6. Diskless Computer for Microsoft Windows 95/NT !!

Since Microsoft Windows 95/NT DOES NOT support diskless nodes, there is an intelligent work-around to overcome this short coming. Microsoft corporation will be surprised !!

6.1 VMWare package

Use the VMWare BIOS software with Linux which can host the Windows 95/98/NT. Linux will be the "host" OS and Windows 95/NT will be the "guest" OS. VMWare is NOT a emulator but has BIOS which allows you to install Windows 95/98/NT as the guest OS to linux. Install the VMWare on Linux server and then install Windows 95/NT on VMWare.

You can use the 'xhost' command and DISPLAY environment from any diskless node. See 'man xhost' on linux. At diskless node give -

        export DISPLAY=server_hostname:0.0
where server_hostname is the name of the server machine. And start X-terminal with
        xterm

6.2 Plex86 package

There are other tools similar to vmware:

• Plex86 (open-source) at http://www.plex86.org
• Wine (open-source) at http://www.winehq.com
• Win4Lin at http://www.netraverse.com

6.3 VNC package from AT and T

You can also use the VNC (Virtual Network Computing) Technology from AT & T. VNC is GPLed and is a free software. Using VNC you can run Windows 95/NT programs on diskless linux computer but actually running on remote Windows95/NT server.

You can use the VNC to display remote machines on your local display.

• The VNC is at http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc
• Get VNC rpms from rpmfind.
• The best Window manager for VNC is QVWM which is like MS Windows 98/NT/2000 interface, get it from http://www.qvwm.org. To turn off xlock in qvwm edit file qvwm/system.qvwmrc file and comment out XLock.
• After starting vncserver, you can start the vncviewer program on clients like MS Windows, Mac or Linux.
• See also the List of X11 Windows Managers.
• See also WinConnect to access MS Windows applications like MS Office, Outlook etc. But WinConnect needs MS Windows XP/2000/NT server.

Compiling qvwm on Solaris : On Solaris you should install the following packages which you can get from http://sun.freeware.com - xpm, imlib, jpeg, libungif, giflib, libpng, tiff. And you can download the binary package for solaris from http://www.qvwm.org.

Or you can download the qvwm source for solaris from http://www.qvwm.org and compile it using gcc.

Troubleshooting compile: You should put unsigned long before arg in usleep() usleep((unsigned long) 10000)