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Windows Terminal Server Replacement? 125

Posted by Cliff from the small-clients-and-big-iron dept.
Evanrude asks: "In my never ending quest to eliminate the Windows operating system from my life, I have yet to find a Linux replacement for the Windows Terminal Server product/service. I have come across the Linux Terminal Server Project but from everything I have read about it, you must boot a diskless workstation to use it, there is no client to connect to it from say a remote workstation [read: internet or remote VPN client]. There is also the Citrix Metaframe Presentation Server for Unix, but I am really looking for something that will run on Linux. I have also googled for anything related to Linux and the Remote Desktop Protocol, but have not had good luck. Has anyone had any experience with replacing a Windows Terminal Server with something Linux based or know of any other projects that might be more on track with this than the LTSP?"
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Windows Terminal Server Replacement? More

Windows Terminal Server Replacement?

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  • Hrmm... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Naikrovek ( 667 ) <jjohnson@ps g . com> on Tuesday March 22, 2005 @03:52PM (#12014981)
    So I take it that X over SSH won't work? Seems to me that that's the obvious choice (its what I'd do).

    Are you looking for something besides that?
    • Right. I'd definitely us X11 if I just wanted to run a program, I'd use either X11 or VNC if I wanted to run a complete user session.
      • Just run a session manager on your X11 server and you have a user session. I haven't done this for a while, but I used to run a CDE session all the time. I haven't tried this with Gnome or KDE, but I don't see why it shouldn't work.

        • Re:Hrmm... (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Yeah but you can't disconnect and reconnect to the same session (in the state it was left in) like you can with Terminal Services/VNC.

          I still use X most of the time though. I don't really care for VNC but I use it when I have to.

          There is that NX client stuff too (lightweight X protocol).
          • Yeah that was brought up in another thread, which is a problem...

            Is Sun still pumping their Java thin clients? That had session disconnect/reconnect ability. It wasn't free, but it seemed to be a pretty nice setup.

            • Here is the server software [sun.com], and it runs on Linux, but unfortunately they don't make a software client (not too surprised since Sun IS a hardware company, even though they try to be a software company). This is the part of the solution that never made economic sense, since the HW clients are pretty expensive, compared to PC's.

              • Re:Hrmm... (Score:3, Informative)

                by numbski ( 515011 ) *
                I'm thinking some degree of x11 forwarding for simple applications.

                In situations where you need to disconnect/reconnect, then I remember seeing something that when you're at the console logging in, you'd define what X11 screen you're connecting to, then run a vnc server on that X11 session. You'd be able to run dozens of servers on different sessions, then simply vnc to the one you want. Want that encrypted? ssh tunnel the vnc session.

                Now what I'm curious about but have never tried is a combination of
              • Technically speaking, the Sun Thin Clients are cheaper than Windows based workstations. After licensing fees, admin requirements, etc - Thin Clients are SO much cheaper.

                But, I can agree with you on the Thin Client software. I think they could open up a new market by selling the software. The Sun Thin clients are nice, but sometimes it feels like they are missing something.
  • Is called X11. The existance of X11 for 'nix has meant this is not a neccessary product on that platform. Worst case would be to set up Cygwin/X on the clients, and tunnel the connections through SSH (which is perhaps the most complicated way possible to say "put a '-x' on the ssh command"). Put a 'gnome-session &' or the KDE equivelent in their startup script, and you're set. Lots of times on these sorts of questions, people will say "that's not neccessary, just do ____". But in this case, the Windows terminal servers are themselves a way of simulating X11. Short of an X11 server for Windows (like Cygwin) needing installed, everything's already there.

    • Re:I think the product you're looking for (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cyber0ne ( 640846 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2005 @04:31PM (#12015462) Homepage
      Not sure if the submitter is thinking along the same lines as me, but I had this same question recently and have just gone with VNC so far.

      More to the point, everyone here seems to be saying "just use the built-in networking of X11." This is all well and good, but let me elaborate on what I was looking for when I was researching this myself (again, I can't speak for the submitter.)

      Using X over SSH and Cygwin and all that was simple enough, but the functionality I couldn't achieve with it was the ability to "detach" my X session and "re-attach" it from another machine, essentially meaning the X session was permanent and the client connections to it would come and go. Is there a way to do this via the tools you're recommending?

