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Citrix-Like Server for Linux?
Devil's BSD asks: "My school is planning to add remote desktop access so that people can easily access a school computer from home. However, with the financial situation in our Kentucky being what it is, using Citrix Metaframe for Unix/XP and buying all the software licenses necessary will be extremely hard. And with the state department of education (ironically named KDE) very pro-Microsoft, VNC is out of the question. Is there a free or low cost Citrix-like software suite that can give access to a remote desktop and compress the datastream to be able to work on a 56k modem like Citrix's ICA does?"
VNC works just fine in a windowswindows configuration. TightVNC compresses vnc pretty well. Remember to keep the color depth down as that can have huge impacts on performance over low bandwidth.
While I'm not sure if it's specifically what you're looking for, there is the Linux Terminal Server Project. It works like Winframe but I don't think it's directly compatible with Citrix ICA. But is is on version 3.0 and a few people I know have used it -- I tried it once for a terminal my house but it was a little overkill for just wanting to make a web terminal for the living room.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
VNC is the answer. Your boss is a moron if the only reason is "it's not MS".
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Was plain old X11 even considered? If it was, and it didn't meet the criteria, then in what way was it found lacking? Too heavy for a 56k dialup connection? I didn't think it was any worse than Citrix there, but I could be wrong about that. You should be able to get a secure connection via SSH tunneling, and that connection can be compressed if necessary -- there is copious documentation for all this, so I won't repeat how to set it up here, but it's very commonly done.
The biggest "obstacle" I can think of is that people will need the X11 server software on their end, but again this isn't a very big deal: there are free versions for Windows (Cygwin and MacOSX (Apple's X11 beta, XDarwin), and of course it is the standard graphical layer for Linux & related systems.
So really, what needs to happen if you go forward with this idea is for some work to go into packaging it up for students & faculty to use, and giving enough training to show how to get going with it. There are a lot of resources out there that can be relied upon, should the state choose to take this path. It sounds to me like what you need most is for someone to make the pitch to those who are making the decisions.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Bottom line. Your question is so massively incomplete that no one could hope to formulate an answer.
What is your budget?
What is your existing infastructure?
What is your timeline?
What the heck does "And with the state department of education (ironically named KDE) very pro-Microsoft, VNC is out of the question."
So you are saying that every single application running on your desktops is purchased from Microsoft? Why the heck does pro-microsoft == anti-vnc. VNC is a wonderful, free and cross platform tool for remotely displaying workstation content, that happens to have a pure web client version (great for people at home!).
If your school ties their balls to MS in such a way -- why not just use Remote Desktop or call up and ask your local Microsoft Rep what he/she recommends.
Why is this a goddamn ask slashdot?
*sigh*
Check out Tarantella . Similar to Citrix MetaFrame, but less expensive, and runs on Windows, Linux, Solaris, and HP-UX.
Now, if you are trying to avoid paying for the ICA client, but you are willing to pony up the money to Microsoft, then there is a client named rdesktop that does the Microsoft remote desktop protocol (RDP). It was reverse Engineered from scratch, and supposedly is reasonable stable. So now, you can run this on Linux desktops, but you still have to pay Microsoft a bunch of money for the apps (just because they are all running on one server, doesn't get you out of paying them for as many concurrent users as there could be).
Now, if you have to have Microsoft Applications, but not a Microsoft desktop, you might want to see the guys who develop the Crossover stuff. Now you can run a lot of Windows Apps on a Linux box that has a Wine processes running remote. The product is called Crossover Office Server Edition I don't follow the legality of this, so get a real good lawyer before you try it out. looks like CodeWeavers is saying, you get to pay Microsoft a bunch of money.
This is probably roughly the same quality, but now your talking about using X for your network transport. Which is a little awkward for remote users, as they will have to run an X server. Cygwin ships with one for Windows desktops.
Now, if all you want is a bunch of desktops you can run remote from a linux server. Get a bunch of machines that can act like X-Terminals. A bunch of old cheap PC's with a good NIC will do the job, as long as the NIC will do PXE, or netbooting of some flavor. Go get PXES from sourceforge and run it. It will net boot, and run rdesktop, a Citrix ICA client, or run as an X Terminal for you. It is very good, and runs pretty well. This is what the city of Largo, FL does. They claim it's great, grand, glorious and best of all, dirt cheap.
I don't understand your requirements. They appear to be directly contradictory. We have to have cool stuff from Microsoft, but we can't afford to pay for it. My guess is the cost of the Citrix Clients isn't nearly as bad as the cost of all of the copies of MS apps you sound like you want to run. Anyways, these are some pretty decent ways to get remote desktops. However, with Microsoft, you don't really get a break on the pricing that way, it does simplify administration of the desktop, and makes replacing broken hardware much easier.
Kirby