Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Technology

Citrix-Like Server for Linux? 70

Posted by Cliff from the seeking-viable-commercial-like-alternatives dept.
Devil's BSD asks: "My school is planning to add remote desktop access so that people can easily access a school computer from home. However, with the financial situation in our Kentucky being what it is, using Citrix Metaframe for Unix/XP and buying all the software licenses necessary will be extremely hard. And with the state department of education (ironically named KDE) very pro-Microsoft, VNC is out of the question. Is there a free or low cost Citrix-like software suite that can give access to a remote desktop and compress the datastream to be able to work on a 56k modem like Citrix's ICA does?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Citrix-Like Server for Linux? More

Citrix-Like Server for Linux?

Comments Filter:
  • Why is VNC out of the question?

  • VNC is not out of the question. (Score:4, Informative)

    by jensend ( 71114 ) on Friday March 28, 2003 @06:42PM (#5619376)
    VNC works just fine in a windowswindows configuration. TightVNC [tightvnc.org] compresses vnc pretty well. Remember to keep the color depth down as that can have huge impacts on performance over low bandwidth.
    • I forgot that /. takes out the <---> in windows<--->windows by default.
    • Actually, he said it was out of the question because the department is exceedingly pro-microsoft. Maybe if he told them it was AT&T who wrote VNC?
      • Actually Olivitii (sp) was paying for the lab when VNC was written.
      • Hm. I'd still be willing to bet a good deal that the asker was ignorant of the fact that VNC can do windows to windows and the "education department is pro-MS" deal was to discourage people from saying "Use X11" because they don't want to switch to Linux (or even worse, try to run all the apps they want controlled under Cygwin/Xfree). If the department is so exceedingly pro-Microsoft that it won't use any programs by anybody else, even for windows, then he might as well have just browsed Microsoft's product
    • I can't say I've compared Citrix to it, but TightVNC still leaves me wanting. Still putzy to use on a 10 mbit LAN for me... Alas.
      • Once again- are you reducing color depth? Using 8-bit color depth may be ugly, but it should more than sufficient for controlling the machine (unless you're trying to do graphics-intensive apps remotely)- and it reduces the amount of data which has to be transferred significantly.
      • Other people have mentioned color depth, but there are a few other things you might want to look into:
        • Does the network have the capacity in the first place? I've run VNC over 10Mbit switched Ethernet without much slowdown; but if the network is non-switched or just really busy, anything that requires low latency is going to be hosed.
        • Get rid of unnecessary pixmaps. On WinVNC, there's an option to remove the wallpaper (that can REALLY help); in X use a windowmanager or theme that relies on simple shapes a
      • Still putzy to use on a 10 mbit LAN for me... Alas.

        Well, and it would be "putzy" on a 100mbit or 1Gbit LAN as well. VNC is slow on Windows out of the box because it has to guess about where screen updates occur--there is no official API. But, if you look around, there is a DLL that hooks drawing functions and makes VNC very fast even on Windows.

    • I have used TightVNC with max compression, 8-bit display and 800x600 resolution over a 26.4baud modem with reasonably useful results. It was far better than using plain X11-protocol (Exceed) for graphical applications.

      After a comparison of several commerical products at work, including both Exceed and VNC, VNC won out. Considering you can run VNC through a tunnel SSH connection, that could also setup your compression, what is so "out" about it?

  • Maybe, LTSP? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Xunker ( 6905 ) on Friday March 28, 2003 @06:42PM (#5619379) Homepage Journal
    While I'm not sure if it's specifically what you're looking for, there is the Linux Terminal Server Project [ltsp.org]. It works like Winframe but I don't think it's directly compatible with Citrix ICA. But is is on version 3.0 and a few people I know have used it -- I tried it once for a terminal my house but it was a little overkill for just wanting to make a web terminal for the living room.

