hi having since Chris Dawkins comments as well and baseing it on our observations here with Thin client testing, the argument is to forget the Citrix route, the license costs will kill you. What are the requirements for running Windows as the client OS, if can avoid doing that then the task of running thin client solutions that have 1. Ease of Management 2. robustness 3. support for multiple platforms 4. cost effective becomes much easier. with office apps like Star Office or even my current favourite ThinkFree then it is only the CD-ROM support that would be a problem. A conversation with VMware about copying all CD-ROM images to a Linux servers Win98 vm has yet to take place but would be potentially a solution. there is only limited usage of non-Windows desktops in schools (Felsted the exception), but it has potential when you really analyse what functionality is required. let me know if you want some direct advocacy or support. i am off the leash occasionally Malcolm ------------------------------------ Dr Malcolm Herbert Head of Technology R&D, Becta 02476 847126 Fax: 02476 847120 ------------------------------------ on 13/9/00 1:22 pm, `paul at smartart@cableinet.co.uk wrote:
Hi Everyone,
I need the benefit of your wiser and more experienced heads please.
I'm acting up as HoD (unpaid, alas) and I've managed to talk the senior DH into giving me some money. I've been given up to £7K to do away from a room full of equipment.
The current room has 25 i333MHZ PCs, on 10MB BNC. network is a queer mix of 2 x Novell 3.12 servers, with an NT proxy & Wins server. The clients run under Win98.
I was telling the boss about how old kit could recycled using a thin client and he said if I can get the job done for £7K, I can go ahead. He would like to be able to free up 12 machines to re-distributed around the school.
Obviously I'd like to get a Linux box in there as the main server for the thin client end.
Now, I could go down the Citrx route - if I can ever afford the licences, but what about having another server and using VNC, VMWare or even Wine.
But I haven't got any experience with any of it, apart from the 30 days when I ran VMWare on my own SuSE machine.
Can I do the job with only £7K: new server, CAT5 cabling, (thin client) licences, probably more memory for each machine, new NICs and so on.
Any ideas or advice would be very gratefully received. If I do a good job then there's a small showcase for other schools in the LEA, the bosses get to swank at other schools' bosses about what the school's done, SuSE gets to sell my school a half-price copy of v7.0 ;-) and maybe I increase my chances of a permanent FT position in January 2001.
TIA
Paul Hornshaw