Citrix, Terminal Server, Tarantellla, Web Enabled, Thin Client, Diskless Workstation, Dumb Terminal, Smart Terminal, Client Server, or related Remote Desktop, VNC, GotoMyPC, Screen Scraping, blah, blah, blah. No wonder people get confused. Lots of similar or related things, no end of licensing confusion, no end of general confusion.

Let's try to cut through some of it. First, let's move back and look at the original Unix style multi-user model: dumb terminals, green screens (even if they were orange or white), the character based environment that all Windows folk loathe and disparage. How did that work? The application ran on the Unix server, and only sent characters back to the terminal, and the terminal only sent keystrokes to the Unix box. This is the hateful environment of Unix, disliked not just for its esoteric character based commands, but also for the centralized control, the lack of empowerment for the user, and for the priesthood of the central server administrators. Funny ...more