    • Re:Maybe, LTSP? (Score:3, Informative)

      by melonman ( 608440 )

      LTSP is great, but I don't think it will do the 56k modem thing. It's basically X11 and a few other standard Linux services linked together in a rather clever way, so the client-server networks overheads are the same as for X11, plus running XFS over tcp, plus serving files... with ten machines, a 10mbit network boils, our current 100mbit one gets congested on occasions, and I'm thinking of getting a gigabyte backbone from the hub to the server in the near future.

      What you can do is run rdesktop, mentioned

  • And with the state department of education (ironically named KDE) very pro-Microsoft, VNC is out of the question.

    Doesn't that same logic rule out Linux as well?

    I would think that VNC or a variation of it running on Linux would solve the problem nicely with the support of multiple virtual desktop running on a single machine.

    http://www.realvnc.com [realvnc.com]
    http://www.tightvnc.com [tightvnc.com]

  • Screw what the boss says... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by benjamindees ( 441808 ) on Friday March 28, 2003 @06:43PM (#5619387) Homepage
    And with the state department of education (ironically named KDE) very pro-Microsoft, VNC is out of the question.

    VNC is the answer. Your boss is a moron if the only reason is "it's not MS".

    • No shit. Show him the bottom line...

      MS = = $$$$$$$$$$
      VCN = = $
    • I agree, I don't understand why you can't use VNC but you're willing to use other free software. Does VNC somehow subvert microsoft's monopoly when it's installed on windows machines? I've used TightVNC in a windows to windows environment and it worked pretty well (I haven't tried it on dialup but I think ping time is more important than bandwidth)
    • The problem with using VNC to access Windows is that it violates your EULA. That's right, Microsoft has denied access to the competion through their EULA. Go read it some time. It's like Anti-Trust Law 101.
      • The problem with using VNC to access Windows is that it violates your EULA. That's right, Microsoft has denied access to the competion through their EULA. Go read it some time. It's like Anti-Trust Law 101

        The MS issue is that the licence says you must use an XP machine to talk to XP - you can use vnc to do that if you want. See Here [infoworld.com] for details.

        For these guys, I guess that you'd have to confirm the OS of all remote desktop users and give them the same one as their remote desktop - XP home, XP professiona
        • Pretty much, yes. There are some finer points you're not summing up, but yes, you've got it.

          What that ammounts to is the damand that in order to manage a Microsoft server, you must employ a Microsoft client. This is a clear case of a product in two wildly different market segments (desktop and server) which is forcing adoption of one (actually forcing you not to swtich off of one) in order to use the other.

          Bastards. Dirty, rat bastards.

  • X11 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by babbage ( 61057 ) <cdeversNO@SPAMcis.usouthal.edu> on Friday March 28, 2003 @06:52PM (#5619446) Homepage Journal
    Nowhere does the article submission mention X11 itself. Was this dismissed out of hand for some reason? As far as I'm concerned, the biggest (and maybe only) strength of X-Windows is the remote display capabilities that are either unavailable or an expensive add-on for other graphical systems.

    Was plain old X11 even considered? If it was, and it didn't meet the criteria, then in what way was it found lacking? Too heavy for a 56k dialup connection? I didn't think it was any worse than Citrix there, but I could be wrong about that. You should be able to get a secure connection via SSH tunneling, and that connection can be compressed if necessary -- there is copious documentation for all this, so I won't repeat how to set it up here, but it's very commonly done.

    The biggest "obstacle" I can think of is that people will need the X11 server software on their end, but again this isn't a very big deal: there are free versions for Windows (Cygwin [cygwin.com] and MacOSX (Apple's X11 beta [apple.com], XDarwin [xdarwin.org]), and of course it is the standard graphical layer for Linux & related systems.

    So really, what needs to happen if you go forward with this idea is for some work to go into packaging it up for students & faculty to use, and giving enough training to show how to get going with it. There are a lot of resources out there that can be relied upon, should the state choose to take this path. It sounds to me like what you need most is for someone to make the pitch to those who are making the decisions.

