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"Thin Clients" that Support Linux and Windows?
An Anonymous Coward asks: "I have been searching for a thin
client that accesses both Linux and Microsoft systems and am dismayed
to find that most thin clients only support MS RDP or Citrix ICA.
Yes, I know that any old PC can be made into a 'thin client' and that
X-stations have existed for many years for Unix based systems, but I
will be buying new hardware for a new office that needs mainly
MS connectivity. Since I am also including a Linux server or two on
the network and think that Linux has a chance on the desktop, I would
like to purchase thin-clients that can connect to both instead of being
locked in by design from the start. This way, I can eventually move users
onto Linux desktops in the future without replacing anything on the
desktop." How hard would it really be to add on X11 functionality
to an existing Windows thin client? While the realities of the
current market makes finding such products unlikely, maybe if we can
drum up the interest now there may be hope to see something
like this in the future.
"I have a chance to buy top of the line hardware for this
project and am looking for something that has a small footprint,
no moving parts, ICA client or MS RDP, Linux connectivity
(embedded X server?), a real manufacturer and a nice design that
would not look out of place in a brand new, designer furnished
office.
The Compaq
Evo T20 serves my current needs perfectly, except that it
forever locks me into Windows on the desktop, Does anybody have
alternatives they can suggest?"
To have a windows client appear as an X11, check out Hummingbird's Exceed. Rutgers U had labs full of Windows desktops with Exceed running on them. Worked quite well.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
I've been keeping an eye out for one of these at a decent price...
The IBM Network Station 1000 Model 8362 is a PowerPC-603-based thin client with support for VT emulation, X, ICA/Citrix, local Java apps, 1600x1280x8bit graphics, sound.
The complicated part is that they were designed to be slaved off of a Win2k/NT or AIX box, but people have figured out ways around that for the most part.
Best of all, they're silent, too.
They seem to go on E-Bay for around 300Eur (These guys have them for 450Eur with a 1yr warranty. [for those not in Europe, that's $270 and $400 US, respectively]
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
I'm not sure what your needs on the windows side are, but the company I work for (www.netraverse.com) has a product called Win4Lin that will allow you to run most office-related Windows applications at near-native speeds on Linux, and there has been some effort put into making it work on a NetVista. If you would like more information you can email me at msouth@netraverse.com and I can put you in touch with the guy that did the work.
The product works really well, and you can run it in full-screen mode so that it looks just like you are sitting at a windows box.
Liberty uber alles.
Here's what I used:
Costs ended up being about $120 for the motherboard, $40 for the CPU, $15 for the heatsink, $50 for the disk on module, and $50 for the case, so ~$275, plus a keyboard and mouse, and the performance blew away the NetVista 2200 that I had been using.
For software, you can run Linux on the machine and use Citrix/ICA client or Terminal Server with rdesktop. The machine is fast enough you could run Linux locally from a remote NFS file system, or you could just use it for a display. The Linux Terminal Server Project has a lot of information about setting this. You might also want to look at the Diskless Windows Cookbook.
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.