[K12OSN] OT: If you MUST use windows (PXES Thin Clients)

[Paul Davison]

A friend of mine needed a solution for a small business that would allow 
him to run linux desktops for about 80% of his users with 20% still 
requiring access to a windows accounting application.

I set up a K12LTSP 3 server running iceWM to auto-login for certain 
workstations, and placed an "rdesktop -f server.address &" in the window 
manager rc file for the autologin account.

The result was Diskless Pentium 166 systems that booted in about 40 
seconds to the login prompt for a Win 2k Terminal server session. The 
users don't even know it is not a windows machine they are using.

As far as I know, that company has been using this system for about a 
year now without a hitch.  They still needed to license the terminal 
server for the number of users that needed access, but the remaining 
computers just run regular login sessions with the full suite of linux 
applications.  It is the best of both worlds I guess.

I toyed with a similar setup using Citrix ICA clients as well. It worked 
the same way.

The result either way, it is cheaper to buy terminal server licenses 
than it is to buy new hardware and OS licenses.

Paul Davison


Jim Kronebusch wrote:

> Also, is this a "diskless" option?  Or do you need local hard drive to
> load the distro to?  Can you boot it from a floppy or boot ROM?  I
> imagine this will not work on a full diskless workstation such as the
> Term150 from www.disklessworkstations.com.  I am intrigued by the idea.