[Thinlinc-technical] engineering my Sun Ray replacement

[Seth Galitzer]

Greetings,

Like many others this week, I'm making my way here in light of the 
official death knell of the Sun Ray product line.  Thanks to those 
lurking on the Sunray-Users list who brought me here.

Ultimately, what I'd like to do is use Thinlinc as a drop-in replacement 
for my SRS installation.  I think I do my Sun Ray setup a little 
different than most, and I'm hoping for some guidance on how to 
replicate that in Thinlinc.  My clients boot up and run what used to be 
called a kiosk app.  Basically, they go straight to a desktop without 
initial user login and run a single application (without a full desktop 
shell).

In my case, the single application is what I call a session chooser, 
built using zenity.  The user can select from one of three sessions: two 
different WTS servers (via RDP), based on their login "realm", and a 
Linux server (via XDMCP).  Once the session is selected, the remote 
client runs and they are presented with a full-screen remote session for 
that host, where they log and continue using that desktop.

This setup is currently used for a teaching lab with 40 desktops.  All 
users should have their own concurrent independent sessions on whatever 
host they eventually connect to.  We have considered expanding to 
include office staff systems eventually, but for now, the lab is the 
primary focus.

On the thin client devices themselves, I'm exploring options for 
hardware replacements (too bad the DTUs have closed firmware), thanks 
also for the many recommendations on that subject.  I figure I'll need a 
PXE-boot setup, which I more or less know how to do already.  I've just 
started working through the documentation, but I could use a little 
guidance in streamlining the software setup to match (or at least come 
close to) what I described above.  Pointers in the right direction would 
be appreciated.

Thanks in advance, and looking forward to continuing this adventure.

Seth

-- 
Seth Galitzer
Systems Coordinator
Computing and Information Sciences
Kansas State University
http://www.cis.ksu.edu/~sgsax
sgsax at ksu.edu
785-532-7790