Any Linux experts?

deicistdeicist Manchester, UK
edited August 2005 in Science & Tech
Just wondering if this is possible at all....

At the moment the company I work for uses a thin client system (citrix), I've recently started to replace the win98 machines running the citrix client with machines running Thinstation, which is a linux distro that boots from CD and runs the citrix client. All well & good so far.... the only problem is we also use an internet testing system called 'Skills arena' which requires Internet explorer, Authorware (IE plugin) and the ability to run activeX controls. At the moment we use a single win98 machine in each branch, which runs IE locally (not over the thin client system) to run this testing suite. What I would like to do is have a machine that boots from CD (Knoppix) and runs IE (through WINE?) to run this internet application. My basic goal is to have an office made up entirely of stateless Linux boxes, with no hard drives required at all. Now:

1) is this possible? the only problem I think I'll have is running IE on wine and getting authorware player and the active x control to work properly. If I can solve that problem it should be good to go though.

2) How difficult would it be for a complete linux noob such as myself? Basically I want to end up with a CD that I can just boot from and already contains WINE (which knoppix already has I think) IE and authorware.... I'm guessing I have to have a linux box to compile the packages on, or is there a way I can get knoppix to look somewhere for extra packages (like a server possibly)?

Cheers for any help anyone can give :)

Comments

  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    I don't think activex controls work in wine.

    I'm not that familiar with knoppix, but I'm pretty sure there's a way to make custom live CDs if you've got knoppix running on a computer already.

    I would reccomend becoming more familiar with linux before (if) you try to deploy this en masse.
  • JengoJengo Pasco, WA | USA
    edited August 2005
    it is actually fairly easy to run and install Internet Explorer from wine, i dont have time right now to actually explain, but you wont be able to do it from knoppix, at least not right off the bat. But wine now has features to help you automatically install Internet explorer and other Microsoft only products such as office and the like. try

    http://www.winehq.com/

    they got tutorials to help you install internet explorer form wine.
  • deicistdeicist Manchester, UK
    edited August 2005
    well I've managed to get this working, I found a neat little live CD called Slax, which is extremely modular.... you can add pretty much anything to it. So I run the live CD, install the windows version of firefox (can't get IE working), add the flash & authorware plugins... then copy the .wine folder to a fat32 drive, pull that drive out and put it in my machine, rebuild Slax with the .wine folder I want to add and ta-da, one live cd that does what I want.

    In theory anyway, I don't have any machines with fat32 drives in them at home, so it'll have to wait til tomorrow before I can actually test this, but in theory it looks good.
  • JengoJengo Pasco, WA | USA
    edited August 2005
    the theory that Linux cant write to NTFS is a lie. but i guess its too late to even explain now....
  • EMTEMT Seattle, WA Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    Jengo wrote:
    the theory that Linux cant write to NTFS is a lie. but i guess its too late to even explain now....

    Wait, it can write NTFS? Is that new?
    (sorry to divert the topic)
  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    It can write to it... sort of. It can overwrite existing files as long as the filesize doesn't exceed the current size of the file. I.e. you can use space that is already allocated but not write new stuff.
  • JengoJengo Pasco, WA | USA
    edited August 2005
    No, actually writing to NTFS in Linux is not new at all. All you need is a program called Captive NTFS

    What captive NTFS does is it uses the Windows NTFS driver to write to NTFS so its very handy to dual boot, or you can just copy the NTFS driver off of a friends XP installation or something. But yes, you can easily write to NTFS

    Knoppix comes with Captive NTFS on the disk. (incase you are wondering)
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