[Thinlinc-technical] thinlinc on openindiana x86?

[Torsten Kasch]

On Monday 14 October 2013 12:56:13 Peter Astrand wrote:
[...]
> In general, providing binaries for a new platform is fairly resource
> intensive and involves update of the build system, documentation and
> testing. We can only support common platforms. So, a special ThinLinc
> version for OpenIndiana or illumos is not likely. On the other hand, as I
> understand it, these are binary compatible with Oracle Solaris 11, so it
> seems it would be sufficient to support that.
[...]
> It seems to me that the Solaris x86 platform is fading away, so it's
> somewhat difficult to motivate an investment in this OS. But if you feel
> otherwise, please tell us :-)

Although we are a not-yet-customer (still evaluating/testing ThinLinc as a 
replacement for our SunRay installation), I'd like to throw in my $.02:

My experience as an admin of Sun/Solaris systems for over two decades tells me 
that if you have code that compiles/runs on Solaris/SPARC, getting it to work 
on Solaris/x86 is usually only a matter of recompiling it on the new target -- 
given that you don't do strange bit-operations in your code and have all the 
dependencies (libraries, build tools, etc.) available...

Regarding ThinLinc server support on Solaris/x86: Having this would be great, 
IMHO, since the OS provides some really cool features that make it an ideal 
desktop os on multi-user machines (the FSS(7) scheduler, for example). 
Although I've to admit that it is unfortunately getting less and less 
attractive, basically due to the lack of end-user software: there's no recent 
office suite available and Adobe has stopped providing Acroread binaries.

On the other hand, providing a ThinLinc client on as many platforms as 
possible does make sense in my eyes -- and would make my life a lot easier 
when planning the migration of our 300+ SunRay clients: I could reduce the 
number of Solaris/x86 servers in our FOG to one or two and have these 
machine(s) provide a ThinLinc login to the (Linux-based) agents and thus I am 
able to keep our desktop hardware (SunRays) running for the time being, 
replacing them with other thin client hardware when funding permits. Maybe 
this scenario is applicable to other SunRay installations as well?

cheers,
	Torsten