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well supported

I'd say RDP has more support than X11. You can get an RDP client on just about any platform--even *unix.

The fact that X11 lets you run over a network does not outweigh the fact it basically sucks at everything else.

But again, the fact a phone runs X11 doesn't matter as long as the phone provides a standard interface to develop against.

and I've had good luck with it in thunderbird.

However, I don't think there's linux program that handles exchange calendaring well. There's a plugin for thunderbird, but it doesn't work very well.

My advice is to use outlook web access for calendaring if you don't have a windows box on hand... although honestly I just keep my corporate laptop with winxp next to my linux workstation for when I need the calendar.

If you get sick of switching back and forth between windows, a good option is to use rdesktop:
http://www.rdesktop.org/

to log into your windows machine and keep a window open with outlook. Alternatively, there's always vmware, although it's a bit pricey and sucks up ram.

I know I have been trolled, but what the hell:

"And lackluster protocols like VNC don't cut it."

You /do/ know that X11 is /meant/ to be used over a network? I'm not talking about VNC. I'm talking about raw X11 piped over SSH, for deliciously encrypted graphical sessions from one side of the planet to the other. And guess what, it's /efficient/ too.

But not only that, Linux speaks RDP too. Yeah, we get to talk to inferior Windows systems with their own language.

http://www.rdesktop.org/

Coming out and implying that VNC is all us Linux users have to work with is such bullshit.

"admin" work you can't do with SSH"

Like what? List something specific.

"anything involving the GUI."

Unlike Windows, configuring a Linux (or unix in general, including OS/X) machine does /not/ require access to the GUI. A GUI is nice sometimes, but if you want to do /real/ work, a command line is so much nicer. Oh yeah, and one of the latest/greatest things about Windows is Power Shell. Funny how Microsoft had to "reinvent" a command line interpreter/shell. So much for the GUI being the be-all/end-all of interfaces.

--
BMO

I noticed a recurring lament in the comments attached to TFA: Businesses usually have one or a few business-specific and business-critical applications that are Windows-only and that don't run adequately under Wine. Rupert's suggestion was to run Windows under virtualization - i.e. polluting every seat at the shop with microsoft code and licenses.

Why not do what my company does: Run the can't-do-without-'em Windows apps on a central Windows server and access them remotely via rdesktop?

Then you have only as many licenses as you actually need and you can migrate as many desktops and laptops as you please to Linux.

(And since it uses Microsoft's own version of remote desktopping they'll have a hard time breaking it without breaking themselves. B-) )

Heck, if i can RDP to my home PC from the road

Sure, it's running Linux, if it doesn't come with it then just install rdesktop (and tsclient if you need a gui for it).

Install the clients as linux terminals. http://www.ltsp.org/

Connect them to a mosix cluster http://www.mosix.org/

Use rdesktop for those apps which still need windows. http://www.rdesktop.org/

Microsoft has released nothing to date that is a Universal Binary. They are currently promising a universal version of Messenger 6.0 later this year, and a free universal version of Remote Desktop Client. There isn't a date set on the next version of Office. Virtual PC and Windows Media Player for Mac have been cancelled.They are currently promising a universal version of Messenger 6.0 later this year, and a free universal version of Remote Desktop Client

Microsoft isn't planning to release a UB of Media Player for Mac. Their site links to a free UB version of the Flip4Mac QT plugin. I replaced Messenger with Adium and RDC with rdesktop.. Adium supports 12 different account types along with MSN Messenger which is a huge advantage. As for rdesktop it requires Apple's X11.app and you have to launch it from the command line but at least it allows you to open multiple connections simultaneously.

I use rdesktop when I need an RDP client, works pretty well ... no idea about 3D support, I only use Windows for a few legacy servers at work (primarily pager routing crap). If you're into PC gaming, then sorry, Linux simply ain't right for you. I own most of the games ported to Linux, but most of them are still wrapped on the shelves. I support the practice of porting them, even if I could care less about playing them.

NotePad seems to be more-or-less reliable, but as you've found, "less" can be unexpected and big-time.

I have a multi-score-element client LAN set up with Linux workstations using the simple and effective but not superfancy rdesktop(1) app to hit the few remaining MakeBux4BillO$ machines left, and some Win16+ apps runnng well on the workstations under WINE. Although the client is a reasonably large (for any WestAus) publisher, OpenOffice.org has worked out well in practice for much of their work. They also have a few Macintoshes.

