Thin-client enviroment

[Francois Tigeot]

On Thu, Feb 24, 2005 at 02:22:24PM +0100, Christopher Rasch-Olsen Raa wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> This is what I have:
> 	A server now running Windows Terminal Server (yuck!)
> 	A couple of dozen computers running various flovours of Windows
> 
> This is what I want to have:
> 	A server running x.org
> 	All the clients logging onto the server to get a graphical UI
> 
> I have absolutely NO idea how the xorg-server and such works, and that
> is why I turn to this list for help. My goal is to get the whole network
> uniform (eg. all the different computers running the exact same
> programs, and beeing configured the exact same way, etc), to ease the
> hell of management I am experiencing now.. I plan on having the clients
> run Fedora Core 3, and were thinking about Debian on the server.

If all your applications are able to run on the server, you don't need to
install a full-featured distribution such as Fedora on your client
machines. By using diskless hosts, the management part can be limited
to the main server.
 
> Could some of you please explain how to do the xorg-server-bit, or at
> least point me towards some resources? I have looked at www.x.org, but
> did not find anything useful or informative there...

The X Server will be running on your client machines. It provides display,
keyboards, etc... services for the applications.
What you must configure on your application server is the xdm service; it
will provide a login banner to your terminals.

A small tutorial on the subject:

http://www.freeos.com/articles/2531/

I use ThinBSD (http://www.thinbsd.org/) as an X terminal everyday, so I have
an application server already configured. If the above documentation is not
sufficient, feel free to ask for more.

-- 
Francois Tigeot