Why do so many large businesses and unit's use these shit tier things instead of buying actual computers? They are slow af.
its cheaper to buy thin clients and connect them to your VM infrastructure / invest money in your vm infrastructure
You don't need a "fast" PC for Excel and Word, anon.
>>51723348
Cheap
Less maintenance
>>51723348
Because virtualization with thin clients is cheaper and easier to maintain than tons of desktops that may be more powerful than anyone at the office or college needs.
>>51723348
Because they are not expected to handle the load... their users are expected to connect to a more powerful system via RDC or Citrix remote. They are just a bit above KVMs because they handle local authentication and encryption.
>>51723370
Not when you skimp on VM infrastructure too and it takes 5 minutes to load a page on your local intranet.
We use these at work. All our computers do is run windows 7 with only access to telnet and and IE. Though I found a work around to launch Word and Excel
>>51723411
But this is a problem with whoever is in charge of the IT department, the thin client is working as intended.
>>51723392
Easier to maintain is the big one. All the user's local state lives on rackmount gear in the server room. If the hardware dies you throw it out and get a new one, and the user is instantly ready to go again.
Those things would have worked fine as replacements for the VT100 and 3270 terminals we used to have all over my warehouse to connect to the RS/6000 and mainframe, but then some dipshit decided we needed PCs everywhere.
If I put a live Linux distro on a flashdrive, will a thin client boot it, and could I use it to get more access than I'm supposed to/ allowed to have by the embedded os to the server?
Those Wyse machines are absolute garbage.
Absolutely garbage.
>>51723724
Like you
Because most of the computer use in the average business is low end stuff like excel and book-keeping.
I work as a mechanical engineer and the last computer my company got me was a nice 4790k build in a R4. If you do things that require actual computing power, and don't work for a shit company, then you get decent stuff.
>>51723684
Sometimes, it really depends on the client, and no. It's tied to users.
>>51723348
Are you black?
Too slow and shitty for you to steal?
>>51723751
Oh no you didn't! Oh my god!
S A S S Y
A
S
S
Y
>>51723348
They're marketed as a drop in replacement for having to maintain fleets of real computers.
Everyone can just be assigned a VM image sitting on a server halfway around the world.
>>51723816
tranny detected
>>51723808
Good one m8
>>51723684
If the client was properly configured, it should not even see the USB drive as a boot device. Most of these things get their boot from a PXE server and then load their image from there if the local disk is missing or does not have boot capability.
I have a WYSE thin client. use it as a linux box. works great. even had a SSD inside of it and 4gb ram.
>>51723582
>as replacements for the VT100 and 3270 terminals we used to have all over my warehouse
You used text terminals in a warehouse?
How long ago?
I bought several WYSE boxes that came preloaded with XP embedded.
I tried installing debian, but xorg won't boot.
I tried installing one of those distros for playing emulators, but xorg wouldn't boot either.
So I'm either thinking of putting headless debian on it and using it as a server, or binning it.
>>51723892
I put ubuntu server on one of those and it works fine. apparently you did something wrong
where do i go for a refresher course on the terminal shell?
>>51723917
Xorg is designed to be on the other end of the terminal. Not that it shouldnt work that way but it was designed for that exact purpose being linux and all.
>>51723917
no graphics?
>>51723348
>They are slow af.
they're terminals, all they need to do is connect over VNC/RDP/Citrix, they don't need to be powerful
>>51723924
Manpages. Hope your distro isn't shit. It's about all bsd is good for.
thanks and im running ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS my last experience was with 8.04.. i've been out for a while. but am anxious to get back in it. just need to find some geeks like me.
Gartner Reports says they have a lower total cost of ownership. Which may be true and they may be fine for most of the year but around finals the Citrix servers just can't cope.
>>51723873
Until about 10 years ago.
>>51723944
Actually X11 was designed so the "server" was on the client end and the "clients" were on the server end.
Yes, this is fucking retarded.
>>51723348
The GNU/Linux lab has hundreds of these types of things, but only eight metal computers running riced to shit hardware where the actual software runs.
Means that instead of maintaining 100+ computers, they just have eight computers to maintain. The thin clients would be +10 years old, but run fine because they upgrade the backend.
I don't mind it, because if I do anything processor intensive when there aren't many people on, it goes blazing speed. That and you can move from machine to machine and keep the same session.
>>51724741
No, it actually makes a reasonable amount of sense. It's just that most people think of "client" as "where I am" and "server" as "remote system somewhere over there".
>>51724741
Yes and No. It is named retarded but actually a good design for the 80/90s workstations/terminals.
The idea was running programs on the mainframe and pushing the graphical calculations to the terminals which had the graphics/video controller.
>>51725014
It actually used to be pretty good at that too, but modern toolkits layer so much extra crap on top of the X protocol that remote X is laggy as hell even on gigabit LAN.
we have them where i work. mainly because its all that is needed for uploading or accessing data from a manufacturing run, inventories or product shipment information. cheap to deploy across an entire organization, small, easy install, relatively maintenance free, scalable (since a server on the backend does all the work).
for a lot of businesses they fit the bill perfectly. for personal use theyre total garbage.
>>51723348
shit thread
>>51725742
np, thanks for the bump
>>51723892
they usually run XP or SUSE but may need proprietary drivers