    • Re:X11 (Score:2, Informative)

      by W. Justice Black ( 11445 )

      Was plain old X11 even considered? If it was, and it didn't meet the criteria, then in what way was it found lacking? Too heavy for a 56k dialup connection? I didn't think it was any worse than Citrix there, but I could be wrong about that.

      VERY wrong about that. ICA as a protocol is thin enough that you can run a session over as little as a 14.4k modem connection (I've done it) and have most apps usable, and things get almost spritely on 56k. It's VERY good at caching, optimizing, and generally being q

      • Tarantella isnt all that cheap, but if you dont need a lot of Enterprise management functionality, they offer a stripped down version called something like the Linux Starter Pak for under 50 concurrent users, that is signficantly cheaper.

        And no, I dont work for them, but I did like their product on Solaris and their tech staff seems to be very unix-saavy, even though they support Windows too.
      • but nobody compares to ICA afaik

        Sure, plenty of things do. You can get lower bandwidth than ICA still with things like Display PostScript and Java. And, in fact, there are even hacks that will take GUIs and expose them through HTML.

        ICA is just one point on a continuum of choices for remote application display; it's tradeoffs are that it needs to take standard Windows applications and squeeze them through a low bandwidth pipe. X11, VNC, LBX, DXPC, etc., all make other kinds of tradeoffs.

    • Well, VNC is better. To get a true X server for Windows Desktops, one that will work with minimum fuss on Windows, it will cost some bucks. Xfree's setup on windows isn't as easy as say installing Exceed. VNC just works. Installs in a blink and is useful for multiple platforms.
    • X11 over a 28-56k modem is usually murder - the simplest programs can generate megabytes of traffic. Over a 400kbit DSL, it's bearable, but still sluggish.
      • What are you doin g, playing Quake or something?

        We used to have users doin g documentation with Interleaf (a professional page-layout type publishing program) and running CAD applications and we could squeeze 4 X-terminals comfortably down a 64Kb/s line to the server.

        • That's a frame relay or frational T1 or other leased line? Phone modem communication is much worse, especially for bursty 2-way. For a nice long file transfer then the phone modem is much like those services.
          • To be fair that was a LAN bridged over a lease line. Some queuing but we tried to tune the prioritising based on protocol type and system.

            I agree, a noisy phone line is bad - mostly because the error correction doesn't mix well with the PPP or whatever you are throwing up it. A clean line seems to be ok though.

      • Use SSH (Score:2)

        by xiox ( 66483 )
        I found that you can get pretty good performance if you tunnel X over a compressed ssh connection. Applications take a while to load, but they're pretty zippy once they've started.

        From linux you can do:

        ssh -C machine.domain ...
        xterm &
    • Too heavy for a 56k dialup connection? I didn't think it was any worse than Citrix there, but I could be wrong about that.

      Some reasons why X is not a good idea in this case:

      1. Plain X protocol doesn't work well with high-latency connections (like a 56k dialup connection): it's the best thing since sliced bread in a LAN, it employs several tecniques to save bandwidth, but unfortunately apps have to continuosly talk with the X server and latencies play a big role. IMHO this is expecially true with modern (r
    • You should be able to get a secure connection via SSH tunneling, and that connection can be compressed if necessary -- there is copious documentation for all this, so I won't repeat how to set it up here, but it's very commonly done.

      I'll help here:

      Server side:

      Uncomment line in sshd_config, enabling:
      X11Forwarding yes

      Client side (Unix, GNU/Linux):

      % ssh -2CX host (2 = SSH2, C = enable compression, X = enable X11 forwarding)
      % startx

      Client side (Windows):

      Get Cygwin/XFree86 [cygwin.com]. It has an easy insta

    • Was plain old X11 even considered? If it was, and it didn't meet the criteria, then in what way was it found lacking? Too heavy for a 56k dialup connection?

      You don't want to run plain X11 over dial-up--it wasn't designed for that. The X11 protocol was designed to be fast for local connections and fast networks. That's why X11 performs comparable to procedure-call APIs like those found in Windows for local graphics.

