Hi,

do you know about a terminal server software for windows with
- the possibility to access by linux workstations
- low (to no, ) budget affords?

I need to supply several linux workstations with a program only available for windows. Emulators aren't practicable, so I think about deploy the program over the network by a windows machine.

I know, that M$ sells terminal services, but I can't figure out, what windows os is capable to do this and, primarily, I have nearly no budget for this thing.

RealVNC seems to be a little bit unhandy. What I need is a server, that starts an application instance for every user.

I did some googling, but all I found was confusion instead of solution...

Thanks a lot!!

You will need windows 2K server.
http://www.microsoft.com/Windows2000...l/default.mspx

rdesktop is one linux application to connect to the Windows terminal server.

with terminal server, you are limited whith the number of user who can connect to.
the exact question is if you want to only show the program or you permit the user to launch it ?
In the last case, this program can be launch more than 1 at the same time, or only one instance of it is available ?

Terminal Services is available on Windows NT Server, 2000 Server, XP Professional, and 2003 Server. The one in XP is only for one user and so is not very suitable. You can connect to it with the "rdesktop" program in Linux (available in most if not all distros).

An alternative is VNC, a free cross-platform remote desktop technology. There are many implementations of VNC, including RealVNC, TightVNC, and many others.

if you are needing to run the applications more then 1 at a time. in other words have more then 1 person access them and the application alows for this, then TS is the best way to handle this either with NT4, win2k server or win2k3 server.

if you will have no more then 2 people at a time ever connected then go with win2k server as it comes with 2 administrative TS client accoutns vs win2k3 that only comes with 1.

in either case you can buy TS client license in sets of 5 for around $150 for the 5 of them. IIRC they are good for 1 year as they are a lease not a true license.

keep in mind that when you use TS all you are passing to the workstation is key strokes. all of the work is done on the TS server. so your TS server will need to be powerful enough to handle that application and the OS (basically) running 5 times.

more RAM and CPU power will help greatly.

sadly all of the VNC options for windows will not suffice to have more then 1 person at a time running the same app. under windows VNC gives you the LIVE desktop of who ever is running the VNC server application. this is not the same as in Linux were VNC creates NEW virtual clients windows does not do this. this is the same for OSx and VNC too.

Hi all and thanks a lot!

I know that the server will have a lot of work to do...
It seems, that I cannot avoid at least a Windows 2k Server license.

If I run a windows 2k server with say 5 linux workstations connecting via rdesktop - hope I am right, that this works technically - do I need the Terminal Server client licenses, too?

Clemens