CentOS - May 2005 - Re: Mini-centOS -- "Thin Clients" and lack of read-only boot

From: Greg Knaddison <greg.knaddison at gmail.com>
> If you want to compare CentOS to this, then you have to realize that
> this "lightweight" version of MS will only run a remote desktop
> session (Terminal Service), a browser (IE), a music app (MSWindows
> Media Player), a virus scanner and a file navigation utility
> (Explorer).
They are basically "Thin Clients" using a PXE boot, although local
installation is an option.

Long story short, Microsoft has _never_ produced a "consumer" 
Windows product, not DOS7 "Chicago" nor NT, that is
"read-only" bootable.
That's been a major limitation of DOS/NT versus UNIX systems, they
_require_ the filesystem to be "read/write" during the boot process.
Most of this is due to the more "consumer" libraries designed for DOS7
"Chicago" Windows (9x/Me).

At the most they've created an ultra-light Win32 kernel with just enough
to RDesktop out of a EEPROM.  But even when they did, companies like
Wyse and many others opted for a BSD kernel with Citrix code instead
of Microsoft's.

This is a totally different issue.  Microsoft is trying to do what UNIX
X-Terminals, Workstations and other UNIX-based Thin Clients have done
for years.  This isn't "innovative" it's "catching
up" to UNIX.



--
Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org