That reminds me... X-Windows of course was design to have the client application running on a central server(s), with the X-server (the display terminal) doing the actual display of the application's windows and interfacing with keyboard/mouse. (Similar to the say Windows Terminal Services / Citrix Metaframe)
Now that *nix is easily deployed to *every* desktop via Linux, this type of setup I imagine is going away. With the available CPU on each desktop it makes sense from a purely performance reason to deploy the app right on the desktop. That being said, as most Windows sysadmins would say, keeping each desktop locked down and under control can prove difficult. Hence the move to Windows Terminal Services in many environments. I was just wondering whether medium to large Linux-only shops have looked at/or have deployed Linux using a tradition X-Windows model. That is, put a minimal Linux install on each desktop, and run the app on the server. This way each Linux desktop can be "locked down" , and the desktop environment can be more easily controlled centrally. For instance upgrading Star Office is *simply* a matter of upgrading SO on the server farm, rather than having to push it out to each desktop. It also means that you don't need a 2GHz CPU and 60GB hard disk on each desktop, just something with a good network interface and a decent CPU/Graphics chip combo to drive the screen. (Or even a fixed config X-terminal but I haven't seen these for ages) What is the current consensus? Martin Visser Network Consultant Technology & Infrastructure - Consulting & Integration HP Services 3 Richardson Place North Ryde, Sydney NSW 2113, Australia Phone *: +61-2-9022-1670 Mobile *: +61-411-254-513 Fax 7: +61-2-9022-1800 E-mail * : martin.visserAThp.com -----Original Message----- From: Ken Foskey [mailto:foskey@;optushome.com.au] Sent: Wednesday, 13 November 2002 7:59 AM To: slug Subject: Re: [SLUG] dishing up star office On Wed, 2002-11-13 at 10:51, mick wrote: > Hi all, > > I was wondering if it where possible to have a central server for star > office > and have it start up at boot with the server and then be accesible to network > uses. > > I have Mandrake 9.0 on the server and another machine and redhat 7.3 > on a > third. The server does the dhcp thing for internet sharing. You can run gdm with xdcmp enabled gdm-config. Then you can run the whole thing off the second box by X -query xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (Ip address or name in hosts) or X -broadcast I do this with some crappy computers and one decent server. KenF -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
