Slashdot Mirror

Neoware http://www.neoware.com/products/hardware/index.php makes some devices that can run Linux distro's or XPE. Fairly simply to set up for what you are trying to do, reboot to restore to a good image. It sounds like your biggest issues isn't going to be the software, os, or hardware, but the end-users. The more you provide them access to, the more of a support role you may end up in. Many community colleges offer beginner web classes that you may want to recommend they sign up for.

These things are really x86 PCs, with upwards of 64MB of memory. They're quite capable computers. The Neoware C50 is a desktop Linux system with no hard drive, for $259. The Wyse S50 is another comparable Linux box. Wyse even has a dual screen model. The HP model runs Debian. HP is having a sale - buy 3, get one free.

Neoware even has a thin client notebook computer. It's only useful when it has a WLAN connection. This is promoted as a security feature; if it's stolen, there's not much data in it.

This may be the way Linux comes to the enterprise desktop. To many companies, this is a cheaper and easier conversion than moving to Vista.

These things are really x86 PCs, with upwards of 64MB of memory. They're quite capable computers. The Neoware C50 is a desktop Linux system with no hard drive, for $259. The Wyse S50 is another comparable Linux box. Wyse even has a dual screen model. The HP model runs Debian. HP is having a sale - buy 3, get one free.

Neoware even has a thin client notebook computer. It's only useful when it has a WLAN connection. This is promoted as a security feature; if it's stolen, there's not much data in it.

This may be the way Linux comes to the enterprise desktop. To many companies, this is a cheaper and easier conversion than moving to Vista.

I hope you realize that Citrix has already dropped support for Metframe XP(a/e/etc) 1.0. Metaframe 1.8 has long since been depracated.

And just FYI, we could fit about another 10-20% more users on the same hardware when we switched from XPe to Presentation Server 4.0

But, if all you need is client drives and printing (don't need published apps, or printer auto-creation, or the management tools), then yeah, go with Terminal Services.

Everyone keeps asking about licensing, well here's how it works. You buy a Microsoft TS license (about $60-$80 I believe). Then, you purchase Citrix licenses, based on concurrency. Those will run you about $350 a piece.

I'd also recommend the thin clients from neoware (http://www.neoware.com/) which run Linux and you can pickup the Capio Ones for under $200 (with mouse and keyboard).

Total cost in mass production, not counting marketing, warranty, and other post-production costs:
Probably under $50, not counting monitor.
Monitor: $50 for new 15" CRT, significantly more for LCD screen.

http://www.neoware.com/ those nifty but expensive boxes run linux and connect to just about anything.. TS VNC CITRIX and a few others I think. We use 2 of them as kiosks in our sales office.

As a test for the s(h)ituation described anecdotally at the end of the initial post, my company has tested a Neoware device for just this purpose: to use RDP5 to connect to a Terminal Services server. They are well built, inexpensive (not cheap!) boxen that do the job. They also have a great management interface.

Although we did not go with them (we are doing a technology refresh and pushing apps back out to desktops... sigh...) I did wish that I could keep the box.

It's core is linux / running an X client to enable RDP. 1600x1200.

(And, no, I don't work for Neoware, just think that their product is most cool.)

--

WWJD? JWRTFM!

As a test for the s(h)ituation described anecdotally at the end of the initial post, my company has tested a Neoware device for just this purpose: to use RDP5 to connect to a Terminal Services server. They are well built, inexpensive (not cheap!) boxen that do the job. They also have a great management interface.

Although we did not go with them (we are doing a technology refresh and pushing apps back out to desktops... sigh...) I did wish that I could keep the box.

It's core is linux / running an X client to enable RDP. 1600x1200.

(And, no, I don't work for Neoware, just think that their product is most cool.)

--

WWJD? JWRTFM!

We use what we call 'netstations' here at Washburn University They have their ups and downs. Part of our problem is that students have reached a point in time where they hate the current setup, and different departments are furnishing their own labs with PCs. The current setup is getting too old to handle the applications we're using. They still have Word Perfect 8, no Open Office etc. The units are old and overdue for an upgrade, but now we're in a battle pc vs. thin client. Sure, we can use WinDD to get to a Windows NT environment, but students don't have that access.

