Having been working for the past few months on introducing LTSP 4.2 into our business (currently rolling out to all users), I was wondering which methods people have adopted for providing access to required Windows apps?
We are in the unfortunate position of having a number of industry-specific applications which are only available for Windows. We have been trialling various options, including: * Wine * Virtualised headless W2K3 server with SeamlessRDP client * Virtualised headless W2K3 server with 2x Application Server client * Citrix Metaframe 1.8 W2K server ---+ Wine * http://www.winehq.org/ Seems to work fine for simple applications, but there always seems to be something that's not quite right, some of these issues are quite trivial but some apps just don't work. At the moment we are persevering with it for certain apps, but I cannot see that we could ever rely on it 100%. (I have tested the same apps in Crossover Linux with the same results.) We have also found issues with printing from certain Windows apps to Kprinter and have found that progress bars seem to hang the LTSP server, with an ever escalating CPU, until the application is killed off. Still working on these two issues. ---+ Virtualised headless W2K3 server * http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki/HOWTO * http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/545 I tried various virtualisation tools, but ended up using QEMU/KVM. I set it up to run headless and installed Terminal Services, to enable multiple RDP sessions. One the best things about this set-up is the ability to run in snapshot mode, and thereby start the server from a clean snapshot each time; in a set-up where all your mail and documents are stored in your LTSP home folder, this would seem to me to be absolutely perfect. Unfortunately W2K3 with TS only publishes desktops, whereas I was determined that the Windows apps would run as applications on the LTSP server. This led me down two paths: ---++ SeamlessRDP client * http://www.cendio.com/seamlessrdp/ * http://www.fontis.com.au/rdesktop (You need both) In some ways this was the biggest success and the biggest failure. It's strengths are speed, clipboard integration, printing redirection, and client drive mapping. It's weakness were some Windows Management issues and the fact that it is at a rather experimental stage in development. At one point I had the Windows taskbar at the top and the KDE taskbar at the bottom and it just worked beautifully, and for my personal use this would have been my preferred option. Unfortunately I don't want all our users to have the Windows start menu, partly because of the usual security concerns, but also because it's confusing for non-technical users. There was also a problem for us, in that the login dialog box for our core management system would not take keyboard focus, i.e. even though you could click into the login box, the keystokes went elsewhere. This was the only real issue for us and would be unlikely to effect you. ---++ 2x Application Server client * http://www.2x.com/applicationserver/ Having installed the 2x ApplicationServer on the W2K3 server (an absolute doddle), this just worked flawlessly. Really could not fault it. Unfortunately there were some gaps in functionality: * No clipboard integration * No drive mapping I feel that these are pretty serious defects in the product which, whilst very cheap (relative to Citrix) is not free at around £1500 for 50 users (free for up to 5 users from memory). ---++ Citrix Metaframe 1.8 W2K server So we have ended up continuing to use our ageing W2K Citrix server to publish applications to our LTSP desktop. It is dreadfully slow (which is why we are replacing it with LTSP!) but technically it is very good, by which I mean that: * Clipboard works * Drive mapping works * Sound works (but very laggy) * No Windows manager issues * Ability to cache login password (if you sacrifice some security) Unfortunately to replace with the latest-and-greatest would cost some £11k (for 50 users in addition to W2K3 cost of around £5k), and is I understand much more complicated to install than 2x. The speed issues do at least encourage users to use Linux and/or Wine software wherever possible, but it's hardly ideal! We are hopeful that, as we migrate users from Citrix desktops to LTSP desktops, that our Citrix will begin to perform better. ---++ Where next The plan for us is to soldier on with publishing from our Citrix server to LTSP until one of the following occurs: * Wine functionality improves sufficiently * W2K8 published applications supported by Linux rdesktop * 2x adds drive mapping and clipboard support * Reactos development (http://www.reactos.org/) Failing all these, we will probably bite the bullet and virtualise a Citrix server, perhaps in a year's time. The LTSP product is absolutely fantastic, and everyone who sees it in operation here is bowled over by it, but most businesses do need to run at least some Windows applications. I was surprised at just how difficult this nut has proved to crack. The perfect answer does seem to be Citrix, but that's a very expensive way of implementing Linux into an organisation! It does seem to me that if we could crack this problem, widespread adoption of Linux could follow. For example the users that we have rolled out with LTSP are already asking about how they could have Linux on their home PCs. So one business could equate to 50 business desktops and 50 home desktops. In other words, as long as people are using Windows at work, most are not going to feel comfortable using Linux at home. What have others done - or are you all in the enviable position of being able to go 100% open source? All the best, Chris. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. 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