The decrease in viruses, spyware and mysterious vanishments of useful stuff has been quite striking, but I don't know if this would suit the original poster's requirements.

I work in a company which does mainly Application Server Providing, and we switched about 2 years ago from Citrix MetaFrame (1.8) to Windows 2003.

Printing works well enough, you just have to install all the necessary drivers on the server and make sure the clients use the same drivers (though universal printing engines like ThinPrint and others will work too).

Local drives work like a charm (although only since 2003), you can even copy files with Ctrl+C and then paste it in your local explorer with Ctrl+V (I don't know if the newest Citrix also supports this). Network drives work as expected.

We don't use published applications, and as far as I know Windows doesn't support this. You *can* specify an application to run in the client, but I never used it.

Our customers all connect over the internet, and the performance is pretty much the same as with Citrix. We did some tests with Presentation Server 4.0, and it performs a little better with images because it has a better caching mechanism, but the difference wasn't enough to warrant the (much) bigger licensing costs.

I also tested the NX server from NoMachine, which supports proxying RDP sessions. The site claimed speedups from 2-10 times, although in my experience it was between 1 to 2 times, and because printer and drive redirection needed additional setup, we didn't continue with this. But for X11 sessions NX is currently the best thing (IMHO better than UNIX Citrix).

So, if you only need to provide Windows applications, WTS is a good enough replacement for Citrix. There's also an official client for OS X and an Open Source client for UNIX (which supports RDP 5.1 as well as printer and drive redirection).

4. [Dare I say it] Remote Desktop. I currently work with a team of 5 IT's to maintain a nation wide network of PC's. VNC just doesn't cut it, neither does a lot of other programs. Remote Desktop is highly acceptable from my point of view, although booting into windows via VMWare is a pain.

Yes it is handy. You don't need VMware just for this. Try the open source client rdesktop.

• Knoppix, live linux boot CD ("rescue"), http://www.knoppix.org/
• Unix Rosetta Stone, table to convert linux vs bsd vs unix, http://bhami.com/rosetta.html
• GNU screen, switch between shells in one login, priceless via ssh, http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/
• GNU stow, simple package management for ANY posix system, http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/
• vim, not vi (I depend on ^P and a real undo history, note emacs is not so great for sysadmins who need quick changes on dozens of architectures), http://www.vim.org
• sudo, especially when giving a group permission as a non-root user as in my /. post groups + sudo can allow installation rights , http://www.sudo.ws/
• wiki, which tells people how to do things without bugging the sysadmin, (any wiki is good, I use mediawiki), http://www.mediawiki.org/
• CVS/Subversion, note changes in important configuration files (cvs is for older Unixes that can't run svn), http://subversion.tigris.org/
• rdesktop, remotely log into windows Remote Desktop/Terminal Services, http://www.rdesktop.org/
• fail2ban, drop traffic to attacking IPs (ie, failed logins) for small intervals, http://fail2ban.sourceforge.net/

rdesktop is an open source client for Windows NT Terminal Server and Windows 2000/2003 Terminal Services, capable of natively speaking Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) in order to present the user's NT desktop. Unlike Citrix ICA, no server extensions are required.

their web-based interface to activate phones ONLY works on Internet Explorer. Period. They actually check for other browsers and REJECT ALL OTHERS.

Maybe firefox's nifty extension User Agent Switcher can help you on that one. The morons wont even notice in their log files.

Additionally, our point of sale requires Terminal Server Client (RDP)

In this one, RDesktop can help you. It even comes with Ubuntu and Novell's Suse.

I believe rdesktop can be used to connect via RDP.

This sounds like a job for Linux Terminal Server

http://www.k12ltsp.org/

http://www.ltsp.org/

I actually run this at home, and am writing this post from a VNC enabled Linux Terminal Server. The machines you are using sound old, so if you are willing to invest a little in server hardware, this could be a good option. If you have PXE boot capable network cards, then you can boot from the network into linux. If not then it can also be accomplished with boot disks. For the must have Windows software packages, you can use rdesktop http://www.rdesktop.org/ and setup a windows terminal server. This can get costly, but it works.

