[K12OSN] M$ access from K12LTSP

[Terrell Prude', Jr.]

Hi Norbert,

I run into a similar situation at work.  I'm running K12LTSP 3.1.2 on my 
workstation.  Since we are a major Microsoft shop, several home-grown 
utilities "work only with Internet Explorer 5.5 or greater."  I simply 
refuse to run those applications.  Cisco may well lose a maintenance 
contract with us because of that (Cisco ACS), because it apparently only 
works properly with Internet Exploder.  I raised enough of a stink that 
we are now seriously investigating moving from that application to 
another solution.  I put it in terms of "We also use Solaris, and it 
doesn't work with Solaris Web browsers (i. e. Mozilla)."

I took a look at the Kid Pix web site.  From what I see, Kid Pix can be 
easily replaced with something like The GIMP (Paul Nelson has a GIMP 
class) or TuxPaint.  As for building Web pages, there are several GUI 
Web page makers, discussed in a previous thread.  The fact that we can 
replace Microsoft Office with OpenOffice.org and have kids pick it right 
up should be encouragement for us to continue pursuing this way of thinking.

Another company lost a contract with us, because of their dependence on 
QuickTime.  Turns out that QuickTime was a poor choice--not a 
cross-platform, open format, and QuickTime seems to have problems with 
Port Address Translation (PAT).  Also, the company said that they tested 
it only with Internet Exploder.  We voted with our dollars.

--TP

norbert wrote:

> Hi Terrell,
>
> The applications fall into two major catagories;
> a) IE specific applications that are not compatible with other browsers
> b) M$ specific applications that do not have an equivalent in Linux 
> nor a Linux version
>
> For exemple there's an educational program that builds website and 
> specialty pages but is only compatible with IE. Believe we've tried 
> every other browser and none display the pages as intented. (Clearly 
> this is a conspiracy !!! :-D )
> Second application like Simply Accounting and Kidpic have M$ specific 
> clients that will not work in a "WINE" linux environment nor any other 
> that M$
>
> thanks
> norbert
>
> microman at cmosnetworks.com wrote:
>
>> Which M$ applications are you looking to access?
>>
>> --TP
>>
>> norbert wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Amongst all the available solutions for providing M$ application 
>>> access via Linux what would be suggested as the best solution 
>>> considering;
>>>
>>> 1) Multiple connections (ie. CAL's)
>>> 2) Stability & security
>>> 3) Cost
>>> 4) Performance both local LAN and remote
>>>
>>> The options we are considering are, (although not exclusive of others)
>>>
>>> WinConnect Server
>>> M$ Terminal CAL on a Win XP or 2003 server (rdesktop)
>>> VMWare GSX server
>>>
>>> The first two options we have tested and seeem to work well although 
>>> cost is an issue with WinConnect. M$ seems to be less expensive ??
>>> VMware GSX would appear to be an ideal solution but we haven't been 
>>> able to get it working with K12LTSP
>>>
>>> Any and all suggestions are most welcome as well as any comments
>>>
>>> thank you
>>> norbert
>>>