[Malvern] Thin Client Linux

[Stuart Parkington]

Ian,

There are a few decent projects on Sourceforge which are 'specialized' 
distros to do exactly this. The two I've used before, although there are 
others, are:

1. PXES - http://pxes.sourceforge.net (which now seems to be at 
/http://www.2x.com/pxes/)
2. ThinStation - http://thinstation.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/ThIndex

ThinStation is the one I've used most, to created terminals out of 
normal PCs and connect to Linux servers using NX, VNC and X-Windows or 
VNC, RDP or Citrix on a Windows servers. I've rolled ThinStation out to 
a couple of mid-scale customers (300-500 seat types) very successfully.

ThinStation allows you to set up individual connections on individual 
terminals, so for demos I tend to connect to a Citrix box on TTY1, then 
switch to TTY2, VNC on my laptop, to TTY3 Linux GDM login prompt. In the 
real world I'd normally just have a default connection to which ever 
desktop I need to deliver. That way the end users just thinks he has a 
Windows/Linux desktop.

For the back end, you need to set up a DHCP, TFTP and (probably) PXE 
boot set up, which is pretty well documented in the documentation).

ThinStation can also be easily customized with a couple of graphics 
and/or colour codes to give an individual feel to fit in with the 
branding of whatever the customer happens to be.

Another thing I've looked into doing with them, but to date haven't, got 
round to, is replacing the standard IDE drives with 'flash' memory, to 
reduce heat and power consumption etc. I've been looking at both Compact 
Flash cards and IDE flash adapters, but like I said haven't tried them 
in anger yet.

The other main project I'd suggest, although to date I've not really had 
a great look at is the LTSP (www.ltsp.org).

Hope some of that is useful to you.

Regards,
Stuart

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Linux #423936  Ubuntu #4500
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IRC - Narrf / www.narrf.net
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