A Task Force Team of KDE and Knoppix hackers and enthusiasts created “just in time” for LinuxTag 2004 two programs which harvested an overwhelming response from visitors: FreeNX Server and kNX Client. Although not yet officially released, several presentations showed a well working preview of the KDE version for the speed boosting NX Terminal Server technology. The software will be available soon at
Kalyxo.org.
Read more here.
KDE Gets Thin Client Technology
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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As the title says, this will come in handy for many linux users, as it will bring speedily updating connections to your computer over something as slow as a phone line
This is great for schools etc. too, as the whole thin-client concept becomes more easily implementable. Thin clients are [should be] much cheaper and easier to maintain, and are generally great as long as you don’t need to run heavy processing (such as 3D rendering) but only need word processing and maybe music playing.
– Simon
Kudos to the KDE developers!
Has anyone tried to benchmark this yet? I don’t want to get the old flame war going again but, VNC, X11 and even X11 via compressed ssh all use considerably more bandwidth and are noticably slower than Citrix ICA. How does NX performance compare? I see claims of 70:1 compression but, what does that mean in the real world? Using Citrix ICA over a 28.8 modem connection is very fast, almost as fast as being on a LAN, unless you enable sound or video. Does NX offer similar performance? That would be great if it is the case. If it offers only slightly better performance than VNC I won’t be very impressed.
Also, is it possible to map client devices to the server as you can with Citrix? Meaning, can the NX server access the clients serial and printer ports, local file system, other devices as is the case with Citrix?
“Also, is it possible to map client devices to the server as you can with Citrix? Meaning, can the NX server access the clients serial and printer ports, local file system, other devices as is the case with Citrix?
”
yes and its atleast as fast as that.
That’s really spiffy!
This project doesn’t impress me at all. Neither does the LTSP. Thin clients are not useful and it makes no sense to have one central server. Remember the mainframe days? Now look at computers, everyone has one on their desk locally to power the programs. Sorry but businesses need more than just a web browser and email client to do business. They have much more to fill their business needs.
Just today, Novell sold $450 million in debt for fundraising[1]; speculation is that it’s for an acquisition. But of whom?
JBoss is a possibility, but M. Fleury’s antics would make that problematic.
My guess (and I know it’s a little far out) is NoMachine, the German company that puts out NX. That’d synch with Novell’s recently reaffirmed commitment to Open Source and their interest in networking. And since NoMachine’s a German company, they’d be able to build on their existing German base with SuSE.
You heard it here first. Just my own personal guess, but don’t be surprised if you see it happen.
[1] http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Jun/06292004/business/179570.asp
“Sorry but businesses need more than just a web browser and email client to do business. They have much more to fill their business needs.
”
you have basically no idea of what you are talking about. thin clients can run everything just like any normal client. its extremely resource efficient and economical. its a big boon for administrative reasons also. just because you dont understand that you cannot dismiss it as useless
Very insightful! While NoMachines is definitely not worth $450 million, I think such an aquisition would make perfect sense. You may also recall that Novell is teaming up with LTSP. Coincidence? Novell absolutely needs the NX technology to compete with Citrix and Microsoft’s offerings of Terminal Services.
“This project doesn’t impress me at all. Neither does the LTSP. Thin clients are not useful and it makes no sense to have one central server. Remember the mainframe days? Now look at computers, everyone has one on their desk locally to power the programs. Sorry but businesses need more than just a web browser and email client to do business. They have much more to fill their business needs.”
I guess you live in a world where everybody lives very good, has everything they need and there are no poor people, but…
that is not the case of the planet Earth.
I can kinda see where he’s coming from. I rolled out a thin client (P166/64 MB, 10 mbps hubbed) for my sister running off the parents PC, and it worked quite well except for;
Games, music, movies.
Guess what she wants to use the computer?
With that it mind – it works perfectly for office type applications. Oh wait…
My point is that thin clients (as oppossed to diskless workstations that run applications locally unlikely) are unlikely in the near future to work for the common home user, and high-bandwidth office users (graphics, audio and video developers).
