Diskless / Thin Clients Question

fw12 · 03-07-2006, 03:19 PM

A nonprofit organisation (church) just received a donation of 40 thin clients called NEOWARE, each running WinXPe. Now they're looking for help on how to network them together to run Micro$oft office.

I purchased usb wireless cards and was able to get the clients online via a Linksys router + cable modem.

Ms Office cannot be installed on the clients, since they have no hard drives.

I'd appreciate your suggestions. Particularly, is there a possible Linux solution to get the clients to share Ms Office from a server?

Thx.

pljvaldez · 03-07-2006, 03:33 PM

Here's a link for installing it on a Windows server: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/as...363351033.aspx

Maybe a linux solution can use Crossover Office or wine...

fw12 · 03-07-2006, 04:04 PM

Thank you for the link.

Unfortunately, I think it will cost a lot to acquire 40 licenses for Enterprise versions of Office XP.

pljvaldez · 03-07-2006, 04:08 PM

I would agree. Can you get away with OpenOffice.org???

fw12 · 03-07-2006, 04:13 PM

Very interesting you should mention OpenOffice. I've thought of that option, but there is nothing mentioning the app being network aware. I hope somebody knowledgeable in that area will share their thought.

pljvaldez · 03-07-2006, 04:17 PM

I'm certain that you can do it from linux servers to linux thin clients, but not sure about deploying it to windows thin clients.

So is your setup Windows thin clients attached to a Windows server? Or windows thin clients attached to a linux server?

pljvaldez · 03-07-2006, 04:20 PM

http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/instructions.html

Look at the multi-user setup...

fw12 · 03-07-2006, 04:24 PM

Thanks again for your insights.

The thin clients are not attached to any server. Apparently, WinXPe is small enough to occupy very little space in what they call flash drive.

However, there is a server with Windows 2003 server on it, that could be setup to provide terminal services. But again, we run into licensing issuesf or installed apps.

I'll dig further to see what openoffice can do on a network.

fw12 · 03-07-2006, 05:04 PM

Very good.

Indeed, it can work with Windows 2003 terminal server.