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SafeDesk Launches STS Open-Source Hybrid Thin-Client Project With Virtualization Support

Thursday, 18 May 2006 by Michel Roth

SafeDesk is pleased to announce that Safedesk Terminal Server 3.1 (STS) has been released. STS is a new open source project leveraging Debian Live Net to create a robust Terminal Services Environment. STS is intended to provide a desktop experience for end-users while offering scalability that is not currently available in the thin-client market. A single STS server with a gigabit port can serve as many 100+ clients at a time. This significant improvement in performance translates directly to hardware cost savings as compared to Windows TS, Citrix or even LTSP, another Open Source thin-client project.

STS reliably supports supports local USB drives, sound and streaming video, and uses Samba CIFS instead of NFS for ongoing stability. Information on implementation, how to get involved, and where to get commercial support is on the Safedesk website.

SafeDesk is currently inviting the FOSS community to participate in making STS an even greater thin-client server solution. We are 100% committed to keeping it free and open source. We see STS as complementing LTSP not competing with it -- in environments where thin clients have more resources and users need a rich user experience.

Core initial development of the STS Open-Source Project is based upon the commercial product SafeDesk Enterprise Server. SafeDesk Enterprise Server features a user-friendly installer and GUI management tool that assists in configuring clients by MAC address. The commercial version also has tools to help support running Windows 98, 2000 or XP inside of a virtualized environment on the client. This allows a system administrator to distribute Windows desktops using a virtualizer to shield the OS from hardware variations. The virtualizer is launched full-screen and does NOT require a hard drive on the client.

Read the full press release here.