Linux as a Substitute for Citrix Metaframe

[Forrest Dickinson]

I apologize for not being clear.  To make this clearer I will describe my setup
from the client machines perspective.
The home clients start the VNCviewer and log into the the linux box that they
are assigned to.  Once they are logged in they start Win4Lin on the linux box
(this boots win98 on the linux box) after win98 boots (this takes about 5
seconds on the linux box) they start lotus notes and go to work.  Running this
setup allows me to have as many windows sessions running on one linux box as I
have Win4Lin licenses for.  And the reason I am running to different flavors of
linux is that I am trying to see which one performs better in this role.  Of
course if there was Notes client for linux this would be a lot simpler.

Brian Kelsay wrote:

> Why are you running Win4Lin?  If the clients are running VNC they can view
> the server directly and make requests to the database.  But if this is true
> then 5 cannot work at the same time.  The way I understand your setup the
> two servers are actually making the requests to the database servers (i.e.
> client-Redhat Server-Database).  If I'm wrong please clear this up.  Also,
> why are you running two different flavors of Linux in the same role?  Are
> you testing for which is faster?  It just seems you are adding a level of
> complexity.
>
> Brian
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Forrest Dickinson [mailto:fdickinson at morganhunter.com]
> Sent: Friday, August 18, 2000 1:13 PM
> To: kclug at kclug.org
> Subject: kclug - Linux as a Substitute for Citrix Metaframe
>
> I am trying to setup a couple of linux servers as "windows terminal
> servers".  The company I work for needs the ability for users working
> from home to have access to an industry specific database (Notes R5
> based, the databases are to large to replicate to home users
> workstations).  The 2 linux servers are both PIII 550s with 192 megs of
> ram.  One is running Caldera 2.3 eServer and the other Redhat 6.2 and
> both have all the bug/security fixes and updates installed (I have not
> decided which ditro I want to go with).  I have VNC running on both
> servers and Win4Lin with win98se as the guest OSes (through my own
> testing I have found that Win4Lin consistently outperforms VMware and
> its cheaper, VNC of course is free).  Anyway it really runs well, I have
>
> found that 5 (or possibly more) users should be able to use each server
> at a time and get adequate performance (pretty good considering this is
> five instances of win98 running at one time and five instance of the
> Notes R5 client running at one time).  The clients are running win98 and
>
> the VNCviewer and have either DSL or Cable modems on their end, and on
> our end the servers access the internet via a T1.  The problem I am
> having is they cannot print to their printers at home (of course they
> can do a print screen or print to the printers at the office, but I need
>
> more than that) and they cannot map to there own drives (the former is
> more important than the latter).   If I could get this working I will
> have saved my company several thousand dollars over the cost of a Citrix
>
> product.  Any insight would greatly be appreciated.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Forrest Dickinson
> Network Administrator
> Morgan Hunter Companies
> fdickinson at morganhunter.com
>
>