Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?
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@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@scottalanmiller said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@StorageNinja said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
That said, VDI and thin clients are neither dying anytime soon, nor are they the future of End-user computing.
VDI isn't dying. Chromebooks just seem like the best physical solution for delivering it at the end point. Along with loads of other solutions.
The question is only why would you use an expensive, under powered, "pure" thin client when normal computers now do a better job at all of that stuff?
When did they ever not do a better job though? that's my question. I've run them side by side since the early 2000's, a full desktop was always way better. Granted required one to lock it down.
That's not really true. Fat clients used to be more costly, have shorter life spans, were harder to manage. All that stuff has only recently changed. Your idea of "better" is incredibly subjective, it doesn't address "cost" which is the primarily definition of "better" to a business.
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Ugh, I put thin clients out there with e-Machines PCs.
We decided years ago to avoid them and stick with the smallest form factor PC would could deploy Windows Pro on. It's paid off well. No driver headaches, no print issues, dual display is plugging in a second cable and monitor, and security can be hardened via Group Policy.
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@PhlipElder said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
Ugh, I put thin clients out there with e-Machines PCs.
We decided years ago to avoid them and stick with the smallest form factor PC would could deploy Windows Pro on. It's paid off well. No driver headaches, no print issues, dual display is plugging in a second cable and monitor, and security can be hardened via Group Policy.
We are using NX for our VDI right now, which has been good for the use case that we have.
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@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
Why are you locked to GPO? Why can't another management solution be used?
Because plenty of people have other applications and platforms that for AAA use AD and don't support other LDAP/Kerberos systems so given how cheap per user a CAL is they say "screw it" and use AD to distribute GPO (note GPO isn't tied to AD it's just commonly viewed that way).
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@StorageNinja said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
Why are you locked to GPO? Why can't another management solution be used?
Because plenty of people have other applications and platforms that for AAA use AD and don't support other LDAP/Kerberos systems so given how cheap per user a CAL is they say "screw it" and use AD to distribute GPO (note GPO isn't tied to AD it's just commonly viewed that way).
Wouldn't that affect the other side of the VDI, though, not the client side?
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@scottalanmiller said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@StorageNinja said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
Why are you locked to GPO? Why can't another management solution be used?
Because plenty of people have other applications and platforms that for AAA use AD and don't support other LDAP/Kerberos systems so given how cheap per user a CAL is they say "screw it" and use AD to distribute GPO (note GPO isn't tied to AD it's just commonly viewed that way).
Wouldn't that affect the other side of the VDI, though, not the client side?
Couldn't it do both?
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@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@scottalanmiller said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@StorageNinja said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
Why are you locked to GPO? Why can't another management solution be used?
Because plenty of people have other applications and platforms that for AAA use AD and don't support other LDAP/Kerberos systems so given how cheap per user a CAL is they say "screw it" and use AD to distribute GPO (note GPO isn't tied to AD it's just commonly viewed that way).
Wouldn't that affect the other side of the VDI, though, not the client side?
Couldn't it do both?
Maybe, I mean you CAN control thin clients with GPO, but not normal thin clients.
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@scottalanmiller said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@scottalanmiller said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@StorageNinja said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
Why are you locked to GPO? Why can't another management solution be used?
Because plenty of people have other applications and platforms that for AAA use AD and don't support other LDAP/Kerberos systems so given how cheap per user a CAL is they say "screw it" and use AD to distribute GPO (note GPO isn't tied to AD it's just commonly viewed that way).
Wouldn't that affect the other side of the VDI, though, not the client side?
Couldn't it do both?
Maybe, I mean you CAN control thin clients with GPO, but not normal thin clients.
Correct. The thin client itself I see managed by either thin client management tools (Terradichi) or by MDM API's.
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Thin client, absolutely. They are slow as fuck in most environments as they are just terrible hardware with an onboard OS that still needs to be patched. They are neither a stand-alone computer with full functionality, or a zero client with speed and security; they are the worst of both worlds.
Zero clients though, completely different story as that's a software-delivery discussion.
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@StorageNinja said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@scottalanmiller said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@scottalanmiller said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@StorageNinja said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
Why are you locked to GPO? Why can't another management solution be used?
Because plenty of people have other applications and platforms that for AAA use AD and don't support other LDAP/Kerberos systems so given how cheap per user a CAL is they say "screw it" and use AD to distribute GPO (note GPO isn't tied to AD it's just commonly viewed that way).
Wouldn't that affect the other side of the VDI, though, not the client side?
Couldn't it do both?
Maybe, I mean you CAN control thin clients with GPO, but not normal thin clients.
Correct. The thin client itself I see managed by either thin client management tools (
TerradichiTeradici) or by MDM API's.FTFY
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@bbigford said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
They are slow as fuck in most environments
Are they slow, or did someone underprovision the Shitrix environment behind it?
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@StorageNinja said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@bbigford said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
They are slow as fuck in most environments
Are they slow, or did someone underprovision the Shitrix environment behind it?
the problem I've always had with thin clients was flash. Any app or webpage that used flash caused the whole screen to flash white between pages. Though this never happened on a typical PC - Even Windows XP with 1 GB RAM - it never flashed and worked well.
