[olug] remote X for all apps

[Carl Lundstedt]

On Mon, 2004-06-07 at 14:35, thelarsons3 at cox.net wrote:
> I am curious how I would set up an older PC to be an X terminal, i.e. how to automatically tunnel an X session to the client machine at user login, and configure all desktop items to run those apps at the remote machine but displaying locally.  I'm sure this is old hat, but I'm not even sure what kind of terms I'd begin googling for.  Any pointers appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> Tim
There are a couple things to do here.  

You can install a bare minimum linux install, with x-windows, log in and
use ssh -X user at server to get x-apps to run.  This should be 'super
easy' (tm).  In this case, I'm not sure what 'desktop icons' refer to
since everything is launched from the terminal.

If you wish to 'boot' the old pc from the server and not have a linux
installation on the old pc,(i.e. use the pc as a thin client), this is a
little more involved, and I admit I've never done it, but at the minimum
you'll need a net card that can act as a boot device and a bios that
supports such activity.  This is nice since the pc would act as the most
transparent terminal possible.

I used to have a machine that had its own *NIX install (DEC UNIX), but
the desktop was 'served' from a linux server (although it resided in its
own window).  I don't recall how I did that, but it must not have been
hard if I figured it out.  This is compromise between the the two
situations above.  The desktop (and associated icons) are all associated
with stuff on the server, but it doesn't require any special hardware.

I'm not sure which functionality you're going for, which would it be? 
-- 
Carl Lundstedt <clundst at unlserve.unl.edu>
University of Nebraska