[lug] Recommendations For Older Hardware?

[David L. Willson]

On Vmware and ESX: 


I recommend against ESX[i]. 

Vmware Server 2.0 is available for free, too, and it 
runs on Linux and can be managed from Linux. 

ESX[i] / vSphere ~still~ have no Linux Client... 
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1234874 

Here's a workaround, if you go with ESX: 
http://vmetc.com/2009/10/23/using-vsphere-client-on-ubuntu-linux-with-single-application-rdp/ 

And on thin RDP capable distributions, there's this: 


ThinStation, an active fork of NetStation, seems promising: http://www.thinstation.org/ 

David L. Willson 
Trainer, Engineer, Enthusiast 
MCT MSCE Network+ A+ Linux+ LPIC-1 NovellCLA UbuntuCP 
tel://720.333.LANS 
Freeing people from the tyranny (or whatevery) of Microsofty-ness 

----- "Robert Racansky" <robert.racansky at gmail.com> wrote: 

> Despite the subject line of this e-mail, this isn't about where to 
> dump my old unwanted PCs, global warming, or inviting Jeffrey Haemer 
> over for dinner. 
> 
> What Linux distributions would work well on old hardware, and have 
> Windows-compatible RDP/RDC clients available. 
> 
> Since you can get VMWare ESXi for free at 
> http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/index.html 
> (registration required, blah blah blah) , I've been thinking about 
> setting up one central server at home to run virtual desktops, and 
> use 
> cheap, old hardware as thin clients to access the virtual machines on 
> the ESXi hosts. 
> 
> If this works out for me, I'd probably recommend it for all the 
> people 
> I've done home/tech support for over the years. 
> 
> I haven't spec'ed out the old, cheap hardware yet, but one of the 
> requirements for the OS would be stability and ease of installation. 
> The point of this exercise is that I don't want to waste time and 
> effort maintaining client machines. Note that I come from a Windows 
> background -- which means I've spent a lot of time and effort over 
> the past 20 years maintaining Windows client machines for other 
> people 
> -- and have very little practical Linux/Unix experience. I just want 
> to be able to set up the host operating system and forget about it -- 
> especially if I end up doing this for other people. 
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