Diskless Nodes HOW-TO document for Linux: Diskless Computer for Microsoft Windows 95/NT !!

5. 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 !!

5.1 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

Using VMWare, Diskless linux computers can run both Linux and MS Windows 95 programs. VMWare is at http://www.vmware.com.

5.2 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

5.3 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.

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)

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