      VNC does provide this, but what it doesn't provide is the level of "desktop integration" found in WTS. That is, suppose I copy something in one, I can't paste it in the other. Moving files back and forth, etc. has the same limitations. The 2 GUI sessions basically have no knowledge of each other's existance. Again, is there a way to achieve this with the tools you're recommending?

      I'm not trolling or anything, I'm honestly looking for the ideal solution for my own networking needs. I was basically looking for a setup like "screen" on my xterm, but for the whole GUI session. WTS does this beautifully on my XP box, but so far I'm only using VNC on my Linux box.

    • FYI (Score:2)

      by numbski ( 515011 ) *
      in cygwin it's ssh -Y, not ssh -x

      I forget why, but that's the way it is.
      • Cygwin's ssh is OpenSSH, same as on most all *nixes.

        -X (uppercase) enables X11 forwarding.
        -x (lowercase) disables X11 forwarding.
        -Y enables trusted X11 forwarding.

        Trusted means that the "auth cookie" from the local X11 server is transfered to the ~/.Xauthority file on the remote machine, so that remote clients will present the cookie to the server when connecting and be trusted. This is analogous to the ancient "xhost +remote" method but much more secure and robust. See "man Xsecurity" and "man xauth".
    • Have you ever used X en masse on a big network?

      X is a network hog, and the slightest network issue will completely fuck your X sessions. RDP is a great protocol.

  • VNC server is a solution (Score:3, Informative)

    by t-maxx cowboy ( 449313 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2005 @03:52PM (#12014987) Journal
    You can run multiple VNC servers on a linux box and had the equivalent. They can even be secured with SSH.
    • yes, had should be have.
    • I agree. I even use VNC on my Windows boxes over other products. It makes for a free KVM.
    • I am only familiar with VNC on Windows. In Windows VNC there is only one VNC user at a time and if someone else logs in the current session is dropped. So with Linux VNC you setup a process for each console port you want to use? Won't that limit you to a finite set of connections? Would you need to load a seperate X windows process for each? Not that Terminal Server doesn't have a finite number of connections, but I guess you would need to run a script starting all the VNC processes.
      • With SuSE, (9.x at least, probably even before that), you can enable a VNC terminal server. If you do this is then adds a VNC service to xinetd allowing multiple sessions to be connected to the server faily easily. I.e. I connect to the system on port 5901 and it spawns a Xvnc process to handle the connection. Connecting again to the same port spawns another one.

        Each VNC session gets its own kdm (in my systems case) login and own X desktop. A quick look shows only one "X" process running and a "Xvnc" p
    • A direct X connection or ssh forwarding is much better that VNC. First of all, the vnc viewer already needs an X server running, so there can be issues operating the remote window manager. Also, the X protocol is much more efficient and responsive than RFB for things like moving windows, as opposed to a vnc server just dumping raw graphics data over the network. X is nice, it's too bad we have to waste space on slashdot explaining it to windows users.

  • X server (Score:2, Informative)

    by khanyisa ( 595216 )
    Any X server will function as a remote client to a Linux installation, and this applies to LTSP first. You're searching for the wrong terms, read up about how X clients and servers work.

  • nx/free nx (Score:5, Informative)

    by mrolig ( 101666 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2005 @03:58PM (#12015056) Homepage
    look at nx/freenx, it works pretty well and is even cross platform. KDE has some kind of integration/support.

    http://www.nomachine.com/
  • Then you want this: rdesktop.org [rdesktop.org]

  • KDE (Score:2, Informative)

    by CyberVenom ( 697959 )
    Check out KDE's offering in this respect.

    krdc and krfb claim to be RDP and VNC compatible.

    http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/krdc
    ht tp://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/krfb

  • FreeNX? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dr.Dubious DDQ ( 11968 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2005 @04:06PM (#12015169) Homepage

    I honestly haven't gotten around to trying to compile and install the mess of little packages [nomachine.com] that make up the free sources for the FreeNX [nomachine.com] server and client, but combined with X's "built in" network transparency it may do what you need. (NoMachine sells licenses for a pre-built commercial version of the server and appears to have some binary downloads for clients as well.)

    X11 itself already has mechanisms built in (for quite a long time now) to handle remote "terminal server" type connections, but by themselves they're really only suited to being used over a LAN. For "remoter" access (e.g. over the internet) FreeNX supposedly adds the functionality that you need to do this.

    (Anybody want to comment on their experiences getting FreeNX installed and configured?)

