The VCL can help campuses do more for less, we’ve discussed many use cases. Here are a couple of additional ways in which Linux in combination with the VCL can lead to savings.
We installed xRDP (http://www.xrdp.org/ Open Source) on an Ubuntu 12.04 base image. It works! Why is this so good? The base is an Open Source Operating System with no license fees. It is a stable version with a long projected life. Our campus has a site license for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and we like that very much, but it is a licensed/maintained release and so we can’t open it beyond our campus community - that’s why we’re discussing Ubuntu for our Linux use cases. The usual way of remotely logging in to a Linux/Unix box is via ssh, or ssh -Y when X Windows is involved. This is no trouble for our readers, but it can be a problem for the communities which we serve. People with Windows machines need to learn to do this and to install the additional software. E.g. XWin32 (proprietary) or a combination of PuTTY and Xming (Open Source). Even though they often know how to use RDP, this additional learning and software is a barrier for many people. Those with Macs have life easier since ssh usually comes installed in the base OS and can be invoked from a term window. Similarly the X Windows capability is usually present (X11). The minor drawback is Mac users already comfortable with using Remote Desktop Client (RDP) with the VCL will need to learn another capability. Before this there was a major barrier to assigning a Linux image for classwork, or any work. However with xRDP running on the image, RDP Client can be used from a Windows or Mac local machine without the need for any additional software or for learning new connection methods. (There are some relatively small changes in login procedure.) Life isn’t that simple even if we’ve greatly eased the access. The application needs to run on Linux. However, I notice that both Maple (our most heavily used package) and SPSS are available in Linux versions, and I’m sure that there are many others. A major reason for pushing in this direction is that some Operating System vendors are charging additional license fees if one wants to login remotely to computers running their Operating System, and this can be costly. But this problem can be avoided when it is possible to run a desired software application on Linux - which the users can then access as described above. --henry schaffer
