Thin Client

Linux adoption - Web thin clients 1 In 2011, Google introduced the Chromebook, a web thin client running the Linux-based Chrome OS, with the ability to use web applications and remote desktop in to other computers running Windows, Mac OS X, a traditional Linux distribution or Chrome OS, using Chrome Remote Desktop. In 2012 Google and Samsung introduced the first version of the Chromebox, a small-form- factor desktop equivalent to the Chromebook.

Thin client 1 A thin client (sometimes also called a lean or slim client) is a computer or a computer program which depends heavily on some other computer (its server) to fulfill its computational roles. This is different from the traditional fat client, which is a computer designed to take on these roles by itself. The specific roles assumed by the server may vary, from providing data persistence (for example, for diskless nodes) to actual information processing on the client's behalf.

Thin client 1 Thin clients occur as components of a broader computer infrastructure, where many clients share their computations with the same server. As such, thin client infrastructures can be viewed as providing some computing service via several user interfaces. This is desirable in contexts where individual fat clients have much more functionality or power than the infrastructure requires.

Thin client 1 The most common type of modern thin client is a low-end computer terminal which only provides a graphical user interface - or more recently, in some cases, a web browser - to the end user.

Thin client 1 By mid-2013, basic Chromebooks, which are web thin clients, had become relatively popular among US buyers seeking to buy an affordable laptop, due to their sub-$300 price, high security (due to the secure design of their browser-based Operating System, Chrome OS, and the impossibility of compromising them via Windows or Mac malware) and simplicity.

Thin client - History 1 Typically, X software is not made available on non-X-based thin clients, although no technical reason for this exclusion would prevent it.

Thin client - History 1 The term thin client was coined in 1993 by Tim Negris, VP of Server Marketing at Oracle Corp., while working with company founder Larry Ellison on the launch of Oracle 7. At the time, Oracle wished to differentiate their server oriented software from Microsoft's desktop oriented products. Ellison subsequently popularized Negris's buzzword with frequent use in his speeches and interviews about Oracle products.

Thin client - History 1 The term "thin client" also conveys better what was then viewed as the fundamental difference: thin clients can be designed with less expensive hardware, because they have reduced computational workloads.

Thin client - History 1 In 2011 Google introduced its Chromebook, a web thin client

Thin client - History 1 In 2012, Google and Samsung introduced the first Chromebox, a desktop equivalent of the Chromebook, with a small form factor, similar to other thin clients.

Thin client - History 1 However, while there was now little size difference, thin clients retained some key advantages over these competitors, such as not needing a local drive.

Thin client - Cheap client hardware 1 Thin clients also are generally very low power and might not even require cooling fans, but the servers are higher power and almost always require an environmentally controlled air conditioned server room.

Thin client - Client simplicity 1 Since thin clients are cheap, they offer a low risk of theft in general, and are easy to replace if stolen or broken

Thin client - Client simplicity 1 Modern thin clients attempt to address this limitation via port mapping or USB redirection software

Thin client - Slow bitmapped/animated graphics 1 Thin clients tend to be optimized for use with simple lines, curves, and text, which can be rapidly drawn by the client using predefined stored procedures and cached bitmap data. In this regard, thin clients work well for basic office applications such as spreadsheets, word processing, data entry, and so forth.

Thin client - Slow bitmapped/animated graphics 1 Graphics rich 3D games can be completely unusable on a thin client unless the updated screen area is kept very small or the overall screen resolution is very low, to reduce the amount of data sent to the client.

Thin client - Slow bitmapped/animated graphics 1 In an attempt to reduce network bandwidth, the server may try to compress high detail bitmaps on the fly before sending the data to the client, but this adds latency to the client- server communications, and may reduce user interface responsiveness. Many thin clients offer options to turn off various graphics rich user interface effects in order to increase performance, such as not showing the contents of a window while dragging or not displaying a desktop background.

