To
use a Raspberry Pi as a thin client:
You will need a computer and a Raspberry Pi both connected to your network (preferably with cables rather than WiFi)
- Download and install VirtualBox onto your computer.
- Insert a Windows 98/XP/7 etc install disk or a Linux 'distro' disk. Or you can use a .iso file.
Then in VirtualBox click on New to make a new 'virtual machine' and go through the process of getting the VM (virtual machine) going.
- Whilst the VM is running, install GuestAdditions onto the VM. This will make it run faster apparently.
- When the VM is not running click on Settings - System and unselct Floppy and CD/DVD from the Boot Order.
This will stop the machine getting confused if you reboot it whilst a disk is in the drive.
- Then in Settings click on - Display - Remote Display, tick 'Enable Server' and set the port to 5001
If you make more than one VM use 5002 for your second VM 5003 for your third etc.
- Start the machine. You can hold down Shift and click on Start to start it in 'headless' mode.
- On the Raspberry Pi open LXTerminal and type "sudo apt-get install rdesktop" this will install rdesktop to the Raspberry Pi.
- Find the IP address of your computer (lets say it's 192.168.0.7) then in LXTerminal type "rdesktop -f 192.168.0.7:5001" where 192.168.0.7 is the IP address of your computer and 5001 is the port number you gave for the virtual machine.
- You should now have see desktop of the VM on your Raspberry Pi. To exit press CTRL + ALT + ENTER
Once you have one VM working you can clone it and (if your computer is fairly powerful) have a number of Raspberry Pi's connected to the VMs. I'm not sure on the legality of cloning Windows VMs.
How well does it work? Well enough for editing documents but not enough for watching video.
To look into:
- Get the VMs to autostart on (a Windows) host machine startup - can start as a service on Linux.
- Redirection of audio.
- Client that's better with video than rdesktop?
- Protocols other than RDP - VMWare View, Citrix, OpenNX, Spice.