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Windows Terminal Server Replacement?
Evanrude asks: "In my never ending quest to eliminate the Windows operating system from my life, I have yet to find a Linux replacement for the Windows Terminal Server product/service. I have come across the Linux Terminal Server Project but from everything I have read about it, you must boot a diskless workstation to use it, there is no client to connect to it from say a remote workstation [read: internet or remote VPN client]. There is also the Citrix Metaframe Presentation Server for Unix, but I am really looking for something that will run on Linux. I have also googled for anything related to Linux and the Remote Desktop Protocol, but have not had good luck. Has anyone had any experience with replacing a Windows Terminal Server with something Linux based or know of any other projects that might be more on track with this than the LTSP?"
So I take it that X over SSH won't work? Seems to me that that's the obvious choice (its what I'd do).
Are you looking for something besides that?
Is called X11. The existance of X11 for 'nix has meant this is not a neccessary product on that platform. Worst case would be to set up Cygwin/X on the clients, and tunnel the connections through SSH (which is perhaps the most complicated way possible to say "put a '-x' on the ssh command"). Put a 'gnome-session &' or the KDE equivelent in their startup script, and you're set. Lots of times on these sorts of questions, people will say "that's not neccessary, just do ____". But in this case, the Windows terminal servers are themselves a way of simulating X11. Short of an X11 server for Windows (like Cygwin) needing installed, everything's already there.
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You can run multiple VNC servers on a linux box and had the equivalent. They can even be secured with SSH.
Regards,
Ryan Pritchard
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Any X server will function as a remote client to a Linux installation, and this applies to LTSP first. You're searching for the wrong terms, read up about how X clients and servers work.
look at nx/freenx, it works pretty well and is even cross platform. KDE has some kind of integration/support.
http://www.nomachine.com/
I honestly haven't gotten around to trying to compile and install the mess of little packages that make up the free sources for the FreeNX server and client, but combined with X's "built in" network transparency it may do what you need. (NoMachine sells licenses for a pre-built commercial version of the server and appears to have some binary downloads for clients as well.)
X11 itself already has mechanisms built in (for quite a long time now) to handle remote "terminal server" type connections, but by themselves they're really only suited to being used over a LAN. For "remoter" access (e.g. over the internet) FreeNX supposedly adds the functionality that you need to do this.
(Anybody want to comment on their experiences getting FreeNX installed and configured?)
As other posters have suggested, X-over-SSH is also an option, and is more likely to be more or less built-in for whatever distribution of Linux you're using. Linux systems should have the necessary capability to do this built in, and you can get the same functionality for Microsoft's Windows via installation of CygWin X11 and OpenSSH packages.
VNC is a third option, though I gather it doesn't work quite as well for this sort of thing as FreeNX or X11-over-SSH does.
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>best solution... it's on a Windows OS
how is this the best solution? out of the box, with a minimal *nix install i can do everything that microsoft wants tons of money for. in many cases, i don't have to pay anything for it.
there are 2 things he might be looking for:
1. thin clientish stuff
2. remote admin stuff.
for people who need thin client stuff, all they need to do is install everything on the server and then run xdmcp. people can then log in from any X server ( ie, another *nix box, a pc running cygwin/hummingbird/whatever ).
for #2, i'd first suggest that he learn how to do everything on the command line, but if he really needs a remote gui, he can either use something like webmin or a tunneled X session.
To justify my point about learning the command line: on a *nix machine, it's not unlikely that you'll have to boot into single user mode and hack some config file with vi ( fstab much? ).
The fact that you can do this at all, when it's pretty much impossible on a windows box, is already a point in *nix's favor, btw, but i digress.
if all you know is Yast or whatever admin gui redhat is shipping with now, you'll never be able to do this.
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Although reading it again it seems it wants an RDP Server. Like this one: xrdp
if not, take a look at Sun's Sun Ray Server Software (aka SRSS). it runs on linux now, but it costs $
we use it here (version 2 tho) and it works fine. you can be doing your thing, go to lunch, leave your apps running, come back (to another client even), and your apps are right there for you
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For whatever reason Citrix does not seem to want to make a Linux version of MetaFrame Presentation Server for UNIX. For those who think X11 is good enough try running it over a dial-up line sometime. Suddenly MPSU looks a lot better (it's also better than e.g. using Exceed on a Windows box on a LAN).
However, one of Citrix's competitors does support Linux. Have you looked into Tarantella? Might be what you are looking for.
-- Argel
The "full-on" LTSP can give you X, NX, and VNC exportable desktops (or an individual application if you configure the sessions that way) plus PXE booting for full terminals if you need it. That gives you a lot of flexibility on the client as you can use the NX client or a VNC client if an NX client is not available or a little dedicated terminal with only a cpu, ram, and motherboard. I'm also sure that you are aware that the dedicated X VNC server is also quite a bit faster than the normal experience of running a VNC server on Windows or x0rfbserver under linux as the graphical changes are all translated to VNC commands directly and do not have to be polled. It should be very fast with java and swig if your apps widgets are not too complicated, so it's not an impossible solution, at least if you want to provide access via a java applet.
Anyway, FreeNX is what you actually want to fool with. Deb's here (or they used to be here anyway):
deb http://www.freedesktop.org/~mornfall/debian/ experimental main
You in theory can configure x0rfbserver on top of the FreeNX X server too, so you could have a user log off of an NX session, then access it later over VNC or standard X or whatever.
Quick and easy setup of xvnc for terminal style access. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-72893-highlig ht-xvnc+terminal.html