About the Author

David Richards is a System Administrator for the City of Largo, Florida. He has been exposed to computer technologies since the day he got his first home computer in the early 1980s. After graduating from college in 1986, he was employed in the manufacturing, distributing, and printing industries. 1992 was the first year that he entered the City’s employment and has been working with Unix, Linux, and thin clients. He promotes thin clients and open source technology, and enjoys the challenges in their deployment. He is often found in the GNOME IRC channels debugging software and interacting with the developers.

What This Book Covers?

Chapter 1: Overview of Thin Clients will give you an overview of what exactly is a thin client, and the different types of models that are available.

Chapter 2: The Types of Thin Clients will give you a sample of multiple types of thin clients. Once you have configured your server, you will have to make decisions about which types of hardware to deploy.

Chapter 3: An Analysis of Costs will identify key areas to review when considering the financial
impact of your thin client plan. This includes hardware acquisition and also staffing costs.

Chapter 4: The People Issues will address what might be the hardest part of your deployment:
People. Some people are passionate about their software and others are challenged with any work flow changes. It’s important to address them as much as possible before, during and after deployment.

Chapter 5: Considering the Network will review the network required to run thin clients. Because
of the simplicity of the computing deployment, your network too is simplified.

Chapter 6: Implementing the Server will cover the steps necessary to design a server for the
number of users in your deployment. Also covered will be steps to allow thin clients to log into and run a desktop environment.

Chapter 7: Implementing the User Software will provide ideas for software packages that run on
Linux, along with their suitability to run over the network to thin clients.

Chapter 8: Implementing the Thin Clients reviews the process of considering the operating system
to deploy on the devices. Also covered is the interaction with USB devices and speakers.

Chapter 9: Support covers three aspects of support. The first is supporting your users, the second is support within your IT staff and the third is support from software vendors.