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Do you have sound or not? If so how do you have that setup and how long did it take you to figure out how to do it?

Out of curiosity which display manager are you using and do you allow users to choose a window manager? If so which ones?

Looking at NeoWare's site I can not tell if the thin clients come with monitors or speakers. I also can not tell if you can change the linux distro on them. Which one of their thin clients did you go with and what do you like and dislike about it? What all different things can you change software wise on the thin clients?

Are you using rdesktop for anything? Do you know if and how well it works on the thin clients?

Sorry for all the questions, but I just love LTSP type stuff.

I have two machines on my work desktop: P4 2.6, SuSE 9, 3 video cards, 3 x 17" monitor, many virtual desktops on each. P4 2.6, Win2k Server, Headless. Through the magic of RDesktop, I access the Win2k server for Outlook, and Visio. Aside from that it is used as file storage and IIS testbed.

RDesktop works as well as or better than the Windows or Mac term-serv clients. However, if you want full color (>256) and full sound support, you'll need WinXP or .Net server, its support for RDP 5.1 allows this.

I very very rarely have to attach a monitor to the Windows server, I often have multiple RDP sessions running, say on my laptop and on my desktop. You can configure X hotkeys to remain in effect within the RDP session, allowing you to run the remote desktop fullscreen with no borders, and still use hotkeys to switch virtual desktops (shift+left/right arrow for example).

Windows multi-head support is miles behind X, IMHO, and the 3 head setup is a huge productivity gain. If my lame desktop machine had any more slots, I'd totally slam more video cards in it.

We also use Term Services and RAdmin (www.famatech.com) to administer our production server farm, very convenient.

WinXP Pro has "Remote Desktop Sharing", so enable that and simply use rdesktop from your *nix box. It's that easy. If you want your home directory mounted on your Windoze box, then use SAMBA on your *nix box as a PDC (Primary Domain Controller) and have your Windoze box log in to this domain (You can then setup SAMBA to automatically mount the home directory on the Windoze box as Z: or whatever). That should do it.

I've got a headless Win2K box sitting under the desk at the office and use MS's Remote Desktop Client to connect to it from my Mac. It'll let you share you Mac's disk drives and printers with the remote machine although for security's sake you may want to use Samba instead.

From Linux I use rdesktop. There is a nice Gnome GUI available for it if that's your bag. rdesktop has proven to be very stable and usable. You can get rdesktop for the Mac via the Fink project if you want to avoid the MS client on Mac.

I've found both work well, even over dial-up connections.

Or you can get a Windows XP machine, and buy WinConnect Server XP. It allows you to have up to 21 Terminal Server connections on Windows XP.

It works really well. I'd also suggest using rdesktop on Linux and the Windows Remote Desktop Client on the Mac.

Remote Desktop is much better than VNC, especially when used over the internet because VNC is not encrypted at all. Remote Desktop includes built in 128 bit encryption.

Five simple steps for migrating an office to Linux:
1. Build "beefy" Windows 2003 Terminal Server with apps that existing Windows users "have to have"
2. Install favorite Linux distro on all workstations
3. Install rdesktop on all workstations allowing access to legacy Windows apps
4. Wean users to Linux applications at comfortable pace
5. Nix Terminal Server

1) Stay low profile, solve as many of your own problems as possible. There have always been a few of us running Macs at work. We had one guy who insisted on trying to force MIS to actively support us. He almost wrecked it for all of us before he left.
2) Don't boast or advertise. Just get your work done.

This may not work for you but it's something worth considering before doing anything drastic.

I don't know what no one has really talked about using both. If you want linux on the client use rdesktop to connect to a windows box with terminal services for the software you can't use on Linux or try CrossOver Office the other alternative is to have Windows on the client and use WinAxe or another X server to conenct to Linux. If you don't like thoes ideas you can also use Open Source Windows software

Almost good. krfb is the server which, as you already pointed out, doesn't support RDP. krdc (KDE Remote Desktop Client) is the client which does support RDP (using code from rdesktop)

Is there a reason they have to run Windows?