Thin client - Repurposing a PC as a thin client 1 The following options allow a PC to be used as a thin client - in some cases, even if it has no working hard drive:

Thin client - Ultra-thin client, Zero client, or Clientless 1 Some thin clients, such as the Sun Ray, use a simpler protocol for communicating display updates, and these are sometimes called ultra-thin clients or a zero clients,

Thin client - RTE client 1 It contains all and only the code needed to accomplish its specific task, thus it is more than a zero client but less than a typical thin client computer

Thin client - Web thin client 1 Web thin clients only provide a web browser, and rely on web applications to provide general-purpose computing functionality

Thin client - Web thin client 1 Examples of web thin clients include Chromebooks and Chromeboxes (which run Chrome OS) and phones running Firefox OS.

Thin client - Web thin client 1 Chromebooks and Chromeboxes also have the capability of remote desktop using the free Chrome Remote Desktop browser extension, meaning that as well as a web thin client, they can also be used as an ultra-thin client (see above) to access PC or Mac applications which do not run on the Chromebook directly. Indeed, they can be used as a web thin client and an ultra-thin- client simultaneously, with the user switching between web browser and PC or Mac application windows with a click.

Thin client - Web thin client 1 Web thin clients are similar to RTE clients, but unlike first-generation RTE clients the Operating System is typically updatable. Chrome OS, for example, automatically updates itself if its update servers (which are hosted by Google) are not blocked by a firewall - while still being tamper- resistant due to its use of Trusted Computing technologies.

Thin client - Applications as thin clients 1 The notion of a thin client extends indirectly to any client–server architecture, in which case, a thin client application is simply one which relies on its server to process most or all of its business logic. This idiom is relatively common for computer security reasons. A client obviously cannot be trusted with the logic that determines how trustworthy they are, because an adversary can circumvent that logic.

Thin clients 1 A 'thin client' (sometimes also called a 'lean', 'zero' or 'slim client') is a computer or a computer program that depends heavily on some other computer (its server) to fulfill its computational roles. This is different from the traditional fat client, which is a computer designed to take on these roles by itself. The specific roles assumed by the server may vary, from providing data persistence (for example, for diskless nodes) to actual information processing on the client's behalf.

Thin clients - History 1 Typically, X software is not made available on non-X-based thin clients, although no technical reason for this exclusion would prevent it.

Thin clients - History 1 The term thin client was coined in 1993 by Tim Negris, VP of Server Marketing at Oracle Corp., while working with company founder Larry Ellison on the launch of Oracle database|Oracle 7. At the time, Oracle wished to differentiate their server oriented software from Microsoft's desktop oriented products. Ellison subsequently popularized Negris's buzzword with frequent use in his speeches and interviews about Oracle products.

Thin clients - History 1 The term thin client also conveys better what was then viewed as the fundamental difference: thin clients can be designed with less expensive hardware, because they have reduced computational workloads.

Thin clients - History 1 However, while there was now little size difference, thin clients retained some key advantages over these competitors, such as not needing a local drive.

Thin clients - Cheap client hardware 1 Thin clients also generally use very low power and might not even require cooling fans, but the servers consume high power and almost always require an environmentally controlled air conditioned server room.

Thin clients - Ultra-thin client, Zero client, or Clientless 1 Some thin clients, such as the Sun Ray, use a simpler protocol for communicating display updates, and these are sometimes called 'ultra-thin clients' or a 'zero clients',.[ gns/thin-client-solutions/zero-clients.html t310 Zero Client] Their tiny operating systems merely initialize the network, begin the networking protocol, handle display of the server's output, and transmit user input events

Thin clients - RTE client 1 It contains all and only the code needed to accomplish its specific task, thus it is more than a zero client but less than a typical thin client computer

Thin clients - Web thin client 1 Web thin clients only provide a web browser, and rely on web applications to provide general-purpose computing functionality

Thin clients - Web thin client 1 Chromebooks and Chromeboxes also have the capability of remote desktop using the free Chrome Remote Desktop browser extension, which means, other than being a web thin client, they can also be used as an ultra-thin client (see above) to access PC or Mac applications that do not run on the Chromebook directly. Indeed, they can be used as a web thin client and an ultra-thin-client simultaneously, with the user switching between web browser and PC or Mac application windows with a click.

Thin clients - Web thin client 1 Web thin clients are similar to RTE clients, but unlike first-generation RTE clients the Operating System can typically be updated. Chrome OS, for example, automatically updates itself if its update servers (which are hosted by Google) are not blocked by a firewall - while still being tamper-resistant due to its use of Trusted Computing technologies.

