Wine as Windows Terminal Server?

[Samuel Hunt]

Thought for you all.....

Would it be possible to use Wine with a few extra bits to 
make a kind of Windows Terminal Server?

So you login via VNC, and the Wine system prompts you for a 
username and password, which it authenticates. It then loads 
up a "desktop", with a fake "Start" menu, that you have 
things similar to a normal start menu, but more appropriate 
to a terminal server environment.

You then run your programs, but all the I/O is to/from the 
remote client, and each session is independent of each 
other, so there can be lots of different clients with 
different permissions (so admin may have full access to all 
of the drive, but users have various bits of their "hard 
drive" read-only and things like that).

Would seem to make Wine very useful if that could be done. 
Then VNC clients simply see a "Windows" desktop, and can do 
what they want, but all the back-end is Wine and Linux.

Sam

[Boaz Harrosh]

Samuel Hunt wrote:
> Thought for you all.....
>
> Would it be possible to use Wine with a few extra bits to make a kind 
> of Windows Terminal Server?
>
> So you login via VNC, and the Wine system prompts you for a username 
> and password, which it authenticates. It then loads up a "desktop", 
> with a fake "Start" menu, that you have things similar to a normal 
> start menu, but more appropriate to a terminal server environment.
>
> You then run your programs, but all the I/O is to/from the remote 
> client, and each session is independent of each other, so there can be 
> lots of different clients with different permissions (so admin may 
> have full access to all of the drive, but users have various bits of 
> their "hard drive" read-only and things like that).
>
> Would seem to make Wine very useful if that could be done. Then VNC 
> clients simply see a "Windows" desktop, and can do what they want, but 
> all the back-end is Wine and Linux.
>
> Sam

I have done something similar but with the X11 protocol.
The client user browses to a web site (somewhere on the LAN). He than 
gets a Menu of applications /Sessions he can use. If these clients are 
Linux than no problem an ssh-X session is initiated to open that 
application. ( We used a load balanced collection of servers). If it was 
a Windows Client than first time comers get an OCX installed that in 
turn installs XMing X-Server and plink. Once installed, the web page 
will initiate the same ssh-X session as before. We chose remote 
application to run as Native apps so there is no distinction between 
locally running or remote applications. But a desktop mode can be used 
as well.

One thing to watch out is that: Currently, wine does not support 
multiple X connections on the same WineServer. What I did is use the ssh 
connection environment variables and set up a quick on-the-fly wine 
$WINEPREFIX folder for each new session. This gave me a nice Cytrix like 
control over what gets saved during a session. (Which was nothing in our 
case)

Remoting is nothing new to Linux, and VNC could work Just as well. Wine 
is just a regular X-client application. Anything that applies to a Linux 
application also applies to a Wine application running under Wine.

Free Life
Boaz

[Segin]

Boaz Harrosh wrote:
> Samuel Hunt wrote:
> > Thought for you all.....
> >
> > Would it be possible to use Wine with a few extra bits to make a kind 
> > of Windows Terminal Server?
> >
> > So you login via VNC, and the Wine system prompts you for a username 
> > and password, which it authenticates. It then loads up a "desktop", 
> > with a fake "Start" menu, that you have things similar to a normal 
> > start menu, but more appropriate to a terminal server environment.
> >
> > You then run your programs, but all the I/O is to/from the remote 
> > client, and each session is independent of each other, so there can 
> > be lots of different clients with different permissions (so admin may 
> > have full access to all of the drive, but users have various bits of 
> > their "hard drive" read-only and things like that).
> >
> > Would seem to make Wine very useful if that could be done. Then VNC 
> > clients simply see a "Windows" desktop, and can do what they want, 
> > but all the back-end is Wine and Linux.
> >
> > Sam
>
> I have done something similar but with the X11 protocol.
> The client user browses to a web site (somewhere on the LAN). He than 
> gets a Menu of applications /Sessions he can use. If these clients are 
> Linux than no problem an ssh-X session is initiated to open that 
> application. ( We used a load balanced collection of servers). If it 
> was a Windows Client than first time comers get an OCX installed that 
> in turn installs XMing X-Server and plink. Once installed, the web 
> page will initiate the same ssh-X session as before. We chose remote 
> application to run as Native apps so there is no distinction between 
> locally running or remote applications. But a desktop mode can be used 
> as well.
>
> One thing to watch out is that: Currently, wine does not support 
> multiple X connections on the same WineServer. What I did is use the 
> ssh connection environment variables and set up a quick on-the-fly 
> wine $WINEPREFIX folder for each new session. This gave me a nice 
> Cytrix like control over what gets saved during a session. (Which was 
> nothing in our case)
>
> Remoting is nothing new to Linux, and VNC could work Just as well. 
> Wine is just a regular X-client application. Anything that applies to 
> a Linux application also applies to a Wine application running under 
> Wine.
>
> Free Life
> Boaz

Yeah, what he said, you can just set $DISPLAY and have Wine spawn up a 
couple of Windows programs after startup...

We could use Calmira for a Windows Explorer replacement, even though 
it's 16-bit. It has a 
taskbar/filemanager/win2000-like-taskmanager/startmenu, and it makes a 
486 feel more usable.