The downside to this setup is sound support. Another package out there that is supposedly quite good is no machine http://www.nomachine.com/

I have never used No Machine, but supposedly it is fast, supports sound, and Educational institutions get a 50% discount on the cost.

If you have any spare hardware kicking around, I would setup a Linux Terminal server and see how you like it. All it would take is one spare workstation that you can wipe and set up with linux. You could then easily enable all of your current machines to boot to the terminal server from floppy, and give it a trial. If it looks like it would fit the bill, then get a real server for it so you don't suffer from speed issues.

Cheers,

CB

My friend gave me a Pentium 1, 100MHz, 32MB RAM, no hard disk.

I put my CD-ROM on it, with a costumized boot CD that loads X, and runs the desktop and applications from my machine (that has power enough to run apps for two users at once).

You can use it as a terminal for a Windows machine too, with rdesktop.

There's a really good Windows remote desktop client for Linux called rdesktop. It connects to XP's Desktop Sharing and 2003 Server. In my experience it's been rock-solid.

As far as the IE-only intranet pages are concerned, it is possible to coerce IE into running in Wine, but the easier and far more sensible solution would be to redesign the intranet pages, focussing on cross-compatibility.

Just tried the link, it should be http://www.rdesktop.org/

1. Entourage sucks ass. I just moved over to Mail.app in Tiger and it's a much better experience. Of course, things other than mail don't carry their way over. Oh darn. iCal can upload a .ics file via WebDAV and other iCal users can check my calendar. 2. RDC - Take a look at http://rdesktop.org/. Much more configurable. Works great. 3. I've had other issues with Office 2004 Mac. Excel likes to munge weblinks and row heights. Not to mention it doesn't save things where you think they should (i.e. saving HTML document where I opened it makes me save a new file in a new directory. YECH). I haven't found any solutions for this yet. I've been Macified since Jan 2004 and I won't look back. I do have a PC next to it (using http://synergy2.sf.net/ so no keyboard and mouse) and I use it for the basic things... i.e. my Windows based phone software and other cranky Winapps. It's old and slow so I use it infrequently. I do use it for VNC because I have yet to find one VNC client on the Mac that Just Works.

The GP was modded interesting because he was referring to RDP implementations on Linux. Like say, for example rdesktop or tsclient, both of which are based on the Microsoft RDP protocol.

All you need is a Windows XP Professional machine with your software on it, and then you can run WinConnect Server XP. It is inexpensive, uses regular Windows RDP, includes a fairly decent admin tool, and you can try it out for free. ThinSoft also makes a Linux client, but you can use rdesktop. The bad news is that it only allows 21 clients concurrently.

No, I don't work for them, but I have used their software quite a bit. Their site leads you to believe that they only sell licenses in groups of three, but in fact, they are more than willing to sell you individual licenses. All in all, their system works rather well.

Windows Terminal server with the Linux desktops connecting via rdesktop is another way (assuming the app runs on TS).

(First Post)

...Thin-clients are rising in popularity again and it won't be long for them to become a familar site in small to large buisnesses. The only reason I can find to purchase Microsoft's XP thin-client is for those of us who would use it with terminal services. Terminal server requires a license for each connecting client, which a Windows OS has. One of the arguments I've heard against thin clients is the licensing fees for terminal service. Why purchase a $200 thin client and then a CAL license[1]when you can purchase a $400 full fledge desktop with XP? If my manager wasn't so strong against Office alternatives[2] a Linux server with OO.org would save the company a fortune. We wouldn't have to worry about costly maintenance[3] or extradanory licensing fees with an OSS thin-client. [1] can't recall how much a CAL costs [2] we're a government contractor and worried about compatibility [3] defrag, spyware, updates, corruption, etc

Then you want this: rdesktop.org

Sure you can...Take a look at rdesktop . It is a great little program. I use it on my linux boxes at work to work on the win. boxes that I occasionally have to mess with.

Hmm? rdesktop is a Free RDP client for *nix. Most distributions these days ship it.

rdesktop for your linux client for Remote Desktop.

I recommend rdesktop instead. I find that it's more stable and more configurable than MS RDC. It is an X11 app so you'll need that installed. that is all.

