Geek Software of the Week: Thinstation!
So, you have old PCs sitting around, to old, too tired, and too under-powered to do anything useful with? Is that your problem, bub? Well, now you have something you can do with them! Especially if you have an Enterprise setup with VMware View and have a need for terminals!
Thinstation is a highly specialized Linux distro that turns old computers into terminals! You can boot from a CD version, or, you can install it on the PC hard drive, but either way, you will have a great, free, client for your VMware (and many other clients) system!
“Thinstation is a basic and small, yet very powerful, Open Source ‘thin client’ operating system supporting all major connectivity protocols: Citrix ICA, NoMachine NX, 2X ThinClient, Microsoft Windows terminal services (RDP, via RDesktop), VMWare View Open client, Cendio ThinLinc, Tarantella, X, telnet, tn5250, VMS terminal and SSH (No special configuration of the application servers is needed to use Thinstation).
Thinstation is mainly intended for schoolroom, office, company or department use, but can be used at home (eg. for a silent PC in the bedroom that ‘runs’ XP on your workstation in the back room).
Whilst Thinstation is based on Linux, users may actually never see Linux at all. If you decide to connect directly to a Microsoft Windows, Citrix or Unix server, the user will feel that they are running directly on the server. But, you can also have a local Desktop interface (with a local Browser & other tools).
Thinstation supports a Microsoft Windows-only environment and REQUIRES NO UNIX/Linux KNOWLEDGE.
Thinstation runs on ordinary PC hardware (x86). You may either reuse older computers or save a lot of time on workstation administration. Or both! An old Pentium 100 MHz with 32 MB RAM or better can be a perfectly useful workstation. And you don’t need a hard disk – you can boot off the network and even have a silent workstation. Workstation devices (floppy/HD/CD/USB) and printers (LPT/USB) are supported.
Thinstation can be booted from network (e.g. diskless) using Etherboot/PXE or from a local floppy/CD/HD/flash-disk, and Prebuilt images and a Live CD are available. The thin client configuration can be local or centralized to simplify management.”