“Sorry but businesses need more than just a web browser and email client to do business. They have much more to fill their business needs.
”
As the saying goes:
It’s better to have people think you are an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Unbelievable. I was the one who posted that comment about businesses need more, and I stand by it. Thin clients were a thing of the past just like mainframes with dummy clients. I think you people are very narrow minded in thinking this will solve all your problems. When your database queries are running slow and your server is at 100% cpu you will see. Businessese use applications that need the data processed locally, not over the network. Whats so hard to understand about that?
This project doesn’t impress me at all. Neither does the LTSP. Thin clients are not useful and it makes no sense to have one central server.
No. It makes more sense to have a couple of redundant ones for failover.
Remember the mainframe days? Now look at computers, everyone has one on their desk locally to power the programs.
Are you employed, sir? I don’t know about your place of business, but at every place I’ve worked, “the server is down” means everyone gets a day off. Without a network, those computers on everyone’s desks basically become big hunks of trash.
Thus fat clients are not especially good at powering programs. Moreover, they are prone to software-based glitches if not properly locked down, hardware glitches even if they are, and on top of that they need to be constantly re-imaged.
It’s bad to have one single critical point of failure; but in the “modern” fat-client/server architecture, a user’s ability to do his job can be shut down by failure on either the client or server side. Which is not good.
Sorry but businesses need more than just a web browser and email client to do business. They have much more to fill their business needs.
I don’t thin you understand what thin clients are. The whole idea is that you do run office suites and junk on thin clients. The big obstacle to adoption, IMHO, has been that so many businesses rely on MS Office, and the price structure of Office makes it prohibitive to run on a thin-client setup.
It’s MS’s pricing, not technical or user-needs reasons, that keeps us in the current architecture. If you’re going to Linux anyways, you might as well go to the better architecture as well. Reserving workstations for those who do lots of CPU-intensive work means less IT nightmares (and cost).
“When your database queries are running slow and your server is at 100% cpu you will see. Businessese use applications that need the data processed locally, not over the network. Whats so hard to understand about that?”
Hey genius,
Databases traditionally use the client-server model so that means the query actually run’s on the server not on the client (This is true for thin or fat client). Other than multimedia / sound applications can you site a specific example of a common business app that doesn’t work satisfactorily on a thin client?
My point is that thin clients (as oppossed to diskless workstations that run applications locally unlikely) are unlikely in the near future to work for the common home user, and high-bandwidth office users (graphics, audio and video developers).
Your objections are completely off the wall. “I tried thin-clients for something they’re not suited for, so they’re bad. Also, they’re not suited for something else they’re not suited for.”
The last thin-client deployment I was personally involved in was at a human resources office where the staff used their computers for:
1. Word processing and spreadsheets.
2. Accessing the mainframe-based payroll software with ssh.
3. Some browser-based corporate portal apps.
The architectural transition was practically seamless. If you tried to do the same thing with graphic artists you’d have to have your head examined.
Databases traditionally use the client-server model so that means the query actually run’s on the server not on the client (This is true for thin or fat client).
By “database” I think he means Access. omg lorfl. n00b!!!
I think you’ve completely mis-understood where I was coming from. I’m basically saying that I mis-predicated what my sister was going to use her computer for.
I’m all for thin clients in workplace setting, for exactly the sort of tasks you describe.
(Yes, I agree with you.)
My point )in a vauge round about kind of way) was that I suspect our anonymous friend here has failed to grasp that what he uses his computer for has jack-all to do with what most office users use their computer for. That, and he clearly has no idea about how much the client-server model is used in office settings – even in ‘thick client’ settings (database and file servers come to mind).
My point )in a vauge round about kind of way) was that I suspect our anonymous friend here has failed to grasp that what he uses his computer for has jack-all to do with what most office users use their computer for. That, and he clearly has no idea about how much the client-server model is used in office settings – even in ‘thick client’ settings (database and file servers come to mind).
