Debian Thin Client Desktop

[drmike]

Looking for some recommendations.

Interested in experimenting with a thin client running on Debian ideally.

Thin client hardware will be an old mini itx, with full audio ability (playback audio and ideally allow recording of audio --- .wav format).

Aside from that need, looking for a client software that will allow logged in session to the server to be saved and restored.  So I can "pick up" my logged in session on another computer in another room or halfway across the country.

Would be ideal to find a solution that can be ran out of a VPS environment.

Anyone doing such a thing and what solution do you recommend?

 

[jarland]

I've not had audio as a requirement for this kind of thing in the past. I've never had perfect results from pushing a system without an audio device to decode and play audio, regardless of the CPU.


This may be a push in the right direction: http://wiki.debian.org/freenx

 

[mikho]

A thin client requires something to connect to.


Will that server be linux or Windows?


If you consider windows, that has been available since RDP was invented.


You can have either windows 7 or a server OS installed on the server side. If you are using windows 7 or 8, only one connection at one time is allowed.


If you will be using server 2008 or 2012, setup RDS and you can have multiple simultanious connections.


Remember to get the needed licenses.


If you don't setup RDS then the server OS will allow "administrative" RDP connections.

 

[drmike]

Thin client will also be Debian, but Debian desktop.

I've used RDP in the ancient past.  Use to be a growing market for hosting desktops remotely.  Was alright, but not really workplace ready back then.

 

[KuJoe]

Just got my new SD cards in the mail for my Raspberry Pi so I'll be installing various Debian-based OSes specifically to be used as thin clients. I have RPITC installed on my test SD card already and it works nicely for servers on the local LAN but I am trying to find a way to smoothly control my VMs in a data center a few states away.

 

[earl]

Might not be completely what your are looking for, but still looks interesting!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome_Remote_Desktop

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-remote-desktop/gbchcmhmhahfdphkhkmpfmihenigjmpp?hl=en

wonder if it works if you install chrome on Debian? it does seem to have audio support, and is linux compatible

"Chrome Remote Desktop is fully cross-platform. Provide remote assistance to Windows, Mac and Linux users, or access your Windows (XP and above) and Mac (OS X 10.6 and above) desktops at any time, all from the Chrome browser on virtually any device, including Chromebooks."

 

[acd]

If I were going to do this, I would try to run it 100% over websockets. Use pulseaudio as your sound server (and if it won't take, use snd-dummy) then when a wss audio client attaches send the sound across over html5. Same with vnc/novnc. Granted, you need a browser and a lot of setup.

Easier would be connect to remote nx server like @jarland suggested. Open a VPN connection to the remote server like l2tp+ipsec or openvpn, then pass data over that. For sound, use pulse in a null-sink/rtp-send configuration and make sure the rtp packets do not go out any other interface but the VPN (you can do this by blocking outgoing SAP/RTP/SDP packets on any interface but the vpn using iptables). Then on the client side, load rtp-recv and set the sap addr group to the rtp-send destination address group. It should automagically configure and work. I've only done it with raw audio over lan, but I recall seeing somewhere you can use vlc to transcode/transport? Worth checking out.

For bidirectional, you do the reverse on a different rtp broadcast group.

Of course, since it's pulse, it'll be extremely fragile and probably not work 10% of the time, or if you accidentally update some library or shake it funny.