Jeff, This sounds so bad but with 40+ apps you have to support why not just run Windows natively and provide a NXClient or VNC Client session into an LTSP Server for those that would use it.
How does putting another layer over Windows (VMWare) help with the maintenance of the images? If you are providing the users access to install their own apps then you will most certainly have the same maintenance issues that you are trying to be rid of regardless of being in VMWare or going native. My thoughts are that culture is hard to battle and the need for 40+ apps is impossible to battle. Why not simply work on making those 40+ apps replaceable (in Linux/LTSP) by the time that spiffy new hardware is old and yesterdays news. Over time more and more apps will be usurped by more capable license free ones(on your LTSP installation) and fewer people will be dependent on those Windows boxes. During that time period more educational software developers will be providing Linux versions of their software hopefully helping from that front as well. This time period also gives users chance to get used to the LTSP environment so that it becomes the "culture". Being ready when economics force management to look at alternatives is a great thing. Doug -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jeff Beaird Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2006 6:17 AM To: Benjamin Green Cc: ltsp-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Ltsp-discuss] vmware player instead of rdesktop? Benjamin Green wrote: > Aside from the practicalities of getting this up and running, wich > sounds possible, wouldn't running Windows under VMware as a local app > be incredibly slow? Essentially each thin client would need to be very > powerful, so missing the point of the thin part. Sorry to appear > dismissive, perhaps I am missing something? > > Why not WINE or rdesktop then? Good questions, Ben. It happens that the clients I have available to me for this project are new pc's, with a decent amount of memory and a fast processor. Perhaps I can answer your question, as well as some of the others introduced in this thread, with a further description of what I hope to do. We currently have 40 or so Windows applications that we need to support in an academic lab setting. Additionally, I have a culture of users that expects to have a Windows desktop available to them when they sit down to do their work. Even if I could get all of the applications running with WINE (which my limited experience with WINE informs me that I could _not_ do), there is still the culture/expectation issue to deal with. It is my hope to be able to offer the user a decent choice at the desktop--either they can sit down and do most of what they need to do in the GNOME desktop, with Firefox and OpenOffice, etc., or, for the specialized software, or if they simply prefer it, they can use the Windows desktop. The reason that I'm not considering rdesktop is because I also need to support some level of end-user application install. If a student brings in a CD that came with a textbook that's required for a class, they don't have their own computer to run it on, I need to provide a place where they can install and make use of the software on the CD. I believe VMWare Player will be a better solution than rdesktop in this case, as I can set the virtual disk to be run in persistent mode--then they can make whatever changes they need, but the changes will not last past a reboot. Or, if need be, I can keep an extra copy of the VM on the hard disk, and copy that over the changed one periodically. I'm still not sure how I'll set that up. Besides, if I have to run rdesktop, that's a Windows _server_ I will have to support, and I succeeded in working myself out of Windows server support a couple of years ago. Currently I have a bunch of Windows pc's that I support in this environment, using a combination of Novell's Zenworks imaging and a great, but abandoned, product, PCRdist. I use Zenworks to image the PC's originally, then use PCRdist to keep them up to date, roll back changes, push apps, etc. This works well, although when I have multiple iterations of hardware to support, it gets more complicated. It can also take a while to ready an application to push out with PCRdist, and I always wonder with each new version of Windows whether PCRdist is still going to work, as it hasn't been actively developed since 2002. If I have one virtual machine image I can push out to the clients overnight via rsync or something, whenever I make a change, that would improve the Windows management side of the house. I've been trying to get this whole thin-client concept and linux a little further in the door for a number of years. Even if the clients themselves are not yet thin (responding to Ben's original question), I may be able to introduce linux to a few more computer users, and, hopefully, simplify the management of the Windows desktop. William Man, thanks for the heads-up about Qemu. I will be looking into that. In the LTSP solution, I can plop down whatever hardware I want, with only an empty ext3 partition on the hard-drive, which should be much easier to manage than a standalone linux distro. Chris Fanning, I hope to eventually make use of Xen whenever they officially support Windows. I'm pretty attached to VMWare, having used Workstation for a number of years. Also VMWare is pretty heavily supported here on campus. These are my humble goals. Further thoughts, anyone? -- Jeff Beaird Systems and Technological Services Buswell Memorial Library Wheaton College Wheaton, IL ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=103432&bid=230486&dat=121642 _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid3432&bid#0486&dat1642 _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net