    As other posters have suggested, X-over-SSH is also an option, and is more likely to be more or less built-in for whatever distribution of Linux you're using. Linux systems should have the necessary capability to do this built in, and you can get the same functionality for Microsoft's Windows via installation of CygWin [cygwin.net] X11 and OpenSSH packages.

    VNC is a third option, though I gather it doesn't work quite as well for this sort of thing as FreeNX or X11-over-SSH does.

    • Re:FreeNX? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by n1ywb ( 555767 )
      X works extremely well over non-LAN connections if you use either LBX [google.com] or (my favorite) DXPC [google.com].

      I use DXPC to get into my box at home from work and it's very useable, definately better than VNC over the same connection. They'll even make X tolerable over a modem but highly graphical apps will still take a hit.

    • Linux systems should have the necessary capability to do this built in, and you can get the same functionality for Microsoft's Windows via installation of CygWin X11 and OpenSSH packages.

      Just realized I should clarify that in this part I mean the capability to be a "terminal" - to USE X11 over SSH to run a remote X11 session. Cygwin's X11 packages theoretically should also be able to serve connections from remote terminals as well, but only for X11/Cygwin applications, you can't run "Microsoft Word" (for

    • Re:FreeNX? (Score:3, Informative)

      by DA-MAN ( 17442 )
      There is a great tutorial available here:

      http://fedoranews.org/contributors/rick_stout/free nx/ [fedoranews.org]

      I just used the precompiled RPM's for fedora. Using FreeNX is definately a good replacement. I use it on my iBook to connect to my Linux Desktop at work via ssh and nothing more.

      It's fast as hell too! Definately usable via dialup.
    • FreeNX works great over a DSL line, which is how I use it. It gives you the Windows Terminal Server experience, more or less. It installs cleanly onto gentoo using emerge, and comes built-in to Knoppix if you want to try it out.

      X over SSH is not an option. X sucks over the WAN, and graphical apps tend to be practically unusable for any length of time. Plus, you don't get your entire desktop, which is what the submitter wants.

      A fully functioning RDP server for Linux would be awesome, however.
      • Plus, you don't get your entire desktop

        Sure you do... if you want it. The components that make up the desktop are just X applications like any other.
        • What, I'm going to run Kicker as a separate X app? Sure it will launch an app if I click on a button, but will I see it? No. It's not the same as having the whole desktop as a cohesive whole.

  • The whole reason why Windows Terminal Server (and Citrix) came about is because windows isn't a multi-user operating system, unlike *nix.

    All you need is an account on the *nix server, you can then login to it and run whatever programs you want, remotely. X11 has inbuilt networking support so you can display the program locally while running the 'compute' bit on the server.

    You don't really explain why you need a WTS type system, other than to replace one. Perhaps you should look at what you are trying to a
    • "because windows isn't a multi-user operating system, unlike *nix."

      Huh? Did you miss the last ten years or something?

      Windows 9x was not a true multiuser OS, but Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 is, and always has been, a multiuser OS. It was designed to be so from the start.

      "X11 has inbuilt networking support so you can display the program locally while running the 'compute' bit on the server."

      Yes, but X11 isn't like Windows Terminal Services. XDMCP is closer to what the poster wants, but it's not quite the same

      • Windows 9x was not a true multiuser OS, but Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 is, and always has been, a multiuser OS. It was designed to be so from the start.

        A multi-user OS means that I can log in several times on the same computer at the same time. And that multiple users can log on at the same time from different places.

        To the best of my knowledge you really can't do this properly in WinXP with utils such as Remote Desktop. It may very well be possible but they haven't exactly gone out of their way to draw atte

        • A multi-user OS means that I can log in several times on the same computer at the same time. And that multiple users can log on at the same time from different places.

          This [sig9.com] allows you to have up to two sessions on at once (for free). If you want more (for $$$) with Windows XP, try WinConnect Server XP [thinsoftinc.com]

        • A multi-user OS means that I can log in several times on the same computer at the same time. And that multiple users can log on at the same time from different places.

          The GUI is not the only service that a computer can use to provide logins. Every version of NT has the basic OS support for mulitple users, if the service they are connecting to supports them.