Sorry I misinterpreted you.
BTW: You do make a good point. When deploying thin clients or any technology, you need to have a very good picture of what the users need it for.
Best,
Starchild
By the way, guys, have a look at the PXES project.
http://pxes.sourceforge.net
I built a 100 client network in a morning with PXES.
It provides clients that can connect to VNC, RDP (Microsoft), XDMCP (Linux), LTSP (Linux) and ICA (Citrix) terminal servers.
When you boot, you can choose to connect to one of the above or you can boot to a minimalist Linux distribution that puts a link on the desktop to each of the above terminal servers. You can then have windows apps in one window and Linux apps on another one.
“This project doesn’t impress me at all. Neither does the LTSP. Thin clients are not useful and it makes no sense to have one central server. Remember the mainframe days? Now look at computers, everyone has one on their desk locally to power the programs. Sorry but businesses need more than just a web browser and email client to do business. They have much more to fill their business needs.”
You have not worked in the enterprise. Thin Clients make administration easy and allows a centeral point for applications to be run: one configuration that works. I have used both true thin clients like Workspace on demand (OS/2) and Citrix and they have made TCO for support go down 80%.
Terminal computing will never go away. That is why S390, Unix, and AS400’s are still being used for data warehousing and business operations.
Jim
Terminal computing will never go away. That is why S390, Unix, and AS400’s are still being used for data warehousing and business operations.
I could take you to places (you wouldn’t want to go to them) where you can still see VMS roaming loose in the wild. I don’t mean the newfangled HP OpenVMS, either. I mean the old-school DEC one.
Scary but true.
I agree with everyone who says Terminal Computing is “useful”. I have 4 computers at home but i mostly like to work on my laptop…now my laptop is a low end 433 MHz machine with wireless networking so i can always TS in my XP boxes which are powerful enough and work on it easily and i can X in my linux boxes and enjoy linux too. I can VPN from home to work and work on my office machines using RDP too and the next morning my session is still there.
So you are wrong if you think this technology is useless. It is very useful and it is very much “IN”
At home I’ve recycled my girlfriend’s older computer into a thin client, so she can surf the web, use office applications and send e-mails when I’m on the web while still having her desktop and preferences. This is one instance where a thin client is useful.
Schools is another good environment for thin clients. More generally, as other posters have shown, there are circumstances where a thin client setup is useful.
Meanwhile, you have shown little knowledge about how databases are usually set up, and your arrogant yet unsophisticated tone seems to indicate that you do not in fact possess the experience your profess. In other words, you are simply a troll, and I see that many people took the bait.
Anyway, you’ve made your point (even though it’s weak) so there’s no reason to simply repeat it over and over. Please go troll somewhere else, and let us discuss the suject at hand. Thank you.
And since NoMachine’s a German company, they’d be able to build on their existing German base with SuSE.
NoMachine is an Italian company.
They are the only ones who would make such dumb founded assumptions. There are very few benefits of a thin client.
Go back to the days of 80286 processors, SPARC 2s and 2Mbps half-duplex coax LANs. You seem to be stuck there.
buy Trolltech? I remember that there have been rumors in the past about Novell buying Trolltech.
It seems that Knoppix doesn’t stop surprising everyone, being probably the most innovative Linux distro (introduced LiveCD and great hardware detection).
It would be great if other distro’s developers tried going the same way – be innovative, be creative! – with stuff like this FreeNX. Now it’s quite boring to have hundred of Kno* and *pix distros, every one built with philosophy “take Knoppix and replace two apps with your favourite ones”.
Is there any way to financially support Knoppix?
If you have “support nightmares” from your PC setup, your IT team obviously doesn’t know what it’s doing.
Snide remarks about marketing speak aside, If you’re having so many computer failures maybe the problem is your IT staff. There are (Windows) computers where I work that haven’t had any problems since I installed them, which in some cases is up to two years ago. Moving to thin clients because your IT department doesn’t know how to support normal PCs isn’t the right reason to move to thin clients.
