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?"

Comments

I think the product you're looking for

[Alternate Interior]

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.

Re:I think the product you're looking for

[cyber0ne]

Not sure if the submitter is thinking along the same lines as me, but I had this same question recently and have just gone with VNC so far.

More to the point, everyone here seems to be saying "just use the built-in networking of X11." This is all well and good, but let me elaborate on what I was looking for when I was researching this myself (again, I can't speak for the submitter.)

Using X over SSH and Cygwin and all that was simple enough, but the functionality I couldn't achieve with it was the ability to "detach" my X session and "re-attach" it from another machine, essentially meaning the X session was permanent and the client connections to it would come and go. Is there a way to do this via the tools you're recommending?

VNC does provide this, but what it doesn't provide is the level of "desktop integration" found in WTS. That is, suppose I copy something in one, I can't paste it in the other. Moving files back and forth, etc. has the same limitations. The 2 GUI sessions basically have no knowledge of each other's existance. Again, is there a way to achieve this with the tools you're recommending?

I'm not trolling or anything, I'm honestly looking for the ideal solution for my own networking needs. I was basically looking for a setup like "screen" on my xterm, but for the whole GUI session. WTS does this beautifully on my XP box, but so far I'm only using VNC on my Linux box.

Re:I think the product you're looking for

[JediTrainer]

NoMachine NX can do that. There's even a free NX server out there (I'm using it now - it's in the Gentoo portage tree even).

NX compresses the X protocol and works some magic so it's usable over even slow links (9600bps even, apparantly). NoMachine has a free client available for download.

It can save your desktop too.

Re:I think the product you're looking for

[Col. Klink (retired)]

VNC version 4 shares clipboards quite well.

If you want to move a single application back and forth across displays, you're looking for xmove.

VNC server is a solution

[t-maxx cowboy]

You can run multiple VNC servers on a linux box and had the equivalent. They can even be secured with SSH.

Re:VNC server is a solution

[thempstead]

With SuSE, (9.x at least, probably even before that), you can enable a VNC terminal server. If you do this is then adds a VNC service to xinetd allowing multiple sessions to be connected to the server faily easily. I.e. I connect to the system on port 5901 and it spawns a Xvnc process to handle the connection. Connecting again to the same port spawns another one.

Each VNC session gets its own kdm (in my systems case) login and own X desktop. A quick look shows only one "X" process running and a "Xvnc" process for each desktop.

(of course I tunnel the VNC connection over SSH but that should make no difference to anything above).

Tim

nx/free nx

[mrolig]

look at nx/freenx, it works pretty well and is even cross platform. KDE has some kind of integration/support.

http://www.nomachine.com/

FreeNX?

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

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.

Re:You just want an RDP Client, right?

[thing12]

Although reading it again it seems it wants an RDP Server. Like this one: xrdp

FREENX - it does that - whatever that is.

[narrowhouse]

OK several people have mentioned it, but apparently the other posters don't seem to catch the hint.

FreeNX does a new connection for each user on the fly.
It allows printer, file and sound sharing.
It works over SLOW connections.
It is cross platform.
It allows you to disconnect from a session and rejoin later.
It has a commercial version if you want support.
I can be used to connect a single app instead of a desktop.

If it doesn't do what you want then neither does Terminal Services.

Sun Rays, Citrix, and Tarantella

[argel]

SUN Ray Server Software (SRSS) 3.0 runs on Linux, though it is missing a lot of functionality that the Solaris version has including Non Smart Card Mobile sessions. SUN also has a Soft Ray Java based SUN Ray client but unfortuantely it has not been released yet.

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.

Re:It really sounds like...

[GoRK]

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.