The ultimate guide for a multi screen work set up

Before I wanted this for myself, I was completely unaware of all the nuances that go into the building of a quality home office. From data speed, to connection type, to the type of processor, memory and screen quality, you need to think about everything. If not, you might buy a bunch of stuff and you'll have 2 or 3 parallel screens showing the same thing.

So first of all, you must chose your PC right. That is crucial. Actually we will focus on laptops here as in case of a PC, what you simply need is a powerful video card with enough monitor ports and that is it. 

So, in case of laptops, if you wanted to future proof your system, but also wanted to make it simple, I would only go with Intel based laptops. There is USB-C 4.0 coming to newer laptops, but it's 40gbps speed is not transferable to DisplayLink capabilities. So even with the latest AMD Ryzen AI 9 laptops, you won't be able use one single dongle, to bring out quality image onto multiple moniotrs, but to also be attached to multiple peripherals.
If you don't know what I am talking about, let me clear you. 

• There is USB-C port with DisplayLink protocol, to transfer an image, that uses way more CPU/GPU, then a thunderbolt port. It has most often 5 or 10gpbps max speed. Often we can find 2 or more on laptops not having a Thunderbolt port.
• Then there is Thunderbolt, Intel's native port of 40Gbps speed multi transfer protocol and we can also find at least 2 on most high end laptops. It requires for it's functioning way less CPU/GPU load. 

The Display Link capability - that you can often see over USB-C ports.

So, if you wanted to get eye-friendly, you must also choose 2 quality monitors. I would recommend either a 24 or 27 inch screens, that has 2, 2.5 or 4k resolution. At least 75hz vertical refreshing rate, but 100 or more would be even better. Low blue light and AntiFlicker features and a matt screen surface. If you worked with text, writing, coding, home labs, screen clarity and screen sharpness will keep your eyes fresh. The more you must force your eyes to read a character or the more you must blink to reduce eye fatigue, the least productive you'll be. So buying a cheap 27 inch screen with HD1080P, just because it is 27", won't do any good for you. 

So if you wanted to run 2 24" or 27" inch screens at 2K or 2.5K at 100Hz, well, here is the first hiccup, if you chose only Display link/USB-C for your laptop. You cannot, due to limited transfer speeds and dock speeds !!! Each display needs around 9.3 Gbps raw bandwidth speed, while your usb-c has 10gbs max!
So imagine, that if you had this limitation, but in the meantime, you wanted to plug in an external HDD, charge your phone and use your keyboard and mouse on the dock too, you would be slowed down drastically ! What if you wanted to charge your laptop in the meantime, but have internet connection going through that same cable too !
Now you understand your data transfer rate limitation importance.
When you have a thunderbolt port and a thunder bolt dock, you arrive anywhere and you plug in one single usb-c thunderbolt cable !
When you have a display link pc with a display link alt mode docker, well, for full functioning, you might plug in your keyboard, mouse, RJ45 into your PC and the usb-c is used only for the 2 screens, but even in this case, you won't be able to run them at 100Hz !

So now, there is the docking device. You must choose your monitors well, because due to my experience, docking devices that can support Thunderbolt 3/4 and running 2 monitors at high refresh rates, while supporting 130w or more laptop charging, coming rarely with 2 HDMI ports. Often 1 HDMI and 2 or more Display ports. This simply means, that you have to add 20 or 30bucks more to a similarly capable only HDMI monitor price. Choose a monitor that supports display port !

