Will it be useful to acceess linux-based services from a linux client?
 

Should you access linux-based services froma linux client or should you access linux-based services from somewhere else other than the linux client?

In general, "services" should be "loosely coupled". So it really shouldn't matter.

PS:
Was my answer as vague as your question ;)?

But it's also true: if a service is designed well, then typically it can be accessed from any client, regardless of platform.

Let me put some light on this.
It shows robustness of the infrastructure when you have multiple distributions like Windows, Linux, Unix,Mac sharing the applications irrespective of their operating system architecture.
While you have Microsoft Windows Exchange Server 2003 running as Mail Server , you show the flexibility to your developers accessing Mail Client through Evolution on Linux.The Sophisticated JBOSS Application Server running on HP-UX and page being fetched on Windows IE/firefox. If you notice these are Web Server application services which are running on Unix/Linux and you allow your users who are comfortable on Windows Xp access them without any issue.

Hope this answer your doubt.

In other words:
So: No, usually you do *not* have to access Linux services ONLY through a Linux client. You should be able to access ANY service from ANY kind of client. There might be exceptions ... but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

'Hope that answers your question .. PSM

Eh?

Sure you can ...

A "service," after all, is simply a program that's listening on some TCP/IP port, waiting to be told to do something for somebody somewhere.

The service doesn't particularly care (unless you tell it to care...) where the computer it's talking to is located. Nor does it care what kind of operating system that computer may be running. (Many services don't care what kind of operating system they are running on.) Services are perfectly willing to talk to other programs on the same computer, e.g. localhost (127.0.0.1).

In fact, it happens all the time. If you're reading this on a Linux box right now, then there's actually a client and a server on the same box, talking to each other and running your GUI display. When you print things, a "print server" (probably CUPS) does that for you (and maybe also for other computers in your network) and so on.