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Ballmer Needs to Learn the Art of Shutting Up
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Comments (31)
11 earlier comments in the full thread.
> You miss my point jdixon...
You're correct, I did miss your point.
However, when you're running Linux servers, why do you need the ICA client? X already lets you run server apps seamlessly on your local machine. And for Windows you can use Cygwin. Am I missing something else? Or is it just that you want to run the apps in Windows the same way you're currently doing so as to not confuse the users?
You're correct, I did miss your point.
However, when you're running Linux servers, why do you need the ICA client? X already lets you run server apps seamlessly on your local machine. And for Windows you can use Cygwin. Am I missing something else? Or is it just that you want to run the apps in Windows the same way you're currently doing so as to not confuse the users?
I think we'd just be talking about a shell script or batch file to run an app over X seamlessly, much like most people click on a Citrix shortcut to run a desktop or application. Citrix is largely accomplishing for Windows what X natively does for Linux. For heavy apps, however...and I mean graphically heavy...X can be rather slow over a slow connection, or over a connection where a multitude of users are on it. This is the one place where Citrix shines, it compresses nicely and displays graphics nicely. We use a .NET app (ConnectWise), which paints slowly over RDP, but runs perfectly over Citrix.
Any way to effectively compress the X traffic better?
Any way to effectively compress the X traffic better?
A lot of the *stated* reason that corporations force users to Windows comes from two things:
1. Outright control freakery by the morons that run the "unified helpdesk" or whatever your big company calls it. They want to have the ability to "staff" the "help" desk with simians, and that means a single script to follow. If they let people run Linux, there'd be hell to pay when Joe Lemur "mans" the helpdesk and has to deal with an unusually configured desktop.
2. Bribes and payoffs to middle managers to put Windows in place. It doesn't take much to get someone who managers grunts to agree to a particular vendor, sometimes as little as a couple of hundred bucks.
I often forget about the control freakery aspect. Sometimes I bring up how little I can configure my work "Windows" desktop relative to my carefully tuned X configuration. Doesn't matter. The control freakery aspect means that configuration is anathema. I'm an "information worker" and Word+Access+PowerPoint+Toad ought to be enough to make anyone happy. What do you mean you like "implicit copy" when highlighting? What do you mean by "focus follows mouse?" Never heard of it.
1. Outright control freakery by the morons that run the "unified helpdesk" or whatever your big company calls it. They want to have the ability to "staff" the "help" desk with simians, and that means a single script to follow. If they let people run Linux, there'd be hell to pay when Joe Lemur "mans" the helpdesk and has to deal with an unusually configured desktop.
2. Bribes and payoffs to middle managers to put Windows in place. It doesn't take much to get someone who managers grunts to agree to a particular vendor, sometimes as little as a couple of hundred bucks.
I often forget about the control freakery aspect. Sometimes I bring up how little I can configure my work "Windows" desktop relative to my carefully tuned X configuration. Doesn't matter. The control freakery aspect means that configuration is anathema. I'm an "information worker" and Word+Access+PowerPoint+Toad ought to be enough to make anyone happy. What do you mean you like "implicit copy" when highlighting? What do you mean by "focus follows mouse?" Never heard of it.
Quoting:Am I missing something else? Or is it just that you want to run the apps in Windows the same way you're currently doing so as to not confuse the users?
I am thinking about the current 98% of big multinationals that run on Citrix. They have vast arrays of Windows Citrix servers that serve Windows apps to Citrix clients. These clients are mixed. Many people use Windows or Linux powered thin clients. Some people have a use for fat clients (photoshop, autocad) so they use a full Windows computer with ICA client installed. Geeks like me simply throw corporate policy to the wind, install Linux on their laptop and install the ICA Linux client.
So, the client side is mixed but the server side is 100% Citrix-on-Windows. There's huuuge gains to be had there since many applications could be replaced by similar apps (or even the same app) running on Linux. But there is no way to serve a Linux application to the ICA clients.
P.S. I'm pricing desktops right now, and in the "home" portion of the Dell site, an Inspiron 530 or 530s with monitor is $469 with Windows Vista, while an Inspiron 530n with monitor is only $428 with Ubuntu.
What I'd really like is the smaller case of the 530s but with Ubuntu ... but still, that's a $41 savings for choosing Ubuntu instead of Vista
What I'd really like is the smaller case of the 530s but with Ubuntu ... but still, that's a $41 savings for choosing Ubuntu instead of Vista
Maybe the growth market for FOSS operating systems and applications is in smaller businesses that are using non-customized proprietary apps right now.
Aside from the huge apps, my company doesn't buy MS Office; we use OpenOffice. We have a Web portal interface for e-mail. Both of these apps can run on any platform. Quite a few of us use Google Apps (Docs, Gmail ...). So from that perspective, we could be using any platform.
Are there instances where from the perspectives of hardware cost (and life expectancy) and support cost where a GNU/Linux desktop makes more sense?
I don't know a lot about remote management of desktops, but I imagine that tools in Red Hat and Ubuntu (and perhaps others) can be very helpful in this regard.
Things like centrally managed repositories to control installs and updates come into play as well. I know our XP desktop situation, in which any user can add any number of Windows applications pretty much at will, is a continual disaster.
Aside from the huge apps, my company doesn't buy MS Office; we use OpenOffice. We have a Web portal interface for e-mail. Both of these apps can run on any platform. Quite a few of us use Google Apps (Docs, Gmail ...). So from that perspective, we could be using any platform.