Thin clients - Applications as thin clients 1 The notion of a thin client extends indirectly to any client–server architecture, in which case, a thin client application software|application is simply one which relies on its server to process most or all of its business logic. This idiom is relatively common for computer security reasons. A client obviously cannot be trusted with the logic that determines how trustworthy they are, because an adversary (cryptography)|adversary can circumvent that logic.

Caldera (company) - Caldera, Caldera Systems and Caldera Thin Clients 1 On 2 September 1998, Caldera, Inc. announced the creation of two Utah-based wholly owned subsidiaries, Caldera Systems, Inc. and Caldera Thin Clients, Inc., in order to split up tasks and directions.Caldera. Caldera creates two owned subsidiaries. Press-release, 2 September 1998, PR-Newswire ([ ease?id=15948 Caldera Creates Owned Subsidiaries]).

Caldera (company) - Caldera UK, Caldera Thin Clients, Lineo, and Embedix 1 formerly known as Caldera Thin Clients, Inc.

Computer workstation - Thin clients and X terminals 1 This approach was actually first attempted as a replacement for PCs in office productivity applications, with the 3Station by 3Com as an early example; in the 1990s, X terminals filled a similar role for technical computing. Sun has also introduced thin clients, most notably its Sun Ray product line. However, traditional workstations and PCs continue to drop in price, which tends to undercut the market for products of this type.

Diskless node - Comparison with thin clients 1 Moreover, thin client computers are increasing in power to the point where they are becoming suitable as fully-fledged diskless workstations for some applications.

Diskless node - Comparison with thin clients 1 Both thin client and diskless node architectures employ diskless clients which have advantages over fat clients (see above), but differ with regard to the location of processing.

Diskless node - Advantages of diskless nodes over thin clients 1 When the central server is busy and slow, both kinds of clients will be affected, but thin clients will be slowed down completely, whereas diskless nodes will only be slowed down when accessing data on the server.

Diskless node - Advantages of diskless nodes over thin clients 1 *'Better multimedia performance'. Diskless nodes have advantages over thin clients in multimedia-rich applications that would be bandwidth intensive if fully served. For example, diskless nodes are well suited for video gaming.

Diskless node - Advantages of diskless nodes over thin clients 1 a USB device can be physically attached to a thin client, the thin client software might not support peripherals beyond the basic input and output devices - for example, it may not be compatible with graphics tablets, digital cameras or Image scanner|scanners.

Diskless node - Advantages of thin clients over diskless nodes 1 Taking all these factors into account, thin clients may bring the most substantial savings, as only the servers are likely to be substantially gold-plated and/or future- proofed in the thin client model.

Diskless node - Advantages of thin clients over diskless nodes 1 Thin client networks may require significantly more powerful servers in the future, whereas a diskless nodes network may in future need a server upgrade, a client upgrade, or both.

Diskless node - Advantages of thin clients over diskless nodes 1 In many typical application scenarios, both total bandwidth consumption and burst consumption would be expected to be less for an efficient thin client, than for a diskless node.

Boot image control - Thin client strategies 1 Organizations that do not closely track, control and set common standards for, acquisition of new computer hardware, typically can only practice a thin client strategy.

Boot image control - Thin client strategies 1 * whether the capabilities of a full operating system are required, or just those of a thin client

Construction field computing - Thin client 1 A thin client refers to a device that acts as a computer terminal|terminal or interface with a server or other device. Sometimes called dumb terminal, these devices do not have sufficient computing capacity or data storage capacity of process information, but only allow the user to access the software and data needed by them. Some advantages of this type of system are:

Construction field computing - Thin client 1 *Lower software and hardware costs since only minimal computing capacity is needed on the thin client device and separate software for each unit is not required.

Construction field computing - Thin client 1 *Thin client device is not useful as a stand- alone so that it is not attractive to Fence (criminal)|fencers and thus a less likely target of theft. (Thieves generally know which items are worth stealing.) Stolen devices are unlikely to be usable to non- authorized personnel. Therefore, proprietary information is protected.

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