We run a modified version of LTSP 2.x on dual-proc P3 1 GHz systems with 3 or 4 GB RAM. We have no problem running 30 clients with OpenOffice, Mozilla, QCad, and Cycas running. However, we also don’t run pure-thin client setups.
Instead, we have our client stations (P 166 through P3 450) configured to run as diskless stations (mount everything via NFS) and run as many applications as possible using the local CPU/RAM. If the client can’t handle a certain piece of software, then only that piece of software is run on the server as a remote X app.
So far, this setup has allowed us to run labs of 30 without problems (low load and RAM/CPU usage on server) and two schools are running 60 clients without taxing the server too much. All using bog-standard X11R6 protocol. We also run TightVNC for remote administration of the clients, as it’s a little faster than pure-X over switched-56K and ADSL connections.
It’s been hyped since the mid-90’s, but thin clients have never really caught on in the corporate environment. Why is that?
No, it is because tons of managers that just need IE, Outlook, and Wordpad, opps Word, and Access won’t stand it. Managers have to have a scanner, digital camera, video capture cards, and dual monitors. It doesn’t matter what they are managing they approve the budget. If it wasn’t the manager, it would be the IT guy or the desktop publishing/web guru that needed it. The managers would generally argree that they need to lock down and micromanage all their employees. They want all that on the same platform as all their toys.
Thin clients should be on almost every business desktop. Other than call centers, I’d doubt that will ever happen. Remember if it was good enough for the manager it is good enough for his sec. or assistant.
Having worked with both Citrix and RDP, and supporting a large number of workstations on Active Directory…
The only advantages of thin clients that I’ve seen over PCs is that the thin clients tend to do better in dirty production enviorments (no clogged fans leading to fried processors).
The great strength of Windows thin clients, be it ICA (Citrix) or RDP (Windows 2000 and 2003 Terminal Services) is database applications that use ODBC connections. Over a remote link (modem, cable, or even T1 WAN) these type of applications just don’t perform worth a damn. Stick a terminal server farm linked via GigE/Fiber/whatever to the database server(s), and the application zooms, and in the case of Citrix, is accessable from anywhere and any platform. Great for outside salse folks.
Support wise though, there really isn’t anything you can do with terminal services that you can’t do in Group Policy and Windows Scripting (VBS, Perl, or whatever your perfered scripting launguage is…you can easily deploy any engine you want to all PCs via group policy.)
Getting those customized ERP/MRP/whatever systems running as fast as possible with 0 downtime it what I see driving thin client soultions in the Windows world. Secondary to that, I see branch offices (Like WalMart Vision Centers) using them to keep real PCs off of the retail floor and (I’m assuming) keep servers and data out of the store and at the regional HQ.
I’ve always wondered:
if a diskless client boots from a server utilising tftp & nfs, then it’s /etc/fstab is that of the server, so if one were to mount a floppy disk on a client, the server would need to mount _that_ via nfs, and so on for each client.
Is this how that kind of thing works?
Short answer: depends.
There are a few different ways to deal with thin clients; some play better with local media than others.
KDElover,
Slackware had a live CD option before Knoppix. Not busting your chops just thought you might want to know. I would agree that Knoppix is continually suprising me as well.
Cheers,
DeadSmiley
I moved about 80 machines from running Windows to using the LTSP about two years ago. LTSP has saved this school an incredible about of money and saved me an incredible amount of time. I actually have time to program and improve the network rather than running around dealing with all the things that make using Windows a miserable experience.
As of today, my LTSP server has been up without reboot or crash for 333 days.
“NoMachine, the German company that puts out NX….You heard it here first. Just my own personal guess”
—-
Hahaha!
Mr. Starchild — since you dont even get the facts right, I wont put too much trust into your personal guesses….
The fact: NoMachine is not a German company. NoMachine is an Italian company.
The proof: Visit their website http://www.nomachine.com/ and click on the “About Us” link on the lower end of the web page….