rumpek
July 17th, 2013, 12:35 PM
Hi
I'm working on a project for a family member's business which is to develop a laptop thin client solution for 5 employees. The reason I've decided to build my own solution is that there are very few commercial laptop thin clients on the market. I have even tried a commercial product to re-purpose a laptop such as IGEL Universal Desktop Converter (UDC), but the lack of essential features (e.g. usb modem support and full laptop hardware support) makes it unsuitable for our purposes.
I am considering the HP 655 laptop as it has the most barebones features (on the Ubuntu hardware certified list) I've seen of a laptop and the employees don't need anything fancy. In terms of the requirements/ features I need of the thin client solution they are as follows:
- Laptop hardware is fully supported, e.g. graphics, wifi, ethernet, display brightness. I know that Ubuntu has this covered out of the box.
- UTMS USB modem support
- RDP client, e.g. FreeRDP
- VPN client, e.g. L2TP/ IPsec
- Printer support
- Read-only OS that the user cannot modify
- Remote VNC shadowing for employee support
- Remote OS image updating
- Remote configuration updating
Essentially I would like the thin client solution to be as intuitive as possible for users and I envision the following user workflow.
1. When a user powers on the laptop he/she is presented with a login prompt.
2. The user must be connected via either LAN or a UTMS usb modem.
3. When the user logs in, a connectivity check is performed to determine whether LAN or USB modem connected.
4. If a USB modem is detected, the 3G connection is established.
5. Once the laptop has an internet connection (LAN or 3G), a VPN session is established.
6. Finally an RDP session to a terminal server is established.
All the user has had to do is power on the laptop, connect an ethernet or USB modem and supply his/ her login details. A printer connected via USB is forwarded to the Windows terminal server and local printing is possible.
From an administration perspective I need to be able to VNC to the laptop to help the user with any potential problems relating to the laptop OS itself. I also need to be able to update the OS image if possible or at least update the OS configuration such as VPN settings via the updating of a configuration file. This could be done automatically with the thin client pulling the updated config file from say a private Github repo or similar.
I have experience with Ubuntu server although I'm far from an expert, but my Ubuntu desktop experience is limited. Nonetheless, after a lot of googling and a couple of discussions on #Ubuntu someone suggested that Ubuntu mini and lightdm might be a solution to investigate.
Any advice and help is greatly appreciate as I'm unsure of how to actually build my proposed solution using Ubuntu mini and lightdm.
Thanks ;)
I'm working on a project for a family member's business which is to develop a laptop thin client solution for 5 employees. The reason I've decided to build my own solution is that there are very few commercial laptop thin clients on the market. I have even tried a commercial product to re-purpose a laptop such as IGEL Universal Desktop Converter (UDC), but the lack of essential features (e.g. usb modem support and full laptop hardware support) makes it unsuitable for our purposes.
I am considering the HP 655 laptop as it has the most barebones features (on the Ubuntu hardware certified list) I've seen of a laptop and the employees don't need anything fancy. In terms of the requirements/ features I need of the thin client solution they are as follows:
- Laptop hardware is fully supported, e.g. graphics, wifi, ethernet, display brightness. I know that Ubuntu has this covered out of the box.
- UTMS USB modem support
- RDP client, e.g. FreeRDP
- VPN client, e.g. L2TP/ IPsec
- Printer support
- Read-only OS that the user cannot modify
- Remote VNC shadowing for employee support
- Remote OS image updating
- Remote configuration updating
Essentially I would like the thin client solution to be as intuitive as possible for users and I envision the following user workflow.
1. When a user powers on the laptop he/she is presented with a login prompt.
2. The user must be connected via either LAN or a UTMS usb modem.
3. When the user logs in, a connectivity check is performed to determine whether LAN or USB modem connected.
4. If a USB modem is detected, the 3G connection is established.
5. Once the laptop has an internet connection (LAN or 3G), a VPN session is established.
6. Finally an RDP session to a terminal server is established.
All the user has had to do is power on the laptop, connect an ethernet or USB modem and supply his/ her login details. A printer connected via USB is forwarded to the Windows terminal server and local printing is possible.
From an administration perspective I need to be able to VNC to the laptop to help the user with any potential problems relating to the laptop OS itself. I also need to be able to update the OS image if possible or at least update the OS configuration such as VPN settings via the updating of a configuration file. This could be done automatically with the thin client pulling the updated config file from say a private Github repo or similar.
I have experience with Ubuntu server although I'm far from an expert, but my Ubuntu desktop experience is limited. Nonetheless, after a lot of googling and a couple of discussions on #Ubuntu someone suggested that Ubuntu mini and lightdm might be a solution to investigate.
Any advice and help is greatly appreciate as I'm unsure of how to actually build my proposed solution using Ubuntu mini and lightdm.
Thanks ;)