I’ve been experimenting with SUSE Linux 10 lately and really like what it has to offer. I’m a newbie when it comes to linux, experimented with 9.1 for a while until I got too frustrated with wireless network card drivers and couldn’t get even the simplest of TCP/IP configurations set to use on a static IP network. Either I’m smarter now, or v.10 makes it easier but I’ve got a 300 MHz test box running in my office now as well as an old PC at home running smoothly.
I’m the IT department for a SMB, about 60 PC’s spread out over three locations, with our two remote locations utilizing about 25% of the machines and running RDP sessions to a win2k terminal server. One location is 30 minutes away, the other about an hour and a half. All our desktops with only a few exceptions (XP pro mostly) are running win2k. For some reason we purchased 15 licenses for terminal server access, when win2k includes them for free, so I have an extra 15 licenses to play with.
I’m thinking of deploying a few linux desktops in our remote locations and maybe one or two here in our main office, say, 10-12 total. Since these people don’t perform anything on their local desktop, it shouldn’t matter what OS they use, as rdesktop seems to work great, and I can still access their desktop via VNC if there’s a problem. Printers are network printers, and with only a few exceptions none have an attached local parallel printer. A complete switch to linux is out of the question, as we have an old ERP system which must run on windows and is not the most stable program on the planet, so an emulator is out of the question. It runs ok in terminal services though so for those who rarely use it, linux could work.
My thinking is the cost savings of licensing a windows OS as well as antivirus licenses, and the fact that linux appears to run faster on an older box better than win2k will give me some more leverage with the older machines. We don’t have a budget so we buy machines as needed and the remote locations get them last since they don’t need to run anything other than remote desktop.
Any problems with this strategy? Is this even enough of a deployment to bother with? Other things I should consider?
Thanks-
Brian