This summer, in the beginning of August, HP has released a new Linux based thin client. Unlike the other models from the "t5000" line of HP thin clients which use Microsoft Windows CE as their embedded operating system, the "t5515" is based on the Linux operating system. This is also, to my knowledged, the first device that is using Xfce for its graphical user interface.
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Just wondering if you can provide a link to Xfce - there doesn't seem to be enough in the review ;-)
I dont start Gnome vs. KDE wars on Slashdot, I use Xfce 99.9% of the time I am using Linux.
It was nice to see Xfce included in Fedora Core 2, however it would have been nice to have it as an install option (instead of mounting the CDs and installing the RPMs manually). It would be useful if RedHat/Fedora could populate the Xfce menus with items for installed/important programs too. That's just my opinion.
Xfce 3 is also an awesome way to resurrect an old computer. Although it would be nice if Knoppix 3.6 came with version 4 instead of 3.
It’s easy to make themes too – this is my only attempt:
http://www.themedepot.org/itemdetail.php4?id=1275
This HP Thin Client is nice. I need a new toy but I don’t think the accounting department will agree :-(
Are the HP-developed modules for XFce going to be released with some kind of open source license, so they can be made available for desktop Linux users? (And FreeBSD users, since that's what I used to use XFce on -- and what I'll use again when I finally get a PC running once again!)
This is very interesting, usually you see a standard Gnome/KDE setup. It's good to see industry looking deeper into the FOSS scene. Props HP.
xfce reminds me a lot of CDE. That's not a bad thing.
Lightweight, simple, fast and doesn't drag older hardware under. What's not to like?
Wonder if they'll distribute a port to HP-UX? I tried Gnome on it and it was so-so, especially since the latest is 1.4 with no plans on HP's part to port newer versions.. which is why I'm back to CDE there. I could always build gnome 2.x myself, but since the machine is on paid HP support at that jobsite I really should stick to stuff they (HP) approve of.
cool, if only i didnt hate hp......though i like xfce
How mutch this baby going to cost me? XFce4 is my default WM, and it's nice too see that HP like it too.
XFCE's interface is just too... different. Very limiting as well.
Are there any mainboards to buy for the enduser? Which company (Asus,MSI etc) delivers mainboards for the enduser so that he can make a Transmeta based PC at home?
Thanks for all answers
1)Prices of those toys?
2)Those applets developed by hp will be included in the standard xfce?
ps another thing, I've tried the first release of xfce4 is there a way now to remove the upper taskbar and use only the lil'iconbox? :-P
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/thinclients/index_t5000.html
Just a direct link to HP thin clients, so you can see what they look like. There's not even a photo in the article.
It sounds like a nice thin client, not a vendor lock in like SunRays which can't run on anything but Solaris (was there a Linux version yet?). The only missed opportunity is the omission of a NX client. Especially with FreeNX out, it would've been interesting to see how it would have broadened this clients' features even more.
There are, and also include powerpc, arm and the like.
You'll want to search for single intergrated motherboards for industral use. They're usually just development boards for commecial use.
If you're planning on creating your own thin client, you may want to check out the mini-itx boards (mostly based on via's C3 x86 CPU; fanless), www.mini-itx.com etc will give you ideas of what you can do with them. You can flash the BIOS with a Linux BIOS on these too.
It sounds like a nice thin client, not a vendor lock in like SunRays which can't run on anything but Solaris (was there a Linux version yet?)
Excuse me, but you can get to run SunRays ThinClients with a GNU/Linux enviroment.. all you need is a GNU/Linux Server (RedHat or SuSe) and the SunRay Server beta version.
One more thing, theres no vendor lock.. the SunRay comes with a lower version of the SPARC family, and its functionality is FAIR different from any other ThinClient out there... besides, Sun keeps claiming ThinClient computing since 96 I guess...
Regards,
another thing, I've tried the first release of xfce4 is there a way now to remove the upper taskbar and use only the lil'iconbox? :-P
if your distribution uses the Session Manager (e.g. you log in using GDM on Debian 3.1), then right-click on the session manager system tray icon (you may need to enable the tray icon via the xfce settings screen), Session Control, and kill xftaskbar. then save the session, with xftaskbar extinct and xfce4-iconbox living.
otherwise, look into the starxfce4 script, and more specifically the programs it loads using xinitrc
Ofcourse, its all possible. Is there a X client frontend too? Using NX (http://www.nomachine.com) might be faster than VNC (and/or Citrix, RDP).