          Notably, the Windows GUI didn't support remote sessions until NT4.0 Terminal Server (or 3.51 with Citrix), but connections to other services like file s

        • WinXP disabled this feature but Windows 2000 Advanced Server allows multiple remote desktop connections by multiple users while someone is logged into the console.
        • Not really with XP - however, you can setup telnet or ssh on the box and connect in that way, with multiple people. XP is designed to be the end user device (think SSH client) and Win2k/2k3 server as being the server - on the server os's (with the right licenses) you can have multiple people connect and run programs at the same time, all seeing their own desktop.
      • No Windows NT/2K etc is a multi-tasking O/S, NOT a multi-user O/S. The Citrix stuff is a kludge to make a multi-user O/S.

        There's a difference. In a non-WTS/Citrix environment more than one person can NOT use the O/S. More than one process owned by more than user can run, but one physical user has control over the keyboard etc. Yes with w2k theres a telnet daemon but you can't run proper windows programs via this method (only CLI stuff).

        The Citrix stuff (either full or cut down with WTS) gives Windows that
  • Is the client running linux or a version of windows? If the client is using Linux then using a X session on a remote X server is the way to go, with SSH. But if your client is using Windows and your server would be Linux/unix.. I can't garantee the stability of the connection and applications. Unless there is a client for windows to run a X sessions in full screen ? Hum.. What about LiveCD booting and connecting directly to a remote X server with SSH connections?
  • ..about what you're trying to acheive?

    Like, what you want to do with your "Linux terminal server session" once you've got it? Also, how many users are we talking about. It might be that something as simple as running vncserver as a service with desktops started for a few users might be what you want, or you might want something a bit more complicated
  • ...he wants to set up a Linux box and be able to remotely connect to it like you would with a Windows Terminal Server box using a standard RDP client. And it sounds like he wants to be able to access multiple, concurrent sessions (unlike Windows XP Pro's Console access.) Yes, you could use X and SSH, but unfortunatly, that kind of connectivity is not easy with Windows clients.

    Looks like he just wants to run Windows Terminal Services under Linux. How would he do this?
    • He doesn't, he runs a vncserver on the host and gets RealVNC [realvnc.com] client for Windows.
    • You are exactly right. I want all the functionality of having multiple users connect to a non-windows server in a multi-user environment to run a GUI Java Application (Or whatever else). All the clients are remote, running Windows, so a Linux client with X+SSH would not work either.

      • Re:It really sounds like... (Score:4, Informative)

        by GoRK ( 10018 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2005 @07:52PM (#12017684) Homepage Journal
        The "full-on" LTSP can give you X, NX, and VNC exportable desktops (or an individual application if you configure the sessions that way) plus PXE booting for full terminals if you need it. That gives you a lot of flexibility on the client as you can use the NX client or a VNC client if an NX client is not available or a little dedicated terminal with only a cpu, ram, and motherboard. I'm also sure that you are aware that the dedicated X VNC server is also quite a bit faster than the normal experience of running a VNC server on Windows or x0rfbserver under linux as the graphical changes are all translated to VNC commands directly and do not have to be polled. It should be very fast with java and swig if your apps widgets are not too complicated, so it's not an impossible solution, at least if you want to provide access via a java applet.

        Anyway, FreeNX is what you actually want to fool with. Deb's here (or they used to be here anyway):

        deb http://www.freedesktop.org/~mornfall/debian/ experimental main

        You in theory can configure x0rfbserver on top of the FreeNX X server too, so you could have a user log off of an NX session, then access it later over VNC or standard X or whatever.
    • Just use SSH + X, and get an X server for windows. X-Win is OK, but it's not free. Cygwin/X is not as good, but it's free and based on XFree86.
  • What I am really missing here is what you want to do no matter if you use WTS or some Unix-based thing.
    Usually you don't have a terminal service just for the sake of it but for accessing some kind of application or the other.

    If this application is a Windows-only app then the answer is: No, you cannot replace the server by something Unixy, but certainly you can use Linux or something else as a (thin) client as many in this thread have suggested.

    If the app also runs on *ix or has appropriate replacements t

    • Usually you don't have a terminal service just for the sake of it but for accessing some kind of application or the other.

      That's a very un*x-eye view of things. There are plenty of companies connecting large numbers of thin terminals to TS or Citrix servers to run their entire desktop, just because of the intrinsic benefits of thin clients (simpler maintenance, easier to tie down).

      Others have mentioned specific benefits of TS, which include persistent sessions and local printers. Another advantage I not

  • I've wondered about this kind of thing as well. The one thing that the RDP based implementations seem to have over standard X versions is that they can pipe the sound over along with display.

