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Adrian Midgley wrote:
I see an advantage of this as being that the Windows server can be isolated from the Internet - Windows is no longer safe to allow a direct connection, if it ever was, in any organisation that regards its IT as importnat.
It never was - but then *nix systems are only marginally better in many cases.
Clearly one progressively moves functionality from teh Windows box to teh Linux server, while the users remain blissfully undistrubed by detailed knowledge of where the processing is going on.
One big issue is browsers - the problems with MS Mail software are generally equally applicable to IE - I know you are an Opera fan - not sure how it stacks up security wise (can't be worse I guess). So if you care about security you want to sandbox email and browsing, thin client is a good way of doing this as it allows all the nasty Internet stuff to be done in a DMZ, with no connections going inwards. Once you remove email and browsing, and maybe chat - you have basically killed the main demands for direct internet connectivity - and can then disconnect your network from the Internet, just allow thin client outgoing. Such a box doesn't have to run GNU/Linux, but if you want a multiuser box for running remote email and browser sessions it seems a reasonable choice - I guess MAC OS X might give you some extra Windows compatibility at a price (not sure how long term such features are in MACOS X). There are even some hacks to make Windows boxes server multiple desktops like this, but I'd be concerned about reliability.
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