Debian-Edu, Skolelinux and NX protocol (access from the internet) ?

[francois schnell <francois.schnell@ulpmm.u-strasbg.fr>]

Hello,

I'm trying Skolinux and I find it really excellent so far. :-)
I work in the french education system (as a teacher working in an ICT department of a French University).
The last years the ministry of education pushed for the development of digital work-spaces in schools. Unfortunately to my knowledge Linux based digital work spaces in schools seem nearly non-existent in France. I'm then really glad Skolelinux / Debian-Edu and LTSP K12 are progressing so well.

Unfortunately I see one major problem for the wide spread of this linux based solutions : X protocol is heavy, it works well in the network of the school but if you want the students to have access to their applications from an internet connection there was no way to compete against RDP from Microsoft (or ICA from Citrix). In my University they deployed RDP and Windows Terminal Servers for this reason.

In this context, I recently discovered and tested the NX protocol for X (from nomachine in Italy www.nomachine.com ).

The good thing is that it works very well from the internet and the NX protocol (which is GPL) is very efficient.

The down side, from the Free Software point of view, is that the clients are proprietary and the servers too ( a fraction of the price of Windows Terminal Server).

The good thing is that they are willing and pushing to see the development of a complete free solution but so far I have the impression they weren't heard well enough ...      :-(

I really think this problem of internet access to the applications is a key issue for Linux Based digital work spaces.

Did you test it ?
What do you think of it ?
Would it be possible to have a complete free solution (client and server NX or equivalent) integrated in skolelinux ?
Do you know any other free alternative of such a quality ?

Thank you for all your work for free software in education.

Francois Schnell
France

Few links :

NX developers resources :
http://www.nomachine.com/documentation.php
http://www.nomachine.com/sources.php

NX / nomachine mailing lists :
http://www.nomachine.com/mailinglists.php

News about NX integration with LTSP:
http://www.nomachine.com/developers/archives/nxusers/0335.php