    Is there any way to get full sound support when connecting remotely to your (flavor of) unix server? Preferably a free/open solution...

    -supertux
    • Yes!!!

      KDE's ARTS has network transparency built into it, and because of the way it uses named pipes in each user's home dir it can work with remote sound hardware. I have never had any success getting it to work reliably but I have heard others have while I was Googling for an answer.

      There is also NAS that has Windows compatibility but is (AFIK) more difficult to configure and use on a per-user/per-login basis. I'm sure it's possible to do, again I gave up and went for ARTS, which sort of does work. NA

  • Trying to set that up now... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kiaser Zohsay ( 20134 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2005 @04:39PM (#12015560)
    TightVNC includes a server Xvnc that has an inetd mode. Basically, you set up identd (or equivalent) to listen on a port (say, 5901) and when a connection comes in it fires up a copy of Xvnc to serve it. Xvnc can query an XDMCP server it initallize a new desktop for the new server. That part runs like a champ.

    kdm claims that it will respond to XDMCP requests when the proper config options are set, but I have not yet been able make that part happen. So for now all I get is a grey-crosshatch default X background and mouse pointer that doesn't have anything to click on.
    • KDM responds beautifully to XDMCP requests. I use it here. I can't remember the line I changed but it was only one line to change in the config file.

      The kdmconfig tool also lets you enable XDMCP. Remember to allow XDMCP into your firewall from trusted machines as well; don't want to block it.

      You probably want hosts.allow as well to make kdm accept connections from hosts - but I don't know... I never had to do that.
      • In the config I am trying to setup, the Xvnc server is on the same machine as kdm. The remote machine connects with vnc, which is working.

        The kdm config file is ${kde_dir}/share/config/kdm/kdmrc, and in the [xdmcp] section I have set enabled=true, which should do it from everything I've read, yet it doesn't.
        • It worked here by enabling that, allowing port xdmcp (can't remember the number) through the firewall and then adding kdm to hosts.allow to let anything on my local network connect to my machine.

          I don't know how it works with VNC, because I have been using a real X server on the remote end...
  • Any of those three will do something like what you're looking for in different ways. If all you need is access to data from the server, OpenVPN is easy to configure and pretty secure. VNC is MUCH nicer on *nix than it is on Windows. Multiple servers can be run with various levels of access based on the privlages of the user. Haven't messed with X over SSH too much, but I understand it'll do what you're looking for, too.
  • Check out this old blog entry [trilug.org] of mine. It details how to set up VNC in a way that does what I think you're trying to do. Clients for any popular OS are abundant.

    You can run that on top of a regular Linux distro, or if you also need thin clients you can add this to an LTSP server.

  • FREENX - it does that - whatever that is. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by narrowhouse ( 1949 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2005 @06:03PM (#12016504) Homepage
    OK several people have mentioned it, but apparently the other posters don't seem to catch the hint.

    FreeNX does a new connection for each user on the fly.
    It allows printer, file and sound sharing.
    It works over SLOW connections.
    It is cross platform.
    It allows you to disconnect from a session and rejoin later.
    It has a commercial version if you want support.
    I can be used to connect a single app instead of a desktop.

    If it doesn't do what you want then neither does Terminal Services.
  • if not, take a look at Sun's Sun Ray Server Software [sun.com] (aka SRSS). it runs on linux now, but it costs $

    we use it here (version 2 tho) and it works fine. you can be doing your thing, go to lunch, leave your apps running, come back (to another client even), and your apps are right there for you
  • ...then you should be trying to get away from terminal servers as well. The only justification I can see for using a terminal server is to have a centrally-managed Windows desktop. People do use terminal servers in a Unix/Linux evironment, but it's never made sense to me. There are better ways to share resources.
    • Ok, let's say you're running something like a high-end engineering/modeling program (like IDEAS, etc.), and need the computing power of a large system (or cluster). Then you can use a terminal server to connect, and have a speed that wouldn't be possible with a single workstation. While this might be a good scenario for grid computing, not all applications are grid-based, and some network architectures just don't accommodate a grid well.

      • Then you can use a terminal server to connect, and have a speed that wouldn't be possible with a single workstation.

        That's one way. But there are better ways.