Are there instances where from the perspectives of hardware cost (and life expectancy) and support cost where a GNU/Linux desktop makes more sense?
I don't know a lot about remote management of desktops, but I imagine that tools in Red Hat and Ubuntu (and perhaps others) can be very helpful in this regard.
Things like centrally managed repositories to control installs and updates come into play as well. I know our XP desktop situation, in which any user can add any number of Windows applications pretty much at will, is a continual disaster.
> But there is no way to serve a Linux application to the ICA clients.
OK. That makes sense.
Hmm. You can run the Linux applications directly on your Linux clients. You can run Cygwin on the Windows boxes and do the same thing. But neither of those uses the existing infrastructure. Silly questions, which probably no one knows the answers to: Will Cygwin install/run on a Citrix server or will KDE 4 install on one? Cygwin only gives you limited options, but I know compiling under Windows was one of the lesser goals of KDE 4. If it works on Windows, it may well work on a Citrix server. If so, that opens up a lot of possibilities. I agree that having the ability to serve Linux apps to your ICA client would be a good thing though. How open are the Citrix protocols, I wonder. Reverse engineering may be a possibility.
OK. That makes sense.
Hmm. You can run the Linux applications directly on your Linux clients. You can run Cygwin on the Windows boxes and do the same thing. But neither of those uses the existing infrastructure. Silly questions, which probably no one knows the answers to: Will Cygwin install/run on a Citrix server or will KDE 4 install on one? Cygwin only gives you limited options, but I know compiling under Windows was one of the lesser goals of KDE 4. If it works on Windows, it may well work on a Citrix server. If so, that opens up a lot of possibilities. I agree that having the ability to serve Linux apps to your ICA client would be a good thing though. How open are the Citrix protocols, I wonder. Reverse engineering may be a possibility.
One of the blokes here is jumping through the usual Microsoft generated hoops, attempting make a copy of a running Windows system. One of the problems he has is that because Microsoft tend to cripple software to make it non functional in siruations they don't approve of, he can only do this on Windows XP professional and Windows Server 2003.
How easy, or difficult is it to make a functioning copy of a running Linux server or desktop?
How easy, or difficult is it to make a functioning copy of a running Linux server or desktop?
Existing infrastructure becomes legacy quickly. Depending on how quickly Citrix removes versions from support, and how quickly Server 2008 catches on, your infrastructure might become obsolete in short order. Server 2008 will publish applications without the aid of Citrix...which still leaves us with Windows-based apps, of course. However, since Server 2008 will require more and more powerful hardware to run (being essentially Vistar Server), the argument could be made to switch over to Linux-based applications to reuse the hardware already in place.
Is it possible to use Cygwin on the Citrix server to tunnel X apps, and then publish that as a Citrix app? A lot of tunneling, but doable? That way Citrix is really just a frontend to your Linux server.
Is it possible to use Cygwin on the Citrix server to tunnel X apps, and then publish that as a Citrix app? A lot of tunneling, but doable? That way Citrix is really just a frontend to your Linux server.
Quoting:How easy, or difficult is it to make a functioning copy of a running Linux server or desktop?
hmm.. Plug drive into host box externally. Partition same as host and mount the partitions. Copy everything over from host. Put drive in new server. Boot from CD. Reinstall grub (actually you could probably do this from the host machine). Tweak any desired settings in /etc or wherever. Boot.
I'm guessing that would work. :)
No it's got to while running.
That's what I was aiming for.
Copying the currently running machine to a disk to make a cloned machine. :)
Host = running machine you want to copy.
Host = running machine you want to copy.
I could also do this into a virtual machine too, I suppose.
Quoting:Will Cygwin install/run on a Citrix server or will KDE 4 install on one?
Given that they're normal Windows Server 2008 boxes, yes. However, I don't think that Citrix App server will serve Cygwin applications since they're not Windows applications. Citrix probably hooks into the window manager an ui toolkit of Windows. KDE4 apps may or may not work. It depends on how Qt4 works on Windows. If Qt4 uses the standard WinForms or MFC to draw widgets, it probably will work.
Quoting:How open are the Citrix protocols, I wonder. Reverse engineering may be a possibility.
Well, the protocols are at least partly figured out. The 2X desktop server gives thin clients a desktop on which you can run ICA applications served from both Citrix app servers and their own 2X app server. Also, gnome's "tsclient" terminal service client claims to be an ICA client (though I never got it to work when I used Citrix).
Quoting:Depending on how quickly Citrix removes versions from support...
Not very fast. It would be corporate suicide if they did, because large enterprises have invested heavily in their existing infrastructure. I know that my former company still has Citrix 4.0 and 4.5 on Windows 2000.
4.0 ends in a year, 4.5 in 2011. Unless they get purchased by Microsoft, at which point all bets are off.
> The 2X desktop server gives thin clients a desktop on which you can run ICA applications ... Also, gnome's "tsclient" terminal service client claims to be an ICA client...
Those are going the wrong way. You want something which will "encode" a running Linux app into an ICA stream which can be accepted by any ICA client. That should be doable if we have open source ICA clients.
Those are going the wrong way. You want something which will "encode" a running Linux app into an ICA stream which can be accepted by any ICA client. That should be doable if we have open source ICA clients.
Exactly. Somebody just needs to do it already. I think this could be a big win for FOSS.
> Somebody just needs to do it already.
Somebody who's a programmer, which lets me out. :(
Somebody who's a programmer, which lets me out. :(
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