Then there is the compatibility, flickering, transfer issues, latency, firmware updates, number of ports and more. I highly recommend to buy the same brand of laptop with the same brand of docking device.
Asus has the Thunderbolt Master 5 or the Tripple 4 Dock. Lenovo has the Thinkpad Thunderbolt 4 with 100 or 230W charging. Dell has the WD19TBS and the WD22TB4.
Look around amazon if you wanted, to find 3rd party devices. Look at the comments and you'll see that there are always some comments about incompatibility. You might not have issues, or you might ! Having two monitors and a laptop, than a docking device giving you hell. Go for the obvious choice !
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What laptop would I choose ? Intel came out with Thunderbolt 5 already, whopping 80 to 120gbps transfer rates. Meaning, if docking stations catch up, you might be able to use 3 27"/32" 4k /8k monitors at 75 to 100Hz refresh rates. The importance of this in case of eye strain is enormous. Pixel density, high hertz, and picture quality is essential.
If battery life, size and money weren't an issue, I would go with the HP ZBook Fury G11 16" - NVIDIA RTX 4000 Ada, 128gigs of ram. It would be around 6000€, having the latest GEN14 I9 14900HX and an RTX4000 with 12gb of vram. Probably with like 1h battery life at heavy works with it's 95Wh battery but 230w charger !
Then at lower budgets, There is the Thinkpad Gen13 Carbon X1, what has also Thunderbolt 5. It comes with the latest Core Ultra 7, so battery life will be way more elevated. I would prefer this one actually. It is exactly half the price, it has half the memory, but 64gbs is more than enough, especially at 8553 speeds. It has integrated graphics, so no GPU will be draining the battery and way lighter. Extremely solid device. If you do only some office work, writing, research and would not need heavy duty specs, there is the latest Galaxy book, what if I am not mistaken, also comes with Thunderbolt 5. It has only 16Gb ram, so I would for sure not use that device with Win11.
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So the final verdict, while also posing 2 questions. What did I choose, did I regret it, what about the OS ?

I went with a budget PC. A DELL Inspirion 14 Plus 7440. It has very limited ports, so I already have a USB dock with it. However, it has the Thunderbolt 4 port, so using one single port with a docking device is charging my PC, splitting my screen output to three, giving me internet, mouse and keyboard too.
It has the GEN 14 2023'Q4 I9 Ultra CPU / 32gb of Lpddr5 6400. This is where the problems start. For me at least. This CPU is way too new to make any linux distro running on it with zero hiccups. I don't like suffering and hiccups, incompatibilities, freezing and unexpected crashes, slowing down and so. On my R5 5600G Desktop, I have this habit of running Debian 12 with a solidity of the best Tank you've ever seen. I virtualize daily, using a lot of scripts in my VMs, I often install and uninstall modules to test out stuff, do use Gimp, basic apps like libre office, mailing and browsing, with tons of tabs open and 7-8 apps running in the meantime of the VMs. It never ever crashes, stops or does anything unexpected. Never !!!
I installed Ubuntu on my new laptop. Tinkered around with, tried to find a solution. Had loads of issues, out of the box. Then tried Fedora. It worked for an hour, then started having issues. Then finally tried just in case, Debian Trixie. All of these distros had major issues of software crashing, some software installing so slowly, that for instance VMware Pro took 90minutes, while it's function was instantaneous. The next article, I will describe all the issues and solutions I tried. Then, went for the obvious choice. Win11, that did not want to install either. So I had found out, that I need to pre-install the RST driver, but the good one and not even the recommended one, but the latest one. Then of course, I needed to install all the drivers, do all the windows updates, all the mess I dislike about windows. Then of course I wrote a script to delete, uninstall and disable all the mess windows installs and proposes out of the box. I have a windows family key booted on the Bios, so it basically now works fully functionally. Except the WIFI. The Dell updater did not do a good enough job, to find the latest update, so I had to pull it down manually from Dells website.
This is to say, if you wanted a high end PC with linux running on it with zero hiccups, choose a Core I7 VPRO or CORE I9 probably going with either Gen12 or Gen13.
I never ever had found a way, to run ubuntu with it's GNOME on any of my PCs. Freezes, shutdowns and unexpected actions were always and always present. Running Debian, Fedora, Mint, Manjaro or even ARch ? Well Zero issues !

Failed - Virus Detected / Impossible a télécharger - Virus detecté

---

As at work my major OS is Windows, I come across all sorts of mishaps, incompatibilities, and weird behaviors. At home, I’ve been running and updating the always-latest Debian, and nothing ever happens. Of course, I'm not joined to a domain, nor are my admin rights/GPOs/user rights handled by 10 different people, nor am I using a mix of connections from Wi-Fi / cable local / VPN. Those all mess things up.

