The Linux Terminal Server Project and the Return of Thin Clients
Veterans of the mid-90s era of IT hype will recall Oracle’s enthusiasm about the prospect of “thin clients” replacing desktop systems, as well as Sun Microsystems’ hyperbolic mantra “The Network is the Computer.” Microsoft, of course, having built its very empire on a foundation of bloated, resource-intensive software (necessitating ever more powerful hardware and feeding the cycle of obsolescence that sustains the Wintel duopoly), declined to add its voice to this chorus of industry heavyweights. And the market has vindicated Microsoft’s dismissal of the thin client notion–relatively cheap hardware (CPUs, HDDs, etc.) abounds for those who don’t necessarily need the absolute state of the art.
Still it has long struck me as odd that my dad, for example, has processing power on his desktop that’s several orders of magnitude greater than what was needed to say, land our first man on the moon, when all he needs to do is access his mail and surf eBay looking for bargains to add to his vast collection of cigarette lighters.
So relatively cheap hardware is great. But it begs the question–what can you do with really cheap hardware? Particularly if you’re in charge of an office network, it has probably occurred to you that most of your computers really only need to fulfill the following functions: Word processing, spreadsheets, email, and Web browsing. This has been the case for several years already–innovations that make other functions necessary for a majority of users have simply not been forthcoming. With a diskless thin-client software project winning this year’s “Best Open Source Project” award at LinuxWorld San Francisco, it seems like an appropriate time to reconsider the benefits thin clients offer.
This case study that describes the genesis of the Linux Terminal Server Project ought to serve as a good starting point for anyone wondering how they might take advantage of the cost advantages Linux offers. Just a couple of years ago, it was probably the case that Linux on the desktop for user unacquainted with the OS was not “ready for prime time.” With new versions of Ximian’s Evolution groupware suite and the OpenOffice suite of office applications, for example, this is manifestly no longer the case.