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>---
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to grow up. I'd make a good family pet, take me home today!
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