This time, a problem from 2020 popped up on a near-latest Windows 11: a failed download issue.

Failed - Virus detected.
In French: Impossible de télécharger - Virus détecté.

 

But actually, there is no virus. It’s just abnormal behaviour from Windows toward its browsers, caused by the antivirus. It can go haywire and we don't know why. You can have Windows Defender and it can still happen. Online, most people complain about McAfee. I experienced it with Kaspersky. Most probably, this happens—like always—due to the mixture of hardware components, browser version, Windows version, and the latest Windows update. Just to say: we don't know.

You might succeed with tricks like turning OFF SmartScreen, doing a Windows update, then turning it back ON, then restarting your PC like 5 times. Some people do a total uninstall of the antivirus, a registry clean, a cleaning of browser data, and a fresh reinstall of the latest Windows update—then the antivirus. They succeed. Some do the same and don’t!

In a company environment, you don’t just totally uninstall anything security-related, especially since you have to act fast with the least restarts possible. Some of the PCs are fast and snappy, with instant lock-in of distant connections. Some might need obligatory user interaction to connect in any case—TV, RDS, AnyDesk, or VNC.

I found that this is the easiest way to solve the problem, with the least harm and the fastest. Till now, it always worked.
First, you either have to modify or create a registry key and restart your PC afterwards.

 

1. Start Registry Editor.

2. Locate the following registry subkeys: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Attachments

3. Right-click the ScanWithAntiVirus DWORD value, and then click Modify.

4. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
   

5. Exit Registry Editor.

6. Log off and log in to Windows to make the change take effect.

7. Open or save the program or file that you failed before.

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Please NOTE that the image shows the Microsoft ideas of doing the change in HKEY_CURRENT_USER. That is not going to work. You must act on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHNIE like I had written it !

 

 

This actually turns the Aggressive scanning procedure to a more contextual based scan. It won't turn it off. That would be bad. It makes it acting smarter.

Company IT Technician VS. IT-Outsourcing Entrprise Grade Support

I recently changed jobs, and my eyes have been blown wide open. Actually, until now, I did all sorts of odd jobs, most of them not even in tech. Things like brick and marble laying, working as a sports shop technician, and bike mechanic. I also worked in oil recycling, where we refined used cooking oil to resell either for research purposes or to established companies to create lubricants or biodiesel.
I am also a coach for trail running and expedition counseling. Additionally, I do a lot of health advisory work, as I have, through 25 years of constant self-education, a much wider view on health than most one-shop doctors, naturopathy practitioners, or even regular doctors.

In terms of IT, I was mostly peeking into projects, doing hands-on stuff like helping set up basic infrastructures, doing open-source to Microsoft migrations (and vice versa), cleaning up messy setups, and loads of physical and software-based repairs.

The thing is, when you work for just one company, after a few days you get the hang of it. You know what types of employees they have, what sorts of demands you might get. You know the physical servers. You know the physical PCs and equipment. You know the types of software used and what could become problematic. You understand how their infrastructure is set up.
After a while, you get totally comfortable and can solve any issue. You know that you can't really mess up — you aren’t doing anything too dangerous, thanks to your ever-increasing internal knowledge.

But when you are handling 10 companies, each with 5 to 10 locations — all installed by different people, not just IT specialists — your initial view, especially during the first three months, is total chaos.

Let me give you an example.
I have companies working with multiple Internet Service Providers. Some use multiple ISPs for redundancy, some delegate different services to different providers. Some sites have a single entry point, others multiple entry points.
In the server bays, sometimes — if I'm lucky — I find only Cisco switches. But that's almost never the case! If I walk through one of our bays, I usually find a messy mix: old Netgear, Cisco, Fortinet switches... then in different buildings, a random mix of manageable and non-manageable Huawei and TP-Link switches.

