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What About Windows?
When you start looking at thin client solutions you're likely to run into a set of acronyms that describe the potential protocols for thin client/server communications like X Windows, RDP, ICA, and VNC. RDP and ICA are of special interest. RDP stands for Remote Desktop Protocol and it's the protocol used by Windows Terminal Services. There's an Open Source RDP client called rdesktop (www.rdesktop.org/) that can be run on Linux and other X Windows systems. ICA, on the other hand, is the protocol that's used to talk to Citrix servers. Citrix supplies Linux binaries for connecting to their ICA-based servers.

If you want to run a Linux desktop as your thin client operating system but still need to provide access to some applications on Windows, I can make a couple of suggestions. One is the excellent Win4Lin product (www.win4lin.com) that can be used to run Windows as a well-behaved process under Linux. Alternatively you can maintain a second terminal server running Windows Terminal Services and use rdesktop to provide access from the Linux clients.

When Is Thin Client the Right Solution?
There are key indicators that can help decide if deploying a thin client solution is right for your organization. If your IT infrastructure includes a number of older machines that are currently scheduled for an upgrade you might want to consider deploying thin clients on the existing hardware. I have seen a number of organizations where this allowed them to buy a brand new thin client server that met their current needs and had room for future expansion for significantly less money than the originally planned upgrade. Look closely at the usage patterns of your users. Desktops where the primary work function of the user is e-mail, web browsing, an office productivity suite, and possibly a line of business application are good targets for deploying a thin client.

When Is Thin Not In
A thin client is not the right solution for every environment. Thin client by its very nature requires a reliable high-bandwidth network connection. Laptops and other devices connected to the network that are intermittent/low bandwidth make poor thin clients. Power users may also find that a thin client slows them down. If your IT environment supports a large number of line-of-business applications that only run on Windows then the cost of moving to a thin client can be erased short-term by the cost of porting those applications to Linux.

Other Considerations
Thin clients have a few added benefits beyond reduced hardware cost. Backing up user data becomes a snap. Instead of having to back up your user desktops in addition to your servers, you now only require a single server-based backup solution. There are no more worries about whether users copied their important data to the file server. In addition, application configuration and maintenance is greatly simplified (in much the same way that a Web-hosted application is easy to maintain and patch) because there's a single application binary for all users.

When migrating to Linux thin clients, desktop migration is an important part of the setup process (see my previous article "Windows-to-Linux Desktop Migration Roadmap" in the February 2005 issue of LinuxWorld Magazine). Make sure you consider how you will migrate your existing users over to a thin client environment efficiently and with minimal retraining and data loss.

Conclusion
Thin client is not the right solution for everyone but it can be a great way to repurpose old hardware and reduce or eliminate maintenance and support costs. Linux has a wide variety of thin client solutions to choose from. They range from mature Open Source projects to commercially supported solutions. If you're considering migrating to Linux you might want to consider a thin client implementation as well. As always, wishing you successful migrations!

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