> 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)
X was designed to allow a number of clients from any machine to use the server at the same time. Which means you can have apps running on many different machines appearing on your desktop. This is a significant difference between it and Metaframe/Terminal Services -> it's *waaay* more flexible. (At uni, web browsers were run on a dedicated set of Linux boxes, and until I learned a fair bit more about X, I didn't even know.) > 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. Why throw all that money away on desktop machines, though? :-) > 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? You're mixing a couple of issues here - locking desktops down, and centralised execution. The nature of X doesn't help you lock the desktop down -> that's a property of the software you're using. (GNOME is well on the way to achieving this nicely, with mandatory settings in GConf.) Unfortunately, without this, users can still do silly and confusing things, which incurs a support cost. Centralised execution is a huge win, or at least I think so. :-) I've done a number of rollouts for various clients, using X and Win4Lin; simple GNOME desktops and OpenOffice; and rdesktop for el-cheap-o terminal services on low end hardware. Lots of room for savings, bucketloads of room for administrative overhead reduction. It's still pretty controversial though. - Jeff -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