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@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@StorageNinja said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@bbigford said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
They are slow as fuck in most environments
Are they slow, or did someone underprovision the Shitrix environment behind it?
the problem I've always had with thin clients was flash. Any app or webpage that used flash caused the whole screen to flash white between pages. Though this never happened on a typical PC - Even Windows XP with 1 GB RAM - it never flashed and worked well.
You mean you had a problem with RDP or other remote sessions, not Flash locally on a thin client? I think you are mixing the concept of the hardware with the effects of some remote access protocols. Very different things. It's like being unhappy with your car based on not having found a road that wasn't congested.
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@bbigford said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
Thin client, absolutely. They are slow as fuck in most environments as they are just terrible hardware with an onboard OS that still needs to be patched. They are neither a stand-alone computer with full functionality, or a zero client with speed and security; they are the worst of both worlds.
And rarely any cost savings! That's exactly how I feel. Old, expensive, no benefits to the traditional thin client hardware approach.
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@StorageNinja said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@scottalanmiller said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@scottalanmiller said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@StorageNinja said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
Why are you locked to GPO? Why can't another management solution be used?
Because plenty of people have other applications and platforms that for AAA use AD and don't support other LDAP/Kerberos systems so given how cheap per user a CAL is they say "screw it" and use AD to distribute GPO (note GPO isn't tied to AD it's just commonly viewed that way).
Wouldn't that affect the other side of the VDI, though, not the client side?
Couldn't it do both?
Maybe, I mean you CAN control thin clients with GPO, but not normal thin clients.
Correct. The thin client itself I see managed by either thin client management tools (Terradichi) or by MDM API's.
Or Salt, Ansible, Google Endpoint Management, etc.
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@scottalanmiller said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@StorageNinja said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@bbigford said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
They are slow as fuck in most environments
Are they slow, or did someone underprovision the Shitrix environment behind it?
the problem I've always had with thin clients was flash. Any app or webpage that used flash caused the whole screen to flash white between pages. Though this never happened on a typical PC - Even Windows XP with 1 GB RAM - it never flashed and worked well.
You mean you had a problem with RDP or other remote sessions, not Flash locally on a thin client? I think you are mixing the concept of the hardware with the effects of some remote access protocols. Very different things. It's like being unhappy with your car based on not having found a road that wasn't congested.
It was RDP in both cases into TS/RDS. The only difference was the hardware. So yeah, pretty sure I was comparing only the cars on the same road.
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@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@scottalanmiller said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@StorageNinja said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@bbigford said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
They are slow as fuck in most environments
Are they slow, or did someone underprovision the Shitrix environment behind it?
the problem I've always had with thin clients was flash. Any app or webpage that used flash caused the whole screen to flash white between pages. Though this never happened on a typical PC - Even Windows XP with 1 GB RAM - it never flashed and worked well.
You mean you had a problem with RDP or other remote sessions, not Flash locally on a thin client? I think you are mixing the concept of the hardware with the effects of some remote access protocols. Very different things. It's like being unhappy with your car based on not having found a road that wasn't congested.
It was RDP in both cases into TS/RDS. The only difference was the hardware. So yeah, pretty sure I was comparing only the cars on the same road.
Had to be different software handling the protocol. You used the same RDP connection, one from a "full PC" and one from a thin client to the same RDS server and got different results?
This suggests that your thin client was likely not up to date (many are not, a standard problem with them) and that it was falling back to an older RDP version.
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This is because a thin client isn't really a thing, it's just a configuration.
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@scottalanmiller said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@scottalanmiller said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@Dashrender said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@StorageNinja said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
@bbigford said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
They are slow as fuck in most environments
Are they slow, or did someone underprovision the Shitrix environment behind it?
the problem I've always had with thin clients was flash. Any app or webpage that used flash caused the whole screen to flash white between pages. Though this never happened on a typical PC - Even Windows XP with 1 GB RAM - it never flashed and worked well.
You mean you had a problem with RDP or other remote sessions, not Flash locally on a thin client? I think you are mixing the concept of the hardware with the effects of some remote access protocols. Very different things. It's like being unhappy with your car based on not having found a road that wasn't congested.
It was RDP in both cases into TS/RDS. The only difference was the hardware. So yeah, pretty sure I was comparing only the cars on the same road.
Had to be different software handling the protocol. You used the same RDP connection, one from a "full PC" and one from a thin client to the same RDS server and got different results?
This suggests that your thin client was likely not up to date (many are not, a standard problem with them) and that it was falling back to an older RDP version.
While is suppose it’s possible, the last testing I did was with a brand new HP thin client latest software versus an XP PC. Same problem, flag based apps/pages would always flash white on the screen.
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@scottalanmiller said in Is the Physical Thin Client Era Dead?:
This is because a thin client isn't really a thing, it's just a configuration.
My thinking of the time was that the RDP protocol was able to use the video card abilities better in the PC versus the thin client.... ie the thin client had shit hardware for the video card/component.