Take a look at the K12 Linux Terminal Server Project. With relatively new machines you can be up and going in 2 hours (not including plugging the machines in). I put this in our business lab at the high school and it's been a dream to run. I never have to worry about viruses, and updates/installations are done once. To install a new machine you plug it in, go to the BIOS and tell it to do a network boot. I don't have to worry about any license issues either. If you need Windows, you can also use RDestkop to access Windows Terminal Services.

K12LTSP also comes with squid and for filtering squidguard and Dan's Guardian.

One problem that I've seen with Deep Freeze is when the latest worm comes out. Sure you can reboot your machine and it is clean, but if there is just one machine on your network still infected, you'll become infected again.

Microsoft Terminal Services require orders of magnitude less bandwidth because it works at the toolkit level (as in, "draw a button and a drop-down menu"

I don't think this is what it does. I've worked a little on RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol), used by MS Terminal Servers, and from what I saw, it does indeed send pixmaps (and text strings, which the client renders). What the protocol does have is 2-level caching - there's a memory cache of bitmaps (so the server can say "draw cached bitmap 14 at this position"), and a persistent disk cache (so that next time you connect, the server might not have to send those bitmaps the first time it draws them).

If you're interested, check our the source code to rdesktop.

...warts and all. And remember what happened to ultra-secure VMS after Microsoft got their paws on it?

...it's better to use Microsoft's own Terminal Services Client for PPC instead. It's significantly faster, although not cross platform, of course.

Maybe Microsoft's client isn't cross-platform, but there are alternatives: www.rdesktop.org.

Earlier versions (1.1) gave me some problems with random crashes, but 1.2 seems to be rock solid. Makes life at work a lot easier, especially with the new 'tsclient' GUI front-end for it that comes with KDE.

I used to have a annoying loud PC in my bedroom and it was very difficult to sleep with it on, so what I did was to place it in the basement and use it as a terminal server.
For my bedroom I built myself a not-so-dumb terminal. I used a VIA processor based motherboard and run it diskless.
All I did was fit a CD-ROM so I could boot a minial homebrew Linux based on knoppix and Morphix. Once booted up it logs in automatically and launches Rdesktop which allows me to login to my server in the basement over 802.11b.
This works great and I sleep much better now!

How about this one?

You could also use VNC or similar.

Of course, I formatted my laptop when I got it at my current job and installed Gentoo on it, even though everyone else in the company is using Windows 2k/XP... Gotta love rdesktop for those apps (and) you just have to use.

I must say I gave up mostly on the alleged compatibility of open-source software with MS Word. There was always something not right in the presentation. Most of the MS Word stuff that I receive is forms from management and outside partners; those people apparently don't know how to make PDF forms.

We have a solution: we use rdesktop to access a single Windows 2000 machine from our Unix desktops, and we run MS Office and Acrobat on them.

It's funny; today someone at work knew I had a Mac and was asking me about it. He's thinking of getting a new machine and so he's pondering a Mac this time around. He asked me if he could connect to work (via VPN) the same way he does from Windows. I happily told him yes he can especially now that Mac OS X natively supports VPN, and he can also use VNC and even a WTS client. Not only can he do everything he could do with his old Windows box, he can have a decent terminal to work with (cmd.exe sucks) and has all the perks of running UNIX (running remote X sessions, ssh, etc). He said one of the main reasons he was pondering a Mac was for its multimedia capabilities (Apple SuperDrive DVD Burner, iMovie, iPhoto, etc). He looks pretty convinved now that he knows all the tools are out there on the Mac for work as well as play.

...he want to use thin Linux desktops to run M$ software.

In which case he wants rdesktop. You can run it on thin boxes in about 16MB OK, more if you want to cache fonts and stuff, down to about 8 if you take the time to optimise the living daylights out of everything.

If the place is so pro Microsoft, (s)he should fetch a copy of the GNUwin2 ISO and install stuff from it everywhere he's allowed to. And tell the nice workers about it. When the next unheralded MS virus invasion happens, they'll still have tools they can use. When they want to do something like run text from frame to frame, they won't need to buy Publisher, just use OOo. When they want a graphics program, GIMP will do a lot of stuff without a $1500 outlay. And so on. After a while, they'll be sufficiently reliant on random FOSS tools for day-to-day work that to deny its integrity would be self-evidently foolish.