We are slowly moving to a PC environment, but that may change in the near future. We've been testing some thin clients called NeoWare clients. The main advantage here, is that they are new thin clients, and not clunky, 8-24 MB RAM, no hard disk, thin clients we are using. All our stuff runs AIX with generic CDE, but we're moving to RH Enterprise in Fall 2005 with the new NeoWare clients. I believe we were given the chance to test one out. The main advantage here is that the OS is loaded from the hard disk it has built in and it has a video card that can handle flash animation (and supports better browsers). Most of our students use these for browsing the web. Wireless access has become fairly big here too, partly due to the limitations in the hardware we currently have. I do not have the main server specs to share, I'm not a part of that dept.

Hope this helps!

Seems to me they didn't do very good research on these lists.

Apparently they've never run into Neoware Thin Clients running Linux?

How is LTSP different from a diskless machine + a boot CD/Flash Drive/USB Drive with XDMCP query in the startup scripts?

Reading up on the LTSP "theory of operation", it seems that the above is EXACTLY how it works. I'm afraid that I don't understand what's new here. The addition of the MickeySoft "Terminal Services" terminology?

Now if only PCs could get Network Booting and hardware drivers into the firmware instead of having to tote around an extra data storage drive. Oh wait. PCs don't have firmware. $%(^!!! That's it! I'm going back to buying NEOStations.

We are just finishing off switching over our computer network to Linux - but we didn't need to wipe windows off anyone's hard drive. Here's how we did it:

• Built a small server and installed Fedora Core 1.
• Installed LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) and configured it for our system.
• Created boot disks for each computer that did not have a 'boot from network' option. I used Rom-O-Matic for this part.
• We also purchased some thin clients from NeoWare for new employees. These have a stripped down Linux distro on them and connect by opening a remote X connection. As our company grows, and the old pentium II and III boxes gradually die off, we will replace all of them with thin clients.

Here are the specs on the server. I have a better one being delivered soon, but this is the 'proof of concept' version:

• Emachine with 1ghz Intel celery processor
• 512MB RAM
• 80GB hard drive
• Nightly backup of home directories to external USB hard drive

The network currently supports 10 users, with usually 6-7 people signed on at any given time. We use Evolution as an outlook replacement, Open Office instead of MS office, and Mozilla for web browsing.

We have a pretty login screen with our company logo, and the face browser so you can click your picture to log in. Redhat's bluecurve desktop is great, and is a snap for any windows user to learn. The terminals start up WAY faster than windows ever did, and all the apps pop right up even on a pokey Pentium II machine. IN fact, my thin clients only have 64mb of memory and they work great too.

There were a few minor glitches or complaints about the UI, but in almost every case I was able to show the sales reps and employees how to get what they needed to do done.

So switching to linux CAN be done. The only drawback is when you've got windows apps that you have to use when there's no linux alternative. In our case, the accounting department makes extensive use of Quickbooks to handle our finances. We tried to emulate, use wine, crossover office, etc. but none of these solutions were either stable or robust enough to meet our needs. So I had to leave three boxes running windows so accounting can continue to use Quickbooks.

We also use our linux box as a Quake 2 server for lan parties after our weekly sales meetings! My boss is an older guy but he loves FPS shooters. The employees enjoy getting a chance to frag the pointy-haired guy every week :P

IGEL and Neoware (manufacturers of thin clients) have models coming up that in plain words are a thin tablet client:
They have I/O such as USB and touchscreen, of course a wireless NIC, but don't rely on harddisks and such.

These devices are of course only meaningful in an area with wireless LAN and terminal server capacity available. Examples:
hospitals, museums, (retail) stores, warehouses etc.

I for one miss better performance on these battery dependent devices (at least compared to a fat Tablet), but as mentioned in previous /. article, Hitachi is leading the way with fuel cell powered units. Wheeehaa!