      However, there are two X11-based protocols designed for dial-up: LBX and DXPC (check on

  • Check out CrossOver OfficeServer Edition [codeweavers.com].

    Runs M$ Office on a Linux 'terminal server'. You still have to buy the M$ Office licenses and the OfficeServer software, but it's hella-cheaper than Citrix.

    100 users for Crossover OfficeServer is something like $5,000 where Metaframe XP (with Windows CALS and Terminal Server CALS) for 100 users would be something like $60,000. You do the math :)

  • Tarantella (Score:5, Informative)

    by humanasset ( 206242 ) on Friday March 28, 2003 @07:12PM (#5619571)
    Check out Tarantella [tarantella.com]. Similar to Citrix MetaFrame, but less expensive, and runs on Windows, Linux, Solaris, and HP-UX.
  • I am using:

    http://www.rdesktop.org/

    You sill need to pay microsoft for remote
    access licenses on server side thought.

  • in fact, I use it as a hack to get a 'persistent desktop'.

    the idea is to run vncserver on a 7x24 server class box. bsd is good and even linux is ok [grin].

    then run your viewer on some rebootable box. ie, a box that you might reboot into windoze or whatever. in my living room, where I don't want a box running all the time (noise), I shut my 'viewer box' down when I'm done for the nite. I just exit vncviewer and shutdown the box. then the next day I boot it up, run vncviewer again and my 'desktop' is t

  • Can you explain the constraints again? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ComputerSlicer23 ( 516509 ) on Friday March 28, 2003 @07:28PM (#5619664)
    Okay, so what precisely are the constraints again? If it has to have a Windows Desktop, you will have to pay Microsoft for a bunch of licenses to be legal. Period. You can skimp on hardware, but that is it.

    Now, if you are trying to avoid paying for the ICA client, but you are willing to pony up the money to Microsoft, then there is a client named rdesktop [sourceforge.net] that does the Microsoft remote desktop protocol (RDP). It was reverse Engineered from scratch, and supposedly is reasonable stable. So now, you can run this on Linux desktops, but you still have to pay Microsoft a bunch of money for the apps (just because they are all running on one server, doesn't get you out of paying them for as many concurrent users as there could be).

    Now, if you have to have Microsoft Applications, but not a Microsoft desktop, you might want to see the guys who develop the Crossover stuff. Now you can run a lot of Windows Apps on a Linux box that has a Wine processes running remote. The product is called Crossover Office Server Edition [codeweavers.com] I don't follow the legality of this, so get a real good lawyer before you try it out. looks [codeweavers.com] like CodeWeavers is saying, you get to pay Microsoft a bunch of money.

    This is probably roughly the same quality, but now your talking about using X for your network transport. Which is a little awkward for remote users, as they will have to run an X server. Cygwin ships with one for Windows desktops.

    Now, if all you want is a bunch of desktops you can run remote from a linux server. Get a bunch of machines that can act like X-Terminals. A bunch of old cheap PC's with a good NIC will do the job, as long as the NIC will do PXE, or netbooting of some flavor. Go get PXES [slashdot.org] from sourceforge and run it. It will net boot, and run rdesktop, a Citrix ICA client, or run as an X Terminal for you. It is very good, and runs pretty well. This is what the city of Largo, FL does. They claim it's great, grand, glorious and best of all, dirt cheap.

    I don't understand your requirements. They appear to be directly contradictory. We have to have cool stuff from Microsoft, but we can't afford to pay for it. My guess is the cost of the Citrix Clients isn't nearly as bad as the cost of all of the copies of MS apps you sound like you want to run. Anyways, these are some pretty decent ways to get remote desktops. However, with Microsoft, you don't really get a break on the pricing that way, it does simplify administration of the desktop, and makes replacing broken hardware much easier.

    Kirby

  • Works over a modem just fine, and windows clients, as well as unix ones (rdesktop).