As for an overpriced remote video/mouse admin over tcp box, they go for $300 and up, they are called Windows systems, they run the terminal (remote desktop) client that is available for Windows 95/98/Me/NT4/2000/XP/2003 and the server is included free for remote admin of Windows 2000/2003. Or you can use rdesktop www.rdesktop.org from a Linux desktop system running X11 to connect via RDP to do the same thing.

It works fine; 0 complaints from me.

Considering how much space winshit takes up, and the innability for specialised projects to modify it you are faced with a serious challenge.

If I had to do it, I would install Linux on the tablet pc with an svgalib client for VNC or terminal server. It will enforce "on premisis" use. VNC supports SSL if you need security.

Make sure to use every available security option and see if you can get modified 802.11a cards "shifted" to another frequency. It won't be perfect, but it will be more effective than WEP.

rdesktop is a free terminal services client for Unix/X11 based platforms.

Or use rdesktop, which works with Windows' (2000+) built-in remote desktop software. Should do sound too. And run faster than VNC.

unless either linux gets an RDP client

Oops, something went wacky there. Here's the correected version...

The name of the protocl is RDP, Remote Desktop Protocol. There's already an RDP client for Linux if you need it that works great with Windows 200 terminal services.

However, Citrix ICA is still years ahead of RDP in terms of bandwidth utilization and flexibility. Furthermore, there's also an compression tool that apparently matches Citrix in terms of bandwidth utilization, although its still in beta. RDP is good, but its certainly not the best.

The name of the protocl is RDP, Remote Desktop Protocol. There's already an RDP client for Linux if you need it that works great with Windows 200 terminal services.

However, Citrix ICA is still years ahead of RDP in terms of bandwidth utilization http://www.medialogic.it/projects/mlview/>and flexibility. Furthermore, there's already an , although its still in beta. RDP is good, but its certainly not the best.

You don't need this to support MS's Remote Desktop Client...

rdesktop has been doing this for a while. Try it at http://www.rdesktop.org/. I use it to connect to Windows 2000 servers and Terminal Services servers without any problems. If I remember correctly, XPs RDC is the same protocol as the aforementioned products.

Give it a shot.

Yeah, Never going to happen

And, of course there is not a citrix client for any unix varient

Better yet, so long as you're running win2k or better on the boxes in question, rdesktop.

You're right. Terminal services is faster than VNC because it's based on RDP (see http://www.rdesktop.org/ for more info), but there's nothing particularly new or innovative about it.

What I'd like to see is some sort of open-source RDP server.

Preach on, brutha.

You do relise that there are ways of getting anyone and everyone involved in creating Open Source tools for education. Make sure that everyone knows that you can contribute whether you're in Microsoft's backyard or across the globe.

OSS tools for education. Hmmmmm.... Let's ponder for a few minutes on this, shall we?

1 - We end up with a standard set of baseline tools that all educators in the US (maybe Canada, too) can use. The same grade book means more consistant results reporting.

2 - Educators and students will be exposed to Open Source software, and can contribute them selves via bug reports. (As well, junior programmers can even contribute code ;^D).

3 - Using/contributing to OSS builds community (potentially across the country), which IMHO is sorely lacking from todays curicula.
As well, the tools themselves provide education in how computers and networks function. The same cannot be easily said about Closed Source Software.

4 - There's no reason to abandon Windows immediately, since you can run Windows and use Linux apps anyway (X termial for Windows of some sort), or even reverse the roles by using Terminal Services(This little utility helps in that regard). That creates a relatively painless migration path. It also shows kids that there's more to IT than Windows and Macintoshes.

These are benefits in addition to those espoused by Linux advocates. Sometimes the best competitive features of a tool are not it's price.

Soko

If "terminal server" (hah! that meant something completely different before MS usurped the term) is your only goal, you may want to try rdesktop under the X emulator under MacOS X. I think it'd be lighter weight.

I use rdesktop to access some corporate goop that only runs on Windoze, and it's gorgeous. Unlike the MS terminal server client, you can even use weird screen resolutions like 700x500 to make apps fit in your host window without scroll bars.

I just love how this is always the last question from a zealot when he's been proven wrong. Allow me to answer, yet again

How, exactly, was said zealot proven wrong???

