Skip to Main Content
Linux in a Windows World
book

Linux in a Windows World

by Roderick W Smith
February 2005
Beginner content levelBeginner
496 pages
16h 10m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Linux in a Windows World

Linux as a Thin Client

Because of its low cost and flexibility, Linux can make an excellent thin client OS. You can load Linux on computers that aren’t powerful enough to run the latest software, configure Linux to run appropriate thin client software, and the computer can then access more powerful Linux, Windows, or other computers.

In many respects, the simplest thin client configuration is to use a traditional Linux distribution or a dedicated thin client package to run Linux as a thin client, using a basically traditional hardware configuration, including a local hard disk or at least a CD-ROM drive. Perhaps the most appealing way of doing the job is to use a dedicated thin client distribution, which provides you with precisely the tools you need—no more and no less—to use Linux as a thin client. However you do it, you can run Linux without a hard disk using a bootable Ethernet card and configuring a system to deliver Linux OS files to computers that boot with such a card.

Distribution Selection and Installation

Your first choice is what distribution to use on the thin client computers. The needs of a thin client are such that a good desktop or server distribution may not be the best choice for a thin client. Many popular distributions, such as Fedora, Mandrake, and SuSE, install many unnecessary desktop or server applications that, in fact, may be undesirable on a dedicated thin client. These distributions also often require a lot of disk space or memory—features that may be ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Ubuntu Made Easy

Ubuntu Made Easy

Rickford Grant, Phil Bull
Ubuntu for Non-Geeks, 4th Edition

Ubuntu for Non-Geeks, 4th Edition

Rickford Grant, Phil Bull
Fedora Bible 2010 Edition: Featuring Fedora Linux 12

Fedora Bible 2010 Edition: Featuring Fedora Linux 12

Christopher Negus, Eric Foster-Johnson
Linux: Powerful Server Administration

Linux: Powerful Server Administration

Uday Sawant, Oliver Pelz, Jonathan Hobson, William Leemans

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596007582