The ThinLinc demo server allows you to choose between several different profiles. The profiles are examples of different ways to configure and use ThinLinc.

You select which profile to test at the beginning of a ThinLinc session in a dialog. To choose another profile, logout and then login again.

The "Administrator's Desktop" profile

The first profile available in the profile selector is the Administrator's Desktop profile. This profile shows what the desktop can look like when an administrator without any restrictions on the contents of the desktops can look like. It shows you all the applications available on the ThinLinc server, with an unrestricted menu.

There is very little customization done in this profile. The desktop background has been locked to a nice red colour using an administrative tool called Kiosktool that allows the administrator to configure global settings for all or selected users. We will see more of this later, especially on the userdesktop.

The "User's (restricted) Desktop" profile

The second profile available is the User's (Restricted) Desktop profile. This profile gives you a desktop that is limited and locked down. It has a menu that contains much fewer entries than the menu in the Administrator's Desktop, and some of the window manager features has been locked down - for example, there's no "Run command.."  entry in the menu.

The menu has been populated with a number of applications that are meant to give an example of what a typical user's desktop can look like, for example in a school environment. Some of the applications are Windows programs run via a Windows Terminal Server, others are Windows programs run via Crossover. There are also a great number of Linux applications. Play around and try some applications!

The "Windows Desktop" profile

The third profile available in the dialog box is the Windows Desktop profile. This profile shows how you can use a ThinLinc server as a frontend to a Windows Terminal Server. Choosing this profile will give you a full Windows desktop from a Windows 2003 server.

Running a ThinLinc server in front of a Windows Terminal Server adds strong encryption and load balancing to your Windows Terminal Server cluster.

The "SLED10" profile

Choosing the SLED10 profile will give you a desktop running on a Fujitsu-Siemens Primergy RX100 S3 running Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. Apart from showing what this distribution has to offer, it also shows how ThinLinc can be used as a gateway to other servers running Linux or UNIX, with Single Sign-On functionality so that the user doesn't have to enter their password more than once.