IGEL and Neoware (manufacturers of thin clients) have models coming up that in plain words are a thin tablet client:
They have I/O such as USB and touchscreen, of course a wireless NIC, but don't rely on harddisks and such.

These devices are of course only meaningful in an area with wireless LAN and terminal server capacity available. Examples:
hospitals, museums, (retail) stores, warehouses etc.

I for one miss better performance on these battery dependent devices (at least compared to a fat Tablet), but as mentioned in previous /. article, Hitachi is leading the way with fuel cell powered units. Wheeehaa!

The minimal list in our case is indeed just a web browser (web based email). Some people have web-based CRM or MRP systems, some others use stuff like, for example, a customized Syspro's Impact Encore.

I'm aware you can do this sort of customisation and establish a Terminal Server in Windows; I've done it myself several times. However, it's much MUCH easier to do it with Linux, plus you're not worrying about licence management/violations with MS Office apps.

Not only that but you cant actually properly lock down a Windows Terminal Services session. There are always backdoors and tricks the user can do to get at the IE or some other apps since Windows security is laughable and many apps just will not run unless they have access to 1/2 of the system. If you restrict access to the IE then the bloody desktop wont run! I mean its just a nightmare.

Oh, and the whole Group Policy system is the most retarded thing ever invented. I mean noone has any clue what the hell is going on inside that thing and the results are totally unpredictable and completely resiliant to any sort of debugging (like most stuff in Windows).

...but desktop systems have rollouts only every e.g. 3-4 years rather than every e.g 2.

We find this much longer. I have some older solid-state IBM NetVista ThinClients (4-5 years) and before that some, believe or not, old DEC X-windows terminals which approach 6-10 years range, hopping along happilly. The only thing that wears out are keyboards and mice and those are dime a dozen (the old DEC keyboards are near-indestructible). I hope the trend continues, with more profound cost saving impact yet, since we started agressively pushing $300 specialized solid-state (no moving parts) clients like these. The linux embedded OS version of course. I expect 10-year service out of them (again excluding keyboards etc). There is absolutely no reason that I can foresee which would require anyone to upgrade these.

This is great to hear. Up till now, even though X has had remote display abilities built-in, it has not been at all practical to replace something like ICA or even RDP. The next step though is to get thin client manufacturers (maybe neoware's linux-based models?) to support this protocol natively. The article doesn't mention how large the libraries required for NX are, but hopefully it is something that could be added to existing thin clients.

Along with that step, it would be great to see "shadowing" support, which has been one of the killer support features of Metaframe (and now TS). The neoware devices have built in tightvnc, but it is not quite as good as ICA/RDP shadowing (NX probably wouldn't have been necessary if it was)

-Mark

The latest thin clients (with no moving parts) are Linux based.
The ones I've been playing with are from neoware. Flash based OS and everything either X or Citrix off a central server. This is the sort of thing that call centres are actually using now, along with some fairly large industrial corps like Lockheed Martin (who I have to deal with).

I believe it was Neoware that I saw when I was down there.

I work at a hospital, and we've begun deploying thin clients that run a citrix desktop. The servers are Xeons running win2k advanced server. The clients are from Neoware and run linux. We can shadow the thin clients at any stage of running, and flashing new apps to them is a breeze. The clients are quick, stable, and not overly expensive. Users love it because they can go anywhere in the hospital, sit at one, and get the same apps, the same desktop, and all their little customizations. Those of us in IS like it because they're simple to work with, and you can shadow them and assist users without hassle. They're also much harder for the users to completely f*ck up.

Neoware sold many X/ICA thin clients. I think they currently have one that runs linux as it's OS as well as ones that run win2000. I haven't been watching them as much lately as I've been replacing my neostations with PC's running Linux. Neoware

There is a company called Neoware that is already doing something exactly like this. They make linux based windows based terminals and need a small lite system. They have a subset of redhat linux on their flash chip. Their mini distribution is called NeoLinux. I think they might even have a distro that fits on an 8MB chip and has X windows, a citrix ICA client (used to connect to windows terminal servers with citrix software) and as I recall even netscape 4.7?!?