How fast is this Transmeta CPU compared to say a Duron 800? If its about the same i think its very fast for a thinclient. Also, one important advantage of the Crusoe is that it doesn't use a lot of electricity.
Finally, don't forget the price of $350 is for one only. When you buy more you pay less, relatively.. 
PS: thanks for XFce. XFce4 is great!
So you review a thin client, yet you don't have access to a server. Well, "In my experience this is faster than vnc" is almost as good as actually trying the thing out. Unbelievable!
Does anyone really read these reviews before they are published?
I think that Sun Microsystems Sun Ray Thin Client machines are better.
The price is better and security is better.
Great that HP pays attention to open source projects.
By the way, Olivier, could you provide us XFCE users with some tips on when to expect the new 4.2 version? I am looking forward for it very much.
Keep up the great work!
ps another thing, I've tried the first release of xfce4 is there a way now to remove the upper taskbar and use only the lil'iconbox? :-P
It's in the XFCE4 FAQ ... you just make it so that .xsession doesn't have the line "xftaskbar &" in it.
I noticed when using XFCE 4.0.5 on top of NetBSD, my machine was using around 45-50 MB of RAM in a rather default configuration. My Ubuntu Linux setup with Gnome 2.8 on an iMac uses around 65-70 MB in a similar configuration. It's too bad Mozilla browsers use up so much RAM. It would be nice if a GOOD browser with solid CSS/DHTML support would come out with a footprint of 5-10 megs MAX.
Amiroff, Here's some info about xfce4.2:
http://www.xfce.org/xfce_42_info/xfce42.html
I wish I could "test drive" some of these thin client solutions, or at least see them in real world, production enviroments.
For $350 (without a CRT/LCD), it seems like it's kinda-pricey for what it does. I will concede though, that the price has to do with the small footprint, I am sure.
Right now I am using old laptops as x-terminals, they are "ok", but I'd sure like to see that HP (or even what LTSP/DisklessWorkstations.com offers) in action.
With audio being "iffy" according to various posts on LTSP, will sound even work on the client?
I'd even be somewhat satisfied with a decent review of thin clients in *nix-only shops. Almost all of the reviews I have seen are all, Citrix this, RDesktop that. Not much on the X side.
Does this machine have one?
If possible, it would make for a nice, cheap desktop machine.
> So you review a thin client, yet you don't have access to a
> server. Well, "In my experience this is faster than vnc" is
> almost as good as actually trying the thing out. Unbelievable!
Did you read the review at least? I did the review with a VNC server, not everybody use/need/have/can afford a Windows Terminal Server.
No windows terminal server doesn't mean no server.
i want to help test xfce 4.2 but at work cvs port is blocked.
Any way to get this beta release ??? im running FC2
Ignacio
At first I was thinking, why buy this when you can get a walmart PC for 199. But then I thought of work where we have about 100 PCs. If I could replace each of those PCs with these and a single server to support them, I would save a bundle on IT and power consumption. As our needs grow the difference will only get bigger. For work this would be pretty cool. <BR> Now for home I would love a $99 to $150 thin client to put in the kitchen, and maybe one on my mini-desk in my bed room. A extra networked media box on my PC in the living room and that would be perfect. In any case, once I figured out that im not the target market for this device, it made more sence.
A Duron will be significantly faster. It is probably important to remember, though, that neither processor would be stressed in a thin client. All the real work is done on the server, this hardware's job is really just to manage the network connection and display what the server tells it to.
Sorry if this is Off topic, but I actually posted those two posts by Powerterm. I don't know why my browser autofilled in PowerTerm as my name, its never done that before. Sorry.
I think this machine will be so quite because it is not using a Fan I guess. I knew that this CPU will not need an active cooling mechanism. If anyone would explain.
More quiter environment more innovative production
uh... is my glinks-hacked fooling me or the correct price is not $350 but a wooping $ 3500 !?
not as complete as flonix usb edition 1.0 (with also vnc, wtse, ssh clients) : http://www.flonix.com" http://www.flonix.com
But it's nice to see more os on usb keys, I think that's the futur 
Client cpu-power does matter, because a) it has to load a linux kernel and b) it has to do all the display / X work.