I might find a FortiGate firewall — but sometimes it's a Meraki. Sometimes they use Windows-based VPN services, paid VPN services, or the built-in FortiGate VPN from the firewall.
Printers could be simply connected directly to the network — or there could be a full print server setup: CUPS, PaperCut, or Windows Print Services.

WiFi?
Well, in very old buildings where there’s no network cabling, WiFi is set up in a messy mesh from the first connected router.

Backups? Again, a different story every time.
Sometimes there's just a simple Windows backup running to a local mini-server. Other times, multiple Synology NASes with VEEAM are on-site. Sometimes, those NASes are there and there’s also Azure Backup running.
Some companies still run Windows Server 2008. Others have a mix of all possible Windows Server versions plus a couple of Ubuntu servers.

Some companies have everything covered under an M365 plan. Others have a chaotic mix of physical on-premises servers and M365 — with or without directory synchronization.

And this mess? It doesn’t even scratch the surface of the 1% real catastrophes IT technicians face when managing big infrastructures.

A simple task like user creation becomes a nightmare.
In a one-shop setup, it takes 3 minutes: create user, add to groups, done.
In a multi-site environment, it’s different every time and full of procedures:
You have to create the user, add to the necessary groups, wait for GPOs to apply, handle printing setups, configure cloud and physical file sharing (which could be a mix of Google, SharePoint, local servers, or others), manage VPN settings, check whether the Windows server syncs with M365, and set up email filtering (Barracuda, Cisco, Mailinblack, etc.).
And of course, set that filtering either in Windows Server, Lighthouse, or both!

When you're handling all this, your mind is just expanding every day.
Your level of experience jumps, Diablo-style — 10x faster than a regular one-shop IT guy.
You collaborate daily with area experts: network engineers, phone system engineers, Android and iPhone specialists, cybersecurity experts, and so on.

---

[The goal of this write-up is simple:]
I'm advising anyone starting out in IT to join a company like this for a few years.
Your knowledge will become so strong that passing a Network or Sysadmin exam will feel like a flash!
Going for a degree afterward will also be ridiculously easy — even doing a Master’s in Cybersecurity or Networking.
Understanding real infrastructures gives you real knowledge.
Things like CMD line, PowerShell, Cisco/Huawei/Fortinet/Netgear supervisory interfaces will become daily interactions.
Writing reports and technical documents will be second nature.
And when you stand in front of professors with four degrees, you'll already have 100 times the practical experience.

Of course, specialized jobs are much more tranquil: easy, slow-paced.
But those are very elitist and highly sought-after.
The "throw-you-in-the-water" positions — the high-pressure, fast-learning ones — are often reserved for young, enthusiastic, and fast learners. They are usually team positions, meaning there are more openings.

{What I strongly recommend though: don’t settle for Level 1 or Level 2 remote tech support.
That will ruin your daily life.
You’ll be stuck on the phone, unplugging mice and recovering Excel files remotely — all day long.
Often (especially in the US), your access rights will be heavily admin-blocked, limiting your ability to actually learn.}

Where I work, if I have 30 minutes free and don’t understand something, I can remote into any server, check connections, investigate event viewers, call a site to turn on a PC, or even drive there myself with my company car.

---

My Recommendations:

• Keep your health in check: do sports, eat well, drink plenty of water, and sleep properly.

• Add 2–4 extra work hours per day to explore and learn.

• Avoid screen time before and after work.

• Focus hard during work, but disconnect afterward.

• Once you are comfortable, limit your working hours to the strict minimum.

• Start learning new skills independently.

• Prepare for exams!

---

You know, if you gave me a Windows Server with three redundancy servers, a nice BAY, 100 PCs, AD-Azure connection, a couple of NAS+UPS devices with, Azure Backup, and some extras, I could easily handle it in 15–20 hours per week.
Right now, I'm doing 50–60 hours of work weekly to master what I do.
Thanks to my health-conscious lifestyle, I still run every day and do strength and conditioning daily.
It’s tough during the week — my family misses me — but it's not permanent. On weekends, I am 100% with them anyway!!!

I hope this advice helps you and gives you some ideas for future-proofing your place in the IT world.

