Franki wrote:
Hi guys,
Just a quick question for the guru's here...
I've been installing Linux servers (usually Debian or Mandrake at
present) into small biz as file servers/DHCP/MTA etc for some time
now, but I've recently had a request I'm not sure I can help with.
The client has a big investment in Quickbooks, and quickbooks
integrats into MSoffice, so they need to continue with both of those..
however they want to swap to a terminal services layout because
Quickbooks was never really designed for network use (unlike something
like SQL-ledger) and when there are dozens of people using it over the
network (client/server), it gets really slow.
I have some small experiance with LTSP, but that isn't going to help
much in this regards.
What I'd like to do is find a GPL alternative to buying Windows
terminal server (They already have a Windows 2003 file server and run
an NT domain style network, (don't look at me, I didn't set it up.))
Is there any GPL software that can perform the tasks required on a
Windows server? I would then install and setup rdesktop on the
clients and run Linux on all of them.
That way they could get the benefit of Windows terminal server,
without the huge cost to them,, and I can swap all their desktops to
light weight dumb terminals. And they can keep using Office and
Quickbooks.
Does anyone have any ideas if what I am proposing is even possible?
In short, what I am asking is, Is there some GPL clone of Windows
terminal services that will run on a windoze server, that can allow
Windows apps to be run over the internal network from Linux based dumb
terminals?
rgds
Franki
Ever thought about using QEMU to install a win on a Linux server and
then installing quickbooks with all other needed programs into the
virtual server?
Maybe that's something that could work?
Regards,
Benedict