We have dipped our toes in this water and can report the following : Application : Remote access to windows dependant applications for 12 users across IP Wan.
Previous solution : Windows XP workstation per user in the computer room with separate machine designated to each remote user. Problems : managing users is painful, seeing who is doing what impossible, a growing stack of dedicated machines rapidly running out of vertical stack space. I know I could have used terminal server and windows server and all that guff, would have been expensive. Current solution : One linux server, running win4lin, with apps loaded under win4lin Clients user Cygwin to establish X session to server. (A window in a window, justy like RDP or windows T-S anyway) Clients use samba and windows Ip networking to share drives and printers in their local lan and the remote lan. Problems : How come I don't have to reboot every other day ? :-) User session runs windows 98 which looks a little dated, but hey, it works. Advantages : One machine in the computer room Easy user admin Locked down user configurations. Others I haven't got the time to list. I can put you onto the guys that helped us do this if you wish. -----Original Message----- From: Grant Parnell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 24 February 2004 9:12 AM To: Sonia Hamilton Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SLUG] accessing MS desktops from Linux On Sat, 21 Feb 2004, Sonia Hamilton wrote: > One of my clients is planning to upgrade their network, and I'm pricing MS > (Terminal services + a whole n/w of new desktops + licenses - ouch). What > I want to do is put Linux on all the old desktops, and have graphical > access to 1 windows machine - what can I run on Linux that will do this? > > I know I can use VNC, but it's a bit clunky, especially since the 1 > Windows app that the users need to access is their main app (which they > use all day). > > Anyone had experience with the Citrix ICA Client running on Linux? It > looks promising. > > Any other hints as to what I could use? I've read the other replies to date and have more to add. I guess I'm slightly biased as I work for EverythingLinux which sells some of the products I'm going to mention. Win4Lin Terminal Server 3.0 (5 users $882.75) plus 5 licenses for (Win95, Win95OSR2, Win98, Win98se, Windows ME). IE no additional CAL's. This solution requires a good sized server running Linux with a Win4Lin enabled kernel (they offer rpm's for various distros - plus open source patch). Then you install the Windows install files and each user runs the 'win' application as needed which launches a real copy of Windows. Licensing required is only for Win4Lin and the number of CONCURRENT windows users - ie it tells you something like "Too many users" when you try to run it. We had a copy running on RedHat 7.1 for about 2 years but decided to migrate it to a single workstation as we now only have one occasional user. (Laura running Photoshop / Corel for doing SOME advertising graphics which requires CMYK output - Gimp's catching up though). The same server or another server could be used to support PXE booting of the workstations and act as a Linux Application server (ie all the apps run on it with screens exported to the workstation's X server). This means you don't need grunty workstations with disk drives or fans or any moving parts.... and yeah we sell them too <grin>. Another possibility is Wine or Crossover Office which is the up-to-date commercial version of wine. Thanks to Code Weavers you can run an impressive array of Windows apps without having a single copy of Windows. MS-Office, Inernet Explorer (why bother?), Adobe products to name a few I've setup for a client. For those that don't know this is achieved by writing from scratch libraries that emulate the function calls available to Windows applications and that's VERY impressive! It is however why some apps don't yet run, they call a function that's not yet implimented - something that doesen't happen with the solutions I mentioned earlier. -- ---<GRiP>--- Electronic Hobbyist, Former Arcadia BBS nut, Occasional nudist, Linux Guru, SLUG/AUUG/Linux Australia member, Sydney Flashmobber, BMX rider, Walker, Raver & rave music lover, Big kid that refuses to grow up. I'd make a good family pet, take me home today! Do people actually read these things? -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
