Chapter 32 (Space web hosting) . Business Desktop Linux: The Novell
Chapter 32 . Business Desktop Linux: The Novell Linux Desktop 801 server and mounts a minimal Linux filesystem by NFS (see Chapter 22) from the server, and starts a local X display. It then runs all applications on the server with only the display happening locally. No management of any kind is required for the client, which has nothing installed on it. If a client fails, it can simply be unplugged and replaced. This type of technology is not new, but it has become more attractive recently because of two factors. . First, the relative power of the server hardware that is available makes it possible to run many more clients from one server than was previously possible. . Second, the other previously limiting factor for this type of solution, the heavy network traffic produced by large numbers of multiple X sessions, can be overcome by using a new technology called NX, which compresses the X protocol and drastically reduces the resulting network traffic. An NX server can also be used in connection with a Citrix server to deliver Windows applications to Linux desktops. There is more information about LTSP at www.ltsp.org. The FreeNX project at http://freenx.berlios.de is based on work done and released as open source by NoMachine (www.nomachine.com). Note that there is no reason why the Linux version running on the LTSP server should not be one of the business desktop specific versions mentioned here, including NLD, so a combination of the two approaches is possible. SLD and NLD SUSE first offered a business desktop version in 2002; this was the SUSE Linux Desktop (SLD), which was based on the code of SLES 8. It was essentially similar to SUSE Personal/Professional 8.1, but had some extra features including a bundled licensed version of CrossOver Office (a commercial version of the Wine Windows emulation software discussed in Chapter 28) and a Citrix client. Take-up was not particularly strong, despite the good publicity that came out of the Munich announcement. There was also a very sensible caution on the part of the SUSE marketing team who did not want to over-hype the product, leading to unfulfilled expectations or disappointment. The explicit statement was made that SLD was not for everyone, and then, as now, the market sectors most suited to the product were identified and clearly stated. Following the release of SLES 9, Novell Linux Desktop (NLD) 9 was released. It was based on the SLES 9 code base, but with recent versions of the KDE and GNOME desktops included, and a great deal of attention paid to usability issues. In particular, the version of OpenOffice.org included with NLD 9 (OpenOffice.org Novell edition)
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