I had a hard time trying to decide whether or not I wanted to post this on my “Free Software Blog” or here. I decided that since this software works alongside Windows Terminal Services that I would write about it on the “Windows Blog.”

A while back Microsoft released a stripped down copy of Windows XP that can be run on old hardware. The main difference is that some of the applications would not be run locally, some of the more processor intense applications could be run off of the server. I think that was a great thing for Microsoft to release, however, they didn't release it to the general public, it is only available to Microsoft Software Assurance customers. The good news is that 2X Software has a server and client application that you can use to achieve this, free of charge (there are limitations however to the free version). You can also serve out applications to Linux clients, that is something Windows XP Fundamentals can't do.

I downloaded and installed it and very quickly was able to push out an application to my old Windows XP laptop that has (as many of you already know) 32 MB RAM & 200 Mhz processor. I chose Aptana (a web development IDE) as my test application. I installed the client software on the laptop after I had set up the server, I saw Aptana and chose to launch it, you can also choose to create a shortcut on your desktop for the application. I had to enter my username and password into a dialog box and I also had to enter it again at a Windows login dialog (I think this is specific to my setup, I have Windows Terminal Services set so that users MUST enter a username and password each time they logon). Once I had entered my login credentials Aptana started up and looked as though it was starting up on the local machine, there is no Remote Desktop window, the application even appears where your running applications normally appear.

The Linux side of things was a little more difficult, for me at least. The 2X Server Client software for Linux is command line only, as far as I know. I could not find a GUI interface and there is no mention of it in the manual. It took me a few minutes to correctly enter the syntax but I was finally able to pull up the Aptana application on my installation of Fedora. It seemed a lot slower on Linux than it did on Windows.

For you Mac fans out there you should be happy to know that they also have client software for the Mac as well, it appears to be a GUI interface.

As far as I can tell, the software is free. For 30 days you can serve an unlimited number of applications, after the 30 days you are only able to serve 5. Even though after 30 days you can only serve 5 applications, that still gives you enough to be able to get old machines up and running a decent web browser, office suite and other mission critical applications.

What I really like: When I am doing testing on websites I always have a virtual server running my web server. I like to keep the web server on a separate display so I don't have to keep switching windows and I can see log files, etc. Normally, I'd have to login to the laptop, make a remote desktop connection, start up my virtual server and then login to that. Now, all I have to do is login to my laptop and double click on VMware and run it just as if it was on my main computer. Very nice!

2X ApplicationServer for Windows Terminal Services

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 at 2:04 pm and is filed under Software Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.