The earlier term 'graphical terminal' had been chosen to distinguish such terminals from text-based terminals, and thus put the emphasis heavily on graphics'' – which became obsolete as a distinguishing characteristic in the 1990s as text-only physical terminals themselves became obsolete, and text-only computer systems (a few of which existed in the 1980s) were no longer manufactured.
The prototypical multi-user environment along these lines, Unix, began to support fully graphical X terminals, i.e., devices running display server software, from about 1984.
X terminals remained relatively popular even after the arrival of other thin clients in the mid-late 1990s.
The earlier term 'graphical terminal' had been chosen to distinguish such terminals from text-based terminals, and thus put the emphasis heavily on graphics'' – which became obsolete as a distinguishing characteristic in the 1990s as text-only physical terminals themselves became obsolete, and text-only computer systems (a few of which existed in the 1980s) were no longer manufactured.
The Wyse Winterm was the first Windows-display-focused thin client (AKA Windows Terminal) to access this environment. The term thin client was coined in 1993 by Tim Negris, VP of Server Marketing at Oracle Corporation, while working with company founder Larry Ellison on the launch of Oracle 7.
Typically, X software is not made available on non-X-based thin clients, although no technical reason for this exclusion would prevent it. Windows NT became capable of multi-user operations primarily through the efforts of Citrix Systems, which repackaged Windows NT 3.51 as the multi-user operating system WinFrame in 1995, launched in coordination with Wyse Technology's Winterm thin client.
Windows NT then became the basis of Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
The term 'thin client' also conveys better what was then viewed as the fundamental difference: thin clients can be designed with less expensive hardware, because they have reduced computational workloads. By the 2010s, thin clients were not the only desktop devices for general purpose computing that were 'thin' – in the sense of having a small form factor and being relatively inexpensive.
Redundancy provides reliable host availability but it can add cost to smaller user populations that lack scale. ===Providers=== Popular providers of thin clients include Wyse Technology, NComputing, Dell (acquired Wyse in 2012), HP, ClearCube Technology, IGEL Technology, LG and Samsung Electronics. ==History== Thin clients have their roots in multi-user systems, traditionally mainframes accessed by some sort of computer terminal.
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Page generated on 2021-08-05