On 19 July 2012 09:20, Rob Malpass <linux@???> wrote:
> Hi all
>
>
>
> For my own education please, I need someone to explain a potentially far
> reaching decision made by our IT people at work....
>
>
>
> At present, we're still stuck on Windows XP and MS Office 2003. The system
> works quite well but is beginning to struggle with the big datasets I have
> to handle. So they've just bought Windows 7 PCs and the spec is pretty
> good (Intel i5, 8Gb RAM). The most bizarre thing is myself and my
> colleague have been asked to test them as "power users" and the
> implementation they've deployed is via a "Citrix container" - whatever that
> is.
>
>
>
> I freely admit to knowing next to nothing about Citrix but I thought this
> was something akin to remotely controlling another PC - except that the PC
> you're remotely controlling was virtual - is this wrong? If I'm right,
> surely it means that all this wonderful Intel i5 power is effectively being
> used as a terminal and the speed we'll have is the speed of the machine
> we're controlling.
>
>
>
> The reason I ask is there's some specialist software for the visually
> impaired that I use which is never going to work over Citrix because it was
> never designed to do so. I have a nasty feeling that they're going to turn
> around and say my software can't be used - and that could have very far
> reaching consequences for me.
>
>
>
> So what is Citrix and can anyone see why they may have set things up in this
> way?
>
Citrix has 2 ways of handling application and virtual desktops.
1) they deliver an entire desktop in the equivalent of a VNCing form
one machine to another.
2) They deliver individual apps to your local desktop. So instead of
seeing an entire desktop, you only see the app window, and it actually
feels as if the app has been installed on your PC. They call this
"streaming" the app. This is equivalent of an individual app window
being passed over VNC between two machines.
Instead of VNC, they use something similar but call it "Citrix Client".
I don't know what your specialist visual software does, but if it can
be used on a VNC client, it should be able to be used on a Citrix
Client. So, maybe having your visual software installed locally, and
using Option 2, might work for you. You would have to test it.
My experience with Citrix is that it does not work very well when
working from home over a broadband link. But, that might just be the
particular setup the IT people have done, and might be tunable if
deployed elsewhere.
I am surprised they are going for Citrix now, Microsoft has some
comparable functions that work over RDP, for a fraction of the cost of
Citrix.
Kind Regards
James
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