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Small, Fast RDP Client?

Posted by Cliff on from the linux-for-a-specific-task dept.

Tazor asks: "I'm working for a small municipality in Denmark where most of our users are using our Windows terminal servers. Now we want to run a RDP client on our older PCs (133 mhz, 32 mb RAM, 2 gb disks). We figure that the best way to do this, is to use open source, and this is where I need your help. I'm trying to find a small Linux distro, running from either a floppy disk or from hard disk, that boots straight into a RDP client logon screen. It needs to be easy to customize (not much Open Source knowledge in our department) so that we can configure hostnames and set the distro to use Danish keyboard settings. We would also like it to be free. I found PilotLinux, but it runs from a Live-CD and is difficult to customize (for a PFY like me anyways). Hope that hardcore OSS geeks in here can help me."

4 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. Netstation Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    NetStation is a Linux distribution for diskless thin clients terminals using standard x86 hardware. It can boot from network, floppy, or flash-disk and connect to an application server using VNC, RDP, XDM, SSH, telnet, Citrix ICA, or Tarantella.

    set karma_whore 0

  2. Everything you need by DrSkwid · · Score: 4, Informative


    sell the hard drives and buy decent network cards then use :

    http://pxes.sourceforge.net/

    boot the thin clients from the network, and hey presto : Rdesktop kiosks

    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  3. CAL Licensing by gadwale · · Score: 4, Informative

    Each user connecting to a Windows terminal server needs a valid Client Access License (CAL). Windows 2000 and XP apparently come with their own CALs. If you are going to use a different OS or client, you may need to separately purchase a CAL for each client and the CAL costs about as much as a seat license for Win2K or XP; so you might as well buy and install the OS.

    More info:
    http://www.winnetmag.com/Windows/Article/Ar ticleID /5863/5863.html

    -Adi Gadwale.

  4. Pilot Linux... by DMadCat · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, though it may seem difficult, Pilot Linux is actually quite easy to customize.

    I was looking for a quick and easy solution to getting more use out of aging PCs at my former job last Spring. We had a Microsoft RDP environment (switched from Cisco) and a bunch of old PIIs still running Windows 95.

    I found Pilot Linux, which boots straight to RDesktop in effect turning your PC into a thin client.

    Customizing it is really only a matter of changing a couple of scripts. The challenging part is mounting the .iso (mount -o loop -t iso9660 tiger.iso /mnt/iso).

    After that you simply copy all of the files to another directory, dip into one of the config files (can't remember which off-hand) to change the settings (I even added a .png of my company's logo at boot) and then use mkisofs to create a new .iso with your customized files. Burn to a disk and you're done.

    I want to stress that it took me about 3 hours to learn all of this prior to which I had zero experience with any form of CD distro. I didn't even know you could mount an .iso before I did it but Google is a wonderful thing.

    Unfortunately, though it worked wonderfully well, my IT Director didn't know anything about Linux and therefore didn't like it. Instead he stuck with Microsoft products and so he ordered 50 new PCs with Windows XP pre-installed just for the Remote Desktop feature (everything else was locked down), in the process using up much of the department's leftover budget for the whole year within the first six months (the majority was spent on new XP servers).