        I don't know a lot about modeling software -- but if it uses an X GUI than you should be able to run it remotely without going through a terminal server. You'd need a good network and a good local workstation, but no more so than you'd need to run a terminal server. Indeed, I think the network overhead would be rather less.

        • Yeah, you're right, for local workstation installations, but I was thinking more for the remote/thin clients, and using something like NX, which might still have advantages even on local networks. I do know that running X sessions over slow links is not great for modeling apps, but I'm not sure if NX is really any better. Another difficult program is EtherApe, since the display will get so far behind actual events due to constant changes (on busy networks). I have used both IDEAS (modeling program) and E

  • Sun Rays, Citrix, and Tarantella (Score:4, Informative)

    by argel ( 83930 ) <argel@NOspaM.msn.com> on Tuesday March 22, 2005 @07:02PM (#12017173) Homepage
    SUN Ray Server Software (SRSS) 3.0 runs on Linux, though it is missing a lot of functionality that the Solaris version has including Non Smart Card Mobile sessions. SUN also has a Soft Ray Java based SUN Ray client but unfortuantely it has not been released yet.

    For whatever reason Citrix does not seem to want to make a Linux version of MetaFrame Presentation Server for UNIX. For those who think X11 is good enough try running it over a dial-up line sometime. Suddenly MPSU looks a lot better (it's also better than e.g. using Exceed on a Windows box on a LAN).

    However, one of Citrix's competitors does support Linux. Have you looked into Tarantella [tarantella.com]? Might be what you are looking for.

  • http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2685 [winehq.org] I tried the following a few months ago then submitted the bug: wine termsrv.exe It failed because the termsrv program is Win2KServer or WinXPserver. Wine doesn't supply those Windows Version types to the program so the Windows termsrv program refuses to run. I was trying to run Wine using termsrv.exe because it would get around the various slow display emulations and bugs that mapping windows display actions into X commands run into. Then I could have all my
  • If you want to eliminate MS Windows from your life, why do you want to connect to it over a terminal server?
  • Does anyone know of a (free) linux vnc client that does resolution scaling?

    Using scroll bars to navigate around my remote desktop is a pain. I'd rather it was just shrunken into a smaller window, but you only seem to be able to do this on windows client->linux server, not vice versa.

    I am also open to alternative windows server/linux client remote desktop solutions.
    • Does anyone know of a (free) linux vnc client that does resolution scaling?

      vncserver -geometry WIDTHxHEIGHT

      Seriously, that's the way to do it.
      Scaling would either look awful without anti-aliasing or suck up lots of CPU time with anti-aliasing.
  • Ok here is your recipe:

    Xvnc
    Kde
    Svncviewer (modified tightvnc java applet / program with ssl and thiner interface)
    And optionally for ssl encryption (server side)
    stunnel
    And optionally for large systems
    ldap / sasl for authentication
    And optionally for internet access
    Apache serving the svncviewer
    And Optionally for network boot terminals
    pxes

    This allows a cheap low bandwidth internet or network boot terminal environment with linux. If you need some windows applications you can run wine (or a varient
  • Quick and easy setup of xvnc for terminal style access. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-72893-highlig ht-xvnc+terminal.html
  • Remote desktops on Linux have been a persistent and annoying problem for a few reasons. Two obvious answers people usually give are "Use VNC and "Use X Windows" but the heart of the problem is in the configuration and setup of these tools and it doesn't address the TS/Citrix and XDCMP method of starting up independent sessions for multiple users.

    When I had to jump around from building to building in order to support developers using my software I worked out a solution that I was very happy with. I didn't

  • XDMCP (Score:1)

    by Boiner ( 58993 )

    I'm not sure if you want to connect linux--linux or not, but assuming you do, it's all built in.

    All the computers here in my home and in my office are basic, basic installs of debian. Open gdm, pick 'xdmcp chooser', and you'll get to see all (1) computers serving X. So, we all have homedirs and applications on the one box.

    It's not the lightest client since each box has a local OS on a local drive, but it's plenty good enough. Maintenance and DR are a breeze...

  • All the above answers are very appropriate, if your not planning to run windows applications on that same server.

    Before all the trolls and flames kick in do allow me to illuminate my thread a little here.

    Recently a client asked if it was possible to provide their corporate accounts package to their clients in a mechanism that enabled the software and data to reside at corporate head offices whilst clients accessed them remotely over the internet.

    I investigated Citrix, Windows Terminal Services, X11 with

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