CentOS - May 2006 - Thin client server setup

Hi,

I am thinking of settting up a thin client server setup.

I would like to set it up to work with linux and windows.

I was going to use Symbiont but it says it needs a different version of 
linux to install.  Has anyone used it with Centos before?

Would it be easier to just install LTSP and set it up. 

I would like to b have a small box that does the dhcp and then allows 
users to logon to windows or linux terminal servers.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Mace

On Sat, 2006-05-13 at 16:47, Mace Eliason wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am thinking of settting up a thin client server setup.
> 
> I would like to set it up to work with linux and windows.
> 
> I was going to use Symbiont but it says it needs a different version of 
> linux to install.  Has anyone used it with Centos before?
> 
> Would it be easier to just install LTSP and set it up. 
Look at k12ltsp before you try anything else.  There are
versions based on both fedora and Centos (trading off the
stability of Centos vs. newer apps on fedora).  Since your
thin client desktops really run on the server you might
prefer the fedora base. http://www.k12ltsp.org/phpwiki/
They are mostly-stock distributions with ltsp and a few
other things added so if you install on a 2-nic machine
it will come up working (booting clients and acting as a
NAT gateway) and only takes a few changes to adjust for a
single nic. 
> I would like to b have a small box that does the dhcp and then allows 
> users to logon to windows or linux terminal servers.
You can do it by adding ltsp to an existing distro, but
it is easier with k12ltsp and everything updates together
with 'yum update'.  Plus there are lot of users to help with
any problems on the mail list.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com

On Sat, 2006-13-05 at 14:47 -0700, Mace Eliason wrote:
> I am thinking of settting up a thin client server setup.
> 
> I would like to set it up to work with linux and windows.
> 
> I was going to use Symbiont but it says it needs a different version of 
> linux to install.  Has anyone used it with Centos before?
I used to be a vendor for Symbio in Canada.  In fact, my company,
Systems Aligned, was the very first Canadian vendor for Symbio (took a
big chance on them with my first LTSP roll out - yikes!).  I had some
big successes with their hardware and software (re:
http://www.systemsaligned.com/content/view/8/3/ ).  Their thin client
management software is good (it's based on a customized version of
webmin, as far as I remember).

However, I recently dropped them.  It didn't make sense for me to tie
myself to their LTSP based solution since I no longer like the way LTSP
is designed: requiring NFS to serve the thin client's file system just
plain sucks, in my opinion.

Secondly, reselling their commodity hardware in Canada didn't make
sense.  Since it's COMMODITY hardware, anyone could build the stuff.
Buying from the U.S. meant having to sell thin clients at a higher price
because of higher shipping fees, customs, duty fees, etc..  Why not just
source the stuff in Canada?  Makes things for me and my clients MUCH
easier.
> Would it be easier to just install LTSP and set it up. 
Yes, definitely.  The Symbiont setup is easy too, and you get a nice web
based admin interface.  But, with plain old LTSP, you don't tie yourself
to a vendor.  I'd favour LTSP, in this case.
> I would like to b have a small box that does the dhcp and then allows 
> users to logon to windows or linux terminal servers.
If I may, I'd highly recommend to you an alternative to LTSP:
Thinstation.  It's essentially a thin client Linux distribution.  It
supports, RDP, Citrix, X, VNC, NX and more, and can be booted via
PXE/CD/HD/FLASH etc.  Best of all, no NFS required.  Well, there's more,
to it then just that, but not requiring NFS is great.

I encourage you to check out Thinstation's web site.  There are a lot of
helpful people on the mailing lists too, so just ask there if you have
questions about the distro.

Try out both LTSP and Thinstation.  It's the only way you'll be able to
gauge which one is better for you.

Regards,

Ranbir

-- 
Kanwar Ranbir Sandhu
Linux 2.6.16-1.2108_FC4 i686 GNU/Linux 
01:41:42 up 19:11, 2 users, load average: 0.24, 0.35, 0.30