Citrix shuns Linux due to 'lack of demand'

We have rdesktop for those poor souls who must access Windoze terminal servers from their innocent, unsuspecting *nix boxes.

Eggsurely, I've been having fun with Xming recently: http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/

Add ssh and port-forwarded X if security is an issue.

Oh... hang on... are we supposed to point out free and robust solutions as an answers? (-:

My employer is a Citrix provider. They actually have a very good product, but I could not sleep well at night (were I them) knowing that Microsoft could, just on a whim, decide that they want their own terminal server product to be as good or better than Citrix, and for less money. Just ask Symantec or McAfee, right?

There's also this to replace Citrix:

http://www.2x.com/applicationserver/citrix.htm

Quoting:We have rdesktop for those poor souls who must access Windoze terminal servers from their innocent, unsuspecting *nix boxes.

Erm.. This article was about the servers, not the clients. There are native Linux Citrix/ICA clients available. What do you think rdesktop wraps around? rdesktop only knows Citrix/ICA if you install their client (verified on my Ubuntu machine which came with rdesktop but without Citrix/ICA client).

The article is about delivering Linux applications through a Linux Metaserver to ICA clients on any OS.

The article doesn't mention servers or clients. Native Citrix servers would be even dumber anyway, given all the the great free remote administration tools Linux already has, both CLI and graphical. Of course there's no demand for an expensive, proprietary alternative.

It does recycle a number of worn-out, well-debunked whines, like:

"If there was a real business need for Linux it would be widely used by businesses, but it is not."

er, hello?

Of course being a Microsoft partner has nothing to do with any of this.

Quoting:The article doesn't mention servers or clients.

True, but combining lines like "Citrix says it has no interest in delivering native Linux support" with the fact that Citrix has been giving away clients for Linux for quite some time makes it pretty obvious that it's about servers. Especially when combined with the remark about applications running better on Windows anyway (the applications run on the server).

I've been using the Citrix client for Linux for quite some time now. It works really well and integrates very nicely with rdesktop and similar programs.

So maybe I got this one wrong. There's just no real need for Citrix on Linux, which is why Citrix doesn't see the demand. If that's the case, please ignore my rant.

Don, your rant is still apt. Because they're emitting the usual M$ party line instead of actually allowing a fact or two to populate their statements.

That was what I felt at the time. And I think you're correct. They need to qualify statements like that. Or maybe they are just joining forces with Microsoft since they know that there's no real market for them in the Linux world.

Don's rant is very much to the point. A Citrix server for Linux would allow a corporation to mix Windows and Linux apps on the citrix client desktops - gradually replacing proprietry apps with FLOSS one's. You could have MS-SQL Manager, BlueFish and xterm all on the same desktop.

Which makes me wonder: Are there other applications that can serve applications to ICA clients? I always see the X2 ads on LXer. Can that work alongside Citrix Metaframe in a mixed enviroment?