ThinLinc Linux Terminal Server

ThinLinc Virtualization solutions are based on the functional breadth of ThinLinc, with the addition of cutting-edge features and packaged industry know-how. This gives our customers the tools and processes that they need to set them apart from the competition and delivers fast payback on their investment.

Main Features

Deploying Linux Desktops with Linux terminal server technology

ThinLinc is the most advanced Linux Terminal Server product on the market today. By using Linux and Open Source software, your organization can reduce the cost of IT, and at the same time get a more flexible computing environment. Deploying Linux on a large number of traditional desktop computers, however, requires large resources. By instead deploying Linux desktops using thin client technology, you will get the benefits of two technology revolutions at the same time.

The Windows server is secured. While the RDP protocol is not secure enough for untrusted networks, ThinLinc uses the trusted Secure Shell (SSH) protocol. This allows you to securely connect to the system over Internet. The Windows instances can be placed behind a firewall and need not be directly reachable from the Internet.

With Server Based Computing, the need for maintenance is greatly reduced. Compared to Windows-based terminal server solutions, the Linux environment provides additional benefits: A better scheduler gives better scalability. It is possible to install, remove, and upgrade software on active systems.

Advanced Graphics Support

ThinLinc is an excellent platform for advanced graphics and visualization. All graphic updates are abstracted on the server side, thus giving great performance independent of application type or toolkit. The ThinLinc server software provides a fast built-in OpenGL implementation, based on Mesa. Server-side, hardware accelerated OpenGL can be provided by using the VirtualGL in conjunction with ThinLinc. This makes ThinLinc very well suited for graphic intensive applications such as CAD-CAM, CAE, and visualization and allows applications such as Google Earth and YouTube to run with good performance. With ThinLinc you can use a graphics processing unit (GPU) in the server to render 3D graphics, with many users sharing one GPU. The graphics is transferred to the client using a fast VNC implementation named TigerVNC. A special accelerated JPEG is used to provide extreme graphics performance, capable of encoding streaming video in real time.

VDI Connection Broker

Desktop Virtualization or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) provides a user experience similar to that of a standard desktop PC, using thin client technology. Typically, each user is provided with a private Windows XP instance which is executed within the data center, either on many smaller machines, or on virtual machines. Since each user has their own Windows instance, it is possible to provide administrator access, making it possible for users to install or remove software and make configuration changes.

Using ThinLinc as a VDI Connection Broker gives many advantages. No additional VDI client or server software is necessary, besides the normal ThinLinc client and server software. This means that the same installation can be used for both VDI and multi user terminal servers deployments, and unique features such as support for smart cards, microphone (bi-directional sound) and eDirectory are now available for VDI users as well.

ThinLinc is based on Open Source

The product is largely based on Open Source Software. This has contributed to faster development times, and also to making the product very robust and at the same time adaptable. The use of Open Source Software in the product also means that many functions which are delivered as addons in other products are part of ThinLinc from the start: encryption, single signon, clustering, advanced printer management, and integration between different systems and services.