Hey. In case anybody cares, there really isn't a need for VNC, as long as you're not using Windows 98 on your media server. Or maybe XP Home too. Windows NT-based operating systems (i.e. 2000 & XP Pro) allow you to use Terminal Services as you're doing to get into them. There's a Remote Desktop client available for both Linux and Mac OS X (www.rdesktop.org).

If you're using Linux as your media server, just connect to it using a remote X-Server. It might be a little less intuitive for a Windows user to understand, but you can locally display your programs on your client that are actually running on your server. The client can be Windows, Mac OS X or Linux. On free windows X server can be obtained at www.cygwin.com.

I'm sure you know all this, but this is just in case anyone else is reading your post looking for options.

In the specific case of needing to run windows apps on Linux, we have now several options:

API emulation: Wine
PC emulation: Qemu (free)/VMWare (expensive)
VNC: (and just move the display)

Also, rdesktop, a client for RFB (remote framebuffer) servers such as Windows Terminal Services.

First, my universal advice: DON'T get in the habit of fixing remote systems for free. It is a huge time-sink & it would be better if you don't foster that dependence. I sometimes fix problems over email or in person for friends/family, but I also usually weasel some free beer out of the deal.

That being said, many have to remotely administer machines for OTHER reasons. Oftentimes, a shell is all that is needed & having OpenSSH is good enough. It is available for win32 too. This can also be used for port forwarding if other daemons are needed.

If you don't need SSH/SFTP & do need a secure connection, setup a VPN. OpenVPN is great:cross-platform, secure, and easy to install. IPSec is still the standard, but I don't bother with it unless I have to (like when my company would buy a hardware implementation). I try to avoid PPTP. It works OK on windows. Not so well on other platforms (poptop does a pretty fair job, though). It also believe it has some known (but, I again believe, still unexploited) security weaknesses.

You hooked on the GUI? I use VNC over VPN or stunnel. I don't really like remote desktop, but if you have to support it put RDesktop on your *nix box. FreeNX is, in many ways, better than both. I like it a lot, but I haven't used it under windows (it can be done & someone might have made it quick-and-easy, but I try to avoid supporting windows machines).

As other posters have pointed out, for Microsoft(r) Windows(tm), the Remote Desktop protocol actually performs surprisingly well. While I personally despise Microsoft's business methods and nearly all of their software design, I have to admit that this is one of the things they seem to have implemented well.

That said, I've been wondering - is it possible to run a "remote assistance" session with rdesktop (that is, connecting to a Windows(tm) machine from a non-Windows machine)? And are there any RDP servers for X11 in development (or should that be an X11 'client'? That always throws me off in X11...)

If you're using all XP or 2000, why not use Remote Desktop? There's a really good linux client as well if that's the reason you were using VNC.

The server side comes stock with 2 licenses for remote admin use.

There is also a client side RDP client for linux that is quite good.

RDP seems to put very little load on the server. VNC is much heavier -- not that it is a fair comparison!

rdesktop

Like Windows Remote Desktop, but running on Unix. I use it on my home network because I got fed up with all the KVM cables.

You can share single application windows with VNC. rdesktop has potential to support that if it doesn't already. But that's the beauty of X11, network transparency is built into the protocol.

In reverse? Like this?

If you do sufficiently lock a computer down to prevent this, you often break some functionality (yes, even in Linux).

Admittedly, KDE is a fairly heavy WM, but the users like it.

Even if I ban the use of IE, how do I get firefox to render html email in Outlook?

The solution that I introduced to the company I work for a few years ago was to run an old box with Windows 2000 Server on it as a terminal server. We had a guy running VMWare and putting up with trying to get it to work again with every kernel update and this eliminated all the hassle.

I'm sure there are commercial terminal services clients for Linux, but we run rdesktop. Since we started using it rdesktop has included support for RDP5 which supports 16 bit colour, so with a Windows 2003 server ( we have upgraded ) you get a reasonably nice looking windows desktop. Audio seems to go mostly too, not that its needed for a couple of minutes worth of checking some html renders in IE or talking someone through how to setup outlook express.

If a windows only accounts package or similar is keeping you from running Linux on your desktop this could be a good solution, the only negative is possibly the Windows server licensing is a bit steep for some situations.

FYI, you can use rdsesk (uses RDP and the code is GPLed) as the remote desktop client for *NIX systems. I tried it with Slackware 9.1 and it plain works.