It doesn't exist. You need a real, business OS to run these tools.

It's called rdesktop, and it works beautifully for those of us that are forced to administer W2K machines, but don't want to be forced to run it on our desktop. Go back to redmond and sit in your cubicle for another year. Check back with us then, and we'll see if you have any more brilliant comments to post.

I used to think that there would be some things lost from moving to an all linux desktop machine such as the ability to terminal server over to a 2000 TS. Well this is no longer the case. I found a small 50K program called rdesktop that allows any linux machine to make Terminal Server connections to Windows servers. This software comes installed by default in the K12LTSP linux distribution. A direct link here.

From inside a windows os there are also a number of ways to connect to linux hosts. You can use a windows compatible X client such as X-Win to connect to a server with Linux Terminal Server Project software installed. Using X gives you the ability to pipe information through an encrypted connection you can setup with ssh/openssh.

rDesktop
GPL'd, works on Linux, *BSD, even solaris. Connects fine to XP, 2k, NT4.

HOBLinkJWT
Java based TS client. Works fine against XP, 2K, NT4, from many oses.

Remote assistance or administration or whatever Microsoft calls it these days work fine with rdesktop. I use it regularly to access my XP pro at work from my linux machine at home.

I suspect so since the licence terms seem to imply that any system you access an XP system from must have either a XP or 2000 licence. Of course this would mean you couldn't access a XP system using Microsoft's own RDP client for WinCE.

For those of you who don't know RDesktop is a nifty little open source RDP (Terminal Services) client for UNIX.

There is a RDP client for UNIX/Linux. It's called RDesktop and it works quite well.
http://www.rdesktop.org for more info.

There is a RDP client for UNIX/Linux. It's called RDesktop and it works quite well.
http://www.rdesktop.org for more info.

Could you kindly point me to the FreeBSD version? No FreeBSD version? OK, how about a version for Solaris? None? So, what else does it run on besides Microsoft?

www.rdesktop.org

Based on what I've read on Apple's site about this the only client software available is for other Mac's. While that's fine in a lot of cases, most IT shops are Windows based and having a native client that could manage Mac servers and desktops would do nothing but encourage adoption of Apple computers. Plus it'd allow me to remote control my Mac from my Win2k box at home. VNC works for now at least.

Having said all that Microsoft does the same thing. There's no MS Remote Desktop/Terminal Services client for non-Windows OS's either. However there are third party options at least. Here's hoping someone does the same for Apple remote desktop.

John

BTW, if you consider Win2k TSE servers, small Linux boxes (ie. all you need is X running) with the free (GPL) and lightweight rdesktop client are a very nice option: it is very close to using PCs as X terminals. I even found rdesktop very nice and comfortable to use over my 512kbps ADSL connection. :-)

Just my 0.02 euros.

nope; it's Rdesktop

rdesktop page

It's very easy, of course, to set up linux as a thin client. X -query someserverhere works well.

There is two options that are cost effective

1. Linux Terminal Server Project. This will serve linux desktops over a thin client solution. LTSP.org

2. Linux Terminal Server pushing to Windows ?? Terminal Services. The program that does the magic is RDesktop. It is a UNIX implimentation of the RDP protocol used by Windows. There is a guy doing this in a project located at Wilisystem. It basically uses LTSP to boot the clients and passes the rest off to Window$. You still need client access licenses for Windows in this scenario.

As far as cost effective, nothing could be more cost effective. Think about it, do you want to admin 500 PC's or a few servers and 500 terminals. When a terminal has a hardware failure you throw it away since the box itself only costs about 300 bucks as opposed to 800 to 1000 for a useable PC workstation with disks. We do this terminal stuff all the time at my work.

http://www.rdesktop.org Is that what you are looking for?

Use a small Linux distro if you don't want to but any of the precooked terminals.

TinyX handles X for Linux, Unix and BSD
RDesktop handles Terminal Services for NT4TSE and Windows 2000
The Metaframe Client does, obviously, Metaframe on your Windows and Solaris app servers.

There is already a Linux RDP client. Maybe this could be used as a starting block to make a X11->RDP gateway.

It would be a very good project indeed. While X11 is a much better protocol in my opinion, having RDP for Linux isn't a bad thing.