    You still have the cost issue though, because you still have to pay for a license for _Each concurrent client_ for _each piece of software_.

    That is to say, if you want to let 10 people connect to a terminal server, you have to buy 10 client licenses (cheap), and (for instance) 10 copies of office (!!), 10 copies of adobe photoshop (!!) and so on.

    If you want them to be able to access a single machine, and only one person pe
  • Hi,

    http://www.paulandlesley.org/faqs/LBX-HOWTO.html [paulandlesley.org]

    Here is an howto on a low bandwith proxy. it's included with x, no modules to add on, works over a phone line, and has a kitchen sink.

    LBX (Low Bandwidth X) is an X server extension which performs compression on the X protocol. It is meant to be used in conjunction with X applications and an X server which are separated by a slow network connection, to improve display and response time

  • KDE won't know about a Linux box unless they actually query the server, which they won't do. VNC, on the other hand, can be blocked by the state-they block everything in and out except for about two ports. (slight exaggeration, but accurate.) Even if I did route VNC through another port, they would still be able to pick up the packets. The server is ideally a Linux box, but it can be shifted to Windows if need be. X11 and Remote Desktop's massive bandwidth requirements make it impossible unless VNC or an
    • VNC can be blocked just as easily or not-easily as any other protocol. You could encapsulate it within HTTP traffic, if you needed to. I would suggest at minimum tunnelling within SSH for security and bandwidth (and thus speed) reasons.

      I don't see why the state would block VNC but not Cyrix.

      Get a life.

    • VNC is cheap. It works. It's easy.

      It's also a network hog, even compared to X-11. KDE or Gnome running on X turn it into a hog, but if you're running a pure window manager instead of integrated behemoth, you'll find X is relatively low traffic and quite snappy.

      Personally I find that VNC performs over a 10MBit ethernet runs about the same as an X-11 terminal at the end of a dialup line. (I use VNC for slaving Win boxen from my main Linux dev box, the X-11 access was to provide support for a customer

  • Yes, they do give things out for nearly free to education (in comparison to the normal prices they gouge most people with.) But their enterprise solutions are NOT reasonable for small-middle sized educational establishments. However, there are linux based solutions for this already. If they were not adverse to using a more customizable, and more economically sound product you would easily have a solution.
  • Why do you want to give them a remote desktop? All they need is access to their files, schoolwork, homework, notes from the teacher... This is nothing that can't be handled via a web interface. No need to install anything meets your "ease of use" criteria. A remote desktop of any kind will kill that, unless you plan on going to each house to install and set things up yourself.

    Student's limited by a dialup will not be able to use a remote desktop and still be able to get things done before bedtime..
  • I used PC Anywhere [symantec.com] (under windows 2000) for a few years, and it's a good product.

    You can acces a remote PC, but also transfer files. It uses an efficient compression method, and can use encryption.
  • I would look into NX from NoMachine. I don't know much about it, but it may be close to what you are looking for. It is apparently not free. I tried the demo a few days ago over a 33.6 kbps modem and I was impressed.

    I found it because it came up on the new forum@XFree86.org -- here is the first post of that thread: http://xfree86.org/pipermail/forum/2003-March/000 3 28.html

    And here are two excerpts:

    <quote>
    We spent last three years trying to make X so good as a network computing platform to compe
  • In our school we simply use ssh (putty if the user is on windows), and tunnel whatever is needed over it.
  • They are a little company with a product called 'Canaveral IQ' that is a direct competitor to Citrix. It's very powerfull, cheap, and claims to overcome the hellish prinint that plagues Citrix by using either PostScript or EMF (I can't remember which). My company just got a demo version, and it kicks ass. Windows only on the server side, it sits on top of a Windows Terminal Server, but the client is available for just about anything. Version 2.0 is due out in a couple of months, and it looks quite nice. Onl

Slashdot Top Deals

THEGODDESSOFTHENETHASTWISTINGFINGERSANDHERVOICEISLIKEAJAVELININTHENIGHTDUDE

Close