On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 12:24 PM, Marcelo Ricardo Leitner <marcelo.leitner at gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> Both are packaged and fairly easy to try on CentOS 6. On 7, only >> x2go is available and it has a problem with the 3d requirement of >> Gnome3 so you have to use KDE or install MATE from EPEL. > > > Ah, just remembered one thing. If memory serves, FreeNX dates back to the > same time that multiseat project was started. They were developed targeting > a very similar use case, but different in the end, while multiseat had a > faster time-to-market, I think. > > Places like some public libraries, like we have here in Brazil, uses > multiseat. Keeping these running is much easier than having someone with the > knowledge to fix a virtualization host when it goes rogue. These places here > have 0 tech people working in there.. The K12LTSP project might have been a good fit several years ago. This was a respin of fedora or centos 4/5 distributions that would come ready to PXE-boot diskless PCs as thin clients and host their sessions. I think you could make them auto-login to a kisok type application if you didn't want individual user logins. That involved more hardware, of course, but a lot of places used old donated boxes with the disks removed and only needed one real server per classroom of 30 or so. The project evolved (or devolved, depending on how you look at it) into packages that you have to install on a stock system and that now have more of a fat-client with local apps approach (k12osn). > Note that multiseat doesn't even require a network at all. You can always > open up a text editor and do some writing, or some spreadsheet calcs... Sure, but networks are cheap and reliable and easy to run longer distances than vga cables. > It's been a while since I last used FreeNX. I didn't recall it being able to > map drivers back then but good to know that x2go can do it, thanks. Back > then it already was indeed much faster than VNC and/or remote X. On a one-hop network, even straight remote X is reasonable for thin-type clients. The main problem remaining is doing full resolution streaming video to many desktops from a multiuser host - which the multi-video card approach should do for some number of seats. But, I'm kind of surprised that someone hasn't done a raspberry-pi type device that boots directly into x2go and comes out cheaper than a video card per seat. Haven't needed one badly enough to build it myself yet. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com