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in Debian you could use this command.

/etc/alternatives/x-www-browser http://www.joshfrank.com/main_articles

This is a symbolic link to the default browser. I don't know in how many distro this...

Check out this article.
How to setup a Linux Time Server

I don't know about the VNC route but if you just want to use built in Xwindows features you must have Xwindows on both machines. The VNC route is worth looking at if your going accross the internet...

You might want to check volume settings. I had this problem with a client once where there was no hardware problem. It turned out the the microphone was plugged in a creating feed back. You may want...

Are you running Xwindows on the client machine? You might want to look at these instructions.