---

Install MS Teams on linux

For certain situations using teams might be very essential. Right now I am dealing with different kind of government related officials and their way of communication, especially when going through documents together with screen sharing, is MS TEAMS.

I personally prefer Telegram, Signal, Jitsi, Apache.Openmeetings or any open source free service. Full web integration might be time to time itchy, but in most cases, if the client has a well working Firefox, Edge or Chrome, they work fine.

NOTE:In browsers WEB-RTC must be turned ON/Enable for online video calls!
I usually have this disabled due to IP leaks and vulnerabilities.

"A WebRTC leak occurs when the WebRTC protocol inadvertently exposes a user's actual IP address. These leaks typically happen due to the STUN (Session Traversal Utilities for NAT) requests that WebRTC uses to discover the public IP of devices behind a NAT firewall !"

If you did not want to install TEAMs, you can use it in a web browser as client or host too, if had an MS account !

Otherwise, the answer is yes, you can install it on any linux device. Here is what I do for debian based distros. I personally don't use Ubuntu, but it will work on that too. On my main machine I run Debian, have a Mint laptop and another small notebook with Fedora, what would be slightly different.

Install or Launch Microsoft TEAMS on Linux

### Install TEAMS by APT
    ## V1
        $ curl https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | sudo apt-key add -

        $ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/ms-teams stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/teams.list'

        $ sudo apt update

        $ sudo apt install teams
    
    ##V2
        $ sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings
        $ sudo wget -qO /etc/apt/keyrings/teams-for-linux.asc https://repo.teamsforlinux.de/teams-for-linux.asc
        $ echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/teams-for-linux.asc arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture)] https://repo.teamsforlinux.de/debian/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/teams-for-linux-packages.list
        $ sudo apt update
        $ sudo apt install teams-for-linux

====================================
### Download .deb or APPIMAGE

        https://github.com/IsmaelMartinez/teams-for-linux/releases
        Install .deb with apt for solving dependencies
        If downloaded an appimage, just chmod +x on it and double
        click to launch .
====================================
### SNAP Install
        $ sudo apt update
        $ sudo apt install snapd

        $ sudo snap install teams-for-linux
====================================
### Flatpak Install
        $ sudo apt install flatpak

        # REPO:
        $ flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

        $ flatpak install flathub teams-for-linux
                                  teams.for.linux
 

You can also use the graphical install for flatpak and snap.                               
                        
 

Mass OpenSSH Decryption - Linux Bash Script

Running all the decryption models on a file is a fast and efficient way to unlock an openssl coded file, document, binary or anything, if you were not sure, how it was encrypted. You can do it with this command :

$ openssl enc -d -aes-256-cbc -in secret -out decrypted.txt -pass pass:vgrohhfyek0wkfi5fv13anexapy3sso6

 

However, to insert all the cipher commands one by one, would take a good 15 minutes. 


Cipher commands (see the `enc' command for more details)
aes-128-cbc       aes-128-ecb       aes-192-cbc       aes-192-ecb       
aes-256-cbc       aes-256-ecb       aria-128-cbc      aria-128-cfb      
aria-128-cfb1     aria-128-cfb8     aria-128-ctr      aria-128-ecb      
aria-128-ofb      aria-192-cbc      aria-192-cfb      aria-192-cfb1     
aria-192-cfb8     aria-192-ctr      aria-192-ecb      aria-192-ofb      
aria-256-cbc      aria-256-cfb      aria-256-cfb1     aria-256-cfb8     
aria-256-ctr      aria-256-ecb      aria-256-ofb      base64            
bf                bf-cbc            bf-cfb            bf-ecb            
bf-ofb            camellia-128-cbc  camellia-128-ecb  camellia-192-cbc  
camellia-192-ecb  camellia-256-cbc  camellia-256-ecb  cast              
cast-cbc          cast5-cbc         cast5-cfb         cast5-ecb         
cast5-ofb         des               des-cbc           des-cfb           
des-ecb           des-ede           des-ede-cbc       des-ede-cfb       
des-ede-ofb       des-ede3          des-ede3-cbc      des-ede3-cfb      
des-ede3-ofb      des-ofb           des3              desx              
rc2               rc2-40-cbc        rc2-64-cbc        rc2-cbc           
rc2-cfb           rc2-ecb           rc2-ofb           rc4               
rc4-40            seed              seed-cbc          seed-cfb          
seed-ecb          seed-ofb          sm4-cbc           sm4-cfb           
sm4-ctr           sm4-ecb           sm4-ofb           zlib 

