Re: Thin client or linux PC?

<snip>

On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 21:57, James Rich <james@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have a customer who is interested in replacing their multiple Windows
PCs with a low maintenance solution.
Could anyone with experience please give recommendations?

</snip>

While I was CIO at United States Bowling Congress we made the decision to use VM View from VM Ware. With View the deployment of a workstation took seconds. The only thing that messed it up from a storage perspective was Domino/Notes. Notes does not play well in the playground. Since I left there they dumped Domino for Exchange which will solve that problem. The VM View environment was built on a blade center with iSCSI attached SAN. Another alternative might have been Citrix but I was not very enamored with my past work in a Citrix environment so I never allowed that discussion to come up.
The Winders vs. Linux discussion was one of licensing costs rather than functionality. AT WinXP there was almost no license issue at all, at Windows 7 it was going to be very very expensive given the new M$ License model that punishes anyone smart enough to have avoided Vista. We used Wyse thin clients because they support dual monitors and all the normal stuff needed.
As to Linux, I was using Open Office 3.x for nearly six months an no one knew it, (everyone else was on M$ Office) so the compatibility argument goes away for an office software suite. Some issues with PowerPoint to Impress and back but they were minor.
All of the Windows based software we had written internally worked fine under wine, so no issues there. The Windohs decision was far more a political one than technical. I would have used Ubuntu at the desktop. CentOS and Redhat Enterprise/Jboss are the servers at this time.
Contact me privately if you would like more thoughts.

Jim Oberholtzer, MSE
Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects -- LLC