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Re: [LUG] thinclients



Adrian Midgley wrote:

I see an advantage of this as being that the Windows server can be isolated 
from the Internet - Windows is no longer safe to allow a direct connection, 
if it ever was, in any organisation that regards its IT as importnat.

It never was - but then *nix systems are only marginally better in many
cases.

Clearly one progressively moves functionality from teh Windows box to teh 
Linux server, while the users remain blissfully undistrubed by detailed 
knowledge of where the processing is going on.

One big issue is browsers - the problems with MS Mail software are
generally equally applicable to IE - I know you are an Opera fan - not
sure how it stacks up security wise (can't be worse I guess).

So if you care about security you want to sandbox email and browsing,
thin client is a good way of doing this as it allows all the nasty
Internet stuff to be done in a DMZ, with  no connections going inwards.

Once you remove email and browsing, and maybe chat - you have basically
killed the main demands for direct internet connectivity - and can then
disconnect your network from the Internet, just allow thin client outgoing.

Such a box doesn't have to run GNU/Linux, but if you want a multiuser
box for running remote email and browser sessions it seems a reasonable
choice - I guess MAC OS X might give you some extra Windows
compatibility at a price (not sure how long term such features are in
MACOS X). There are even some hacks to make Windows boxes server
multiple desktops like this, but I'd be concerned about reliability.

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