 TC, so now you can enjoy IGEL OS on even more variety of DELL Thin Clients.
I strongly recommend you download the 11.08.200 firmware either using the firmware update too in the UMS console or going to www.igel.com/software-downloads to get your copy.
Especially if you are using Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop or Windows 365, as the new improvement will give huge improvements to the User Experience!
The firmware will be released (hopefully 🙂 ) later today the 18th of October 2022.
That’s all for Today, Stay safe out there
/Fred
VirtualBrat 