One of my technological obsessions is thin client computing. I absolutely love taking one powerful computer and making it usable by multiple users on less powerful computers or devices. Whether those users are physically near that computer, or thousands of miles away. I think this type of solution is underutilized in schools, small businesses, non-profit organizations, and even homes. It upsets me when I think about a school struggling to put computers in front of students due to a limited budget. I fear that too many of them don’t have an understanding that there is a much more affordable approach. My goal for this post is to show you how I have implemented this type of solution in my home and to provide you with information on how you can implement it into your own home or office.
In this post I am going to present to you how to take one computer running Microsoft Windows and share it with multiple users. Each user will have their own desktop that can be used while other users are also using the system simultaneously, without interference. Each user will be connecting to the server (the computer running Windows) with a Raspberry Pi being used as a thin client.