 

LET'S WRITE A SCRIPT

 

$ nano mass_decrypt.sh

 

In the script:

• Basically you just have to replace the password with your password, if you had it.
• Put your input file in place of input_file.
• Change output directory name if wanted.

-----------------------------------------------------

#!/bin/bash

password="vgrohhfyek0wkfi5fv13anexapy3sso6"
input_file="secret"
output_dir="decrypted_attempts"

# Create output directory
mkdir -p $output_dir

# Get a list of all available OpenSSL ciphers
algorithms=$(openssl list -cipher-algorithms)

echo "Starting mass decryption with all available algorithms..."

for algo in $algorithms; do
    output_file="$output_dir/decrypted_$algo.txt"
    echo "Trying $algo..."
    openssl enc -d -$algo -in $input_file -out $output_file -pass pass:$password 2>/dev/null
    if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
        echo "[+] Success with $algo! Output saved to $output_file"
    fi
done

echo "Decryption complete. Check the $output_dir directory for results."

-----------------------------------------------------

$ chmod +x mass_decrypt.sh
$ ./mass_decrypt.sh

Here you go, either you are looking for one particular file, maybe one particular string, you can filter with grep if needed. 

DATE Chnaging python script

 I had a bunch of files that I smartly named by using a date format of DAY / MONTH / YEAR. The format was this "22_12_2025_" .
Except when you put them into name order, they get sorted by days first in a hectic monthly and yearly order and not by year and month, then day. Here is a python script to sort out this basic issue.

 
```python

import os
import re

# Path to the folder containing the documents
directory = "/home/levi/Documents/date"

# Function to convert date format from DD_MM_YYYY to YYYY_MM_DD
def convert_date_format(filename):
    # Use a regex to match the date pattern at the start of the filename
    match = re.match(r"(\d{2})_(\d{2})_(\d{4})_", filename)
    if match:
        day, month, year = match.groups()
        # Reformat to YYYY_MM_DD
        new_date = f"{year}_{month}_{day}_"
        return filename.replace(match.group(0), new_date)
    return filename

# Iterate over each file in the directory
for filename in os.listdir(directory):
    old_path = os.path.join(directory, filename)
    
    # Skip directories and only process files
    if os.path.isfile(old_path):
        new_filename = convert_date_format(filename)
        new_path = os.path.join(directory, new_filename)
        
        # Rename the file if the name has changed
        if old_path != new_path:
            os.rename(old_path, new_path)
            print(f"Renamed: {filename} -> {new_filename}")
```

VMWare automatic TOOLS update / Install issues on Guest #linux-host

Update 04/07/2025 :
VMWare keeps having issues under debian after updates with VMWARE Tools.
You can download it here for each client os if needed:

https://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/latest/
------------------------------------------------------------

There is a simple solution if you cannot install the needed VMWare tools for shared folders, shared clipboard and improved speed and compatibility from the latest VMWare Workstation Pro.
Make sure that you have the latest VMWARE PRO and VMWare OpenVM Tools installed...

$ sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools-desktop
$ vmware -v

 

Then you make sure that your virtual machines CD rom / sata and all is in working order. Remove Floppy drive if needed. Remove CD / DVD if needed and READD it.

Launch VM. Selon your operating system, you simply download the necessary ISO from here, !!! inside the VM !!!:

https://packages.vmware.com/tools/releases/latest/

In Windows, it is easy. Double Click the ISO downloaded, launch setup.exe and follow the install. I preferably would install the full package.

Here you go, installing the latest VMWare Tools when the Workstations pro fails. 

 

_dnhyper