And very nice to see how XFCE4 is employed, it deserves it! Excellent! I only wish it had a better filemanager..
I don't believe you can do that. An alternative to consider is VIA's C3 platform, which you can buy in fanless configurations.
Of course it has to load the linux kernal, and run X. But thats it. I have a 200mhz arm PDA that can do that pretty well. I was just saying that either processor is beyond the point where it matters very much.
> So you review a thin client, yet you don't have access to a
> server. Well, "In my experience this is faster than vnc" is
> almost as good as actually trying the thing out.
>>Unbelievable!
>>
>>Did you read the review at least? I did the review with a >>VNC server, not everybody use/need/have/can afford a Windows >>Terminal Server.
>>
>>No windows terminal server doesn't mean no server.
No offense, but this person has a point. Why would you review a thin client without a terminal server of some kind? That's the whole idea behind thin clients.
VNC isn't a real-world test, because no one uses VNC with thin clients in a real-world production environment; very poor performance and... only ONE connection at a time allowed per server! How would that work in an office of 50 people?
Not having a *windows* terminal server is no excuse. www.K12LTSP.org nothing simpler in the world to set up and it's free.
I don't mean to flame things up here, but if you don't know what to do with a thin client, do the research or drop the review.
Unless you mean per server process, of course, that is not right. I have a VNC server where a dozen clients connect (a classroom where students can watch my desktop).
On another configuration, the dozen clients have each one a separate desktop on the server.
Nice fonts on those screenshots. Probably the best I've ever seen on Linux.
> Not having a *windows* terminal server is no excuse.
> www.K12LTSP.org nothing simpler in the world to set up and
> it's free.
Sorry, www.K12LTSP.org doesn't provide a Windows Terminal Server for free (!!), all they give is rdesktop, the exact same software that ships with the HP device... I hardly see your point with K12LTSP, it's another client, not a Windows server..
From K12LTSP web site :
We've included the rdesktop package that provides access to Windows2000/NT4 terminal sessions with a simple click of an icon. This gives users a choice of operating systems as needed. Note that this option requires a separate W2K/NT terminal server and licenses for clients.
Compared to Sun's SunRay this HP offering looks rather bleak, uninovative and uninteresting (typical HP). SunRay looks like a more promising piece of technology especially with Linux support coming very soon. I use SunRay at work every day and I have to tell you this is really a kick ass piece of technology especially if coupled with smart cards to transparently move the session from one client to the other.
Roberto: Multiple VNC viewers do not constitute multiple processes. It's multicast; everyone gets the same data at the same time. Not the same thing as multiple terminal connections and it's still only one single server (host) process anyway. You couldn't configure a VNC server so that multiple users could work on that server simultaneously, opening files and programs, etc.
Olivier: Correct, LTSP isn't Windows, hence the acronym Linux Terminal Server Project. This same acronym reveals that LTPS is also not a client, but a server that hosts heavier applications so that clients only need be able to run X. The rest is done by the server.
What I meant was that it would have been nice to see tests involving HP thin client and a Linux or UNIX terminal server. This would have been great for us to see, particularily because those of us who actually work with thin clients have never seen an HP thin client built specifically with and for Linux/UNIX!
It's like reviewing a hard drive by only powering it up without ever attaching the data cable.
Forgive me for expecting a technical review.
With all due respect, you are incorrect. VNC can have several users on the same server simultaneously, each in an entirely separate session.
In fact when I was in university (I just graduated and the class to which I am referring did things this way until fall of 2003), the preferred method of working in the FreeBSD environment was to ssh in from our windows box at home, start up a vnc session and then connect (the window manager was WindowMaker). There could be (and were) numerous students on the same machine at the same time.
In fairness to you, you are correct for VNC on Windows, but that is not where VNC was originally designed or most effective. My apologies if you meant VNC for Windows, but you did not specify.
Read my message. I have two setups. On one, it's multicast. On the other, it's one desktop for each client.
This is not windows, you know.
We set up 10 PCs that were destined for scrap, right from 90 MHz Pentiums with 8MB RAM. KDE was too slow; but XFce saved the day and even the users (who are school kids) noticed the difference. I was amazed at how much we could get out of these old machines.
Question for Oliver: has HP contributed the code back for the extra modules. If they haven't, shame on them. If they have, that's great.
No matter what anyone says about XFce, I think it's great. Good job Oliver. Long live XFce.