You can do it on X window, too. (rdesktop)

Giving them a happy blue box that blinks and costs $50 trumps any ability to ssh into it and fix. . . .

And I'm not getting calls during the weekend when a power outage fries the hard drive and I have to rebuild the Linux partition.

I think you're trolling a wee bit here.

First, the ability to ssh into a machine and fix things is not dependent upon choice of OS, because you can ssh into a Windoze box and fix it. If you want to see the user's desktop, use Desktop Sharing or whatever it's called on XP, with rdesktop (Free Linux client), or try VNC.

Second, it's silly to pretend Linux is more vulnerable to filesystem corruption than 'Doze. If it's a machine with unreliable power (or unreliable users), then use a journalling filesystem.

You're in the wrong place if you think you're going to convince anyone that Linux is truly more difficult or costly to support than 'Doze, especially now, when the true cost of its piss-poor security model is finally becoming apparent even to non-technical end users.

• Abiword - Word processor, supports .doc, .rtf, GPL.
• Open Office - Whole Office suite, including a database frontend and BASIC macro language.
• Perl - Scripting language
• Python - Scripting language
• Cygwin - UNIX emulator. Can create Windows programs, reliant on a cygwin1.dll.
• MinGW - Port of some of the UNIX utilities (BASH, gcc, vi...) to Windows.
• djgpp - UNIX emulator for DOS.
• Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird - Web browser, e-mail client, IRC client, lots more.
• Filezilla - FTP client.
• xchat - IRC client.
• putty, pscp, psftp and others - Telnet/SSH clients.
• Gaim - Client for IRC/Yahoo/MSN/ICQ/AIM and more.
• gzip - Compression (usually better than .zip).
• tar - Extracts/Makes tar archives.
• bzip2 - Totally ace compression (usually better than gzip).
• Info-ZIP - Support for .zip. Good free substitute for Winzip.
• 7-zip - Support for multiple compression formats.
• frhed - Hex editor
• Ext2fs - Several programs for doing Ext2 under Windows.
• Antiword - Converts documents out of the proprietary .doc format.
• MySQL - RDBMS.
• Apache - Web/Proxy server
• sendmail - Mail server
• squid - Proxy server
• freeamp - Audio player
• winlame - MP3 encoder
• cd-ex - MP3/OGG encoder?
• gimp - Very detailed graphics program.
• imagemagick - Graphic manipulation. Provides the 'convert' utility under UNIX.
• freeciv - Civilisation clone.
• gnuplot - Plotting package.
• TightVNC - A fork of VNC, with enhancements.
• RealVNC - The original VNC.
• rdesktop - Access Windows Terminal Services and Remote Desktops.
• Nmap - Well known port scanner.
• John the Ripper - Password cracker. Does NT and MD5.

Works even better using RDP. Windows XP, Windows2k Server, and Win2k3 (and NT4 Terminal Services I guess...but...why?) work great through RDesktop. It's way fast, and with XP or 2k3 you can get 16-bit color and sound instead of just 256 as with Windows 2000.

fish://yourname@yourserver/path/to/website (or ftp://yourname@yourserver/path/to/website) plus drag and drop. Fabulous! The MS Windows version ain't as smooth or up to date, but it is a great deal safer than IE. (-:

For images, GIMP 2 doesn't have an image-chopper-upper by default, and while there are plugins to do that, I often prefer to do it (with GIMP, set some guides and then crop to that; you can make some sections of an image JPEG and others PNG (or omit them and replace that piece with flat colour) to suit the content) "by hand". It does have all manner of other nice features, more than enough to keep the average punter occupied for weeks.

To test things with IE 'coz "everyone" uses it, I could maybe-illegally run it under WINE (someone's even done an RPM, but I can't be bothered finding it) but as it turns out, I have a friend with a Windows2003 box exposed to the internet, so I aim rdesktop at that when I want IE-testing.

I don't call that "truly multi-user."

But that's just how Microsoft chose to license it (XP workstation). There is nothing inherent in the OS, that prevents them from working in parallel. In fact, NT Servers (XP and 2000) allow multiple people to login. I'm using Remote Desktop right now to access one from my FreeBSD box.

Also, rumors are, the limit on the number of simultamious users can be increased by careful editing of the registry, but I can not find the link right now...