Converting Desktops to Thin Clients?

tfiedler asks: "I manage about 3500 desktop computers and was recently asked by my CIO to begin looking into thin client computing, something like WYSE terminals. I'd like to know, what are some good functional, and more importantly, manageable options to convert existing desktop computers into what would essentially be a Citrix terminal? I was thinking some brand of Linux that starts up an X11 session, starts the Citrix client and connects to our server farm. The user would see a Windows logon, our apps would function as normal and I'd get the benefit of performing a LOT LESS client-side maintenance. Any suggestions?"

Comments

We use this

[phorm]

We use this where I work.

Essentially we have little sub-1Ghz client boxes with 512MB RAM and no hard drive. They boot off ethernet via PXE, grabbing a kernel and then mounting the root filesystem etc via NFS.

Newer setups have the client files in a vserver (google util-vserv) which allows for some convenience in seperating the server's components and those for the clients.

Some apps run locally on the client's processor/RAM, while others are run remotely "ssh -X" with the GUI piped back.

I'm trying to setup something similar at home, with a server image that should allow friends to connect and use 'nix while at my house (for rounds of frozen bubble, or whatever). You could email me (form on my website) if you want more info.

Re:No

[Demon10000]

I'm going to call shenanigans on this.

I'm employed by a company that has approximately 5000 users. A few years ago, we had about 80% Desktops and 20% thin clients. These days, we're about 20% Desktops and 80% thin clients, and both the Technicians and our users couldn't be happier.

The difference between a Citrix implementation failing, and working successfully is knowing the technology that you're working with. You can't have an application thats going to go rouge and take down your server with 50 users on it -- and that is where most implementations fail. Every application can not be made to work in a thin environment.

Looking back, I can't imagine supporting all those users on Desktops. We have a 40 server citrix farm and 5 techs to support both the users and the servers. A good implementation goes a LONG way!

Windows is a single point of failure

[pogson]

I worked at a place one year where MSFT decided to override our settings to "upgrade" to SP2 and our whole system needed reinstallation. We did not have enough storage to back up every client so I had to go through the whole system customizing clients. It made my day. In systems I design there will be no Windows.

The last system I designed had 130 seats as Linux thin clients and I could tweak the whole system without leaving my chair in seconds. I had redundant servers ($1500 each) instead of redundant clients and it took only minutes a day to verify that everything was OK and it was for months. Not one incident of malware disrupting anything. The users migrated from needing a full time geek to re-install that other OS several times each year on each client to having machines as reliable as telephones.