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

sun ray's!

[Nova1313]

Check out sunrays. They are dirt cheap and they now have a windows version of the software. I use them at home they are really that easy to setup. We run a windows and a linux sunray server here. 2 Servers that I upgrade every 2 years and then we have about 10 terminals scattered throughout the house. I'm on one right now actually. It's a simple solution and fairly cheap to deploy.

Not sure that's the way to go

[countach]

Even 20 years ago, we were using rdist on Solaris (or is it rsync?) to totally automate updating of clients, and then we were NFS mounting the home directories, so that they are on the server and backed up. So you get most of the benefits of local computing with local CPU etc, and the benefits of no client maintenance because it's all automated and the home directories are backed up. Why does Windows make it so hard?

Linux terminal servers

[vinsci]

You're may be looking for the Linux Terminal Server Project.

No

[Greyfox]

Thin computing is a buzzword companies throw around when the balance sheet is drifting into the red and the CEO doesn't want to give up the corporate jet. Ultimately the latencies are unacceptable, network outages paralize your entire company, and unless you're doing a lot of stuff that does't require computers in the first place the entire effort will not only fail, it will fail miserably. Look at ANY company that has attempted to deploy graphical thin clients and you will find nothing but failure. The guys at Sun will try to tell you that they have thin clients and it works great but this is not true. All the guys who do real work at the company have either laptops or SunFire machines on their desks.

Here's a suggestion straight from the BOFH that might work though; Spin off a company to test the citrix rollout. After a couple of weeks of using citrix anyone who finds it acceptable gets moved to the new company. Then mismanage the new company into bankruptcy. You'll have gotten rid of most of the deadwood at your company and the citrix rollout will die the ignomious death it so richly deserves.

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.

Try pxes

[sfire]

Try PXES. I used it at a high school to netboot old desktops ( I think I used etherboot, with all nics embedded, so it didn't matter what nic was in the desktop), to download pxes, which would then connect to the X11 box to run all the applications. It features RDP, X11, NX, and others perhaps.Download here.