Install OS On Wyse Thin Client Linux Ubuntu

20 thoughts on “Install OS On Wyse Thin Client Linux Ubuntu”

• I think the best OS I've had on it has been Windows Embedded ReadyPOS 2009. Installing it was a real nightmare though. It essentially gives you a really lean and mean version of XP. All apps seems to work as XP. It works with 512 MG memory, but 1G is probably recommended (I recall seeing this is the max, but havent tried yet). If I recall correctly it was 1-2 GB disk size, so the 512MB flash hard drive wont get it in.

  The downside is it did not install cleanly. To get it on the machine, I had to install it on a Virtualbox on another modern machine, then clone that virtual hard drive to the real hard drive (used a laptop HD same as in this video), and move it to the WYSE. If you decide to do this, I'll save you some frustration: before you clone, make sure in your virtual setup you use Microsoft's generic HD drivers, and setup Windows to autologin. After moving, the OS will eventually find the needed drivers to make it work. This may take up to 2 restarts (you may need to cut power manually if its not finding the keyboard drivers). This leaves you with essentially a stripped down version (like basically an nLited version) of Windows XP SP3. The only web brower working on XP in this day and age is K-meleon. You can download ReadyPOS from Microsoft website for free (6 month trial). There are permanent keys floating around (easy Google exercise)

  I do have this running (I should make a video). The downside is getting updates. ReadyPOS actually runs alot of ATMs (or at least used to). It was supported by microsoft until 2019. When you first load the system, and request to update, you'll get 10 years of updates – works out to about 219 updates. If you install all of them it takes almost 18 hours. Somewhere along the way it breaks something. I've been manually added them from an inital install – this is extremely tedious and boring. I've added about 50 so far with a stable OS. Still don't know which update is breaking it. Antivirus is a problem to, as this is a non-SSE processor system, and finding AV supported on this machine will be a chore.

  I use this setup for things that need the serial port and older software. My uses in particular were for programming a Vista 20p alarm system (OMG, this involved a 2400 baud Hayes smartmodem) and a Mercedes Xentry/DAS car diagnosis system (current project)

• can i turn this into a vpn access point

• gracias por fin pude borrar la clave del bios

• Thanks for the video. I'm going to try to install FreeDos on my V10L this week and see what happens. Funny that I'll have more RAM (512M) than disk space (128M). But, it's still overkill for a dos-based system. Should be fun

• Haha, Several things to point out to users:

  1. Thin clients were not meant to run full feature OS's. Rather they were destined to network boot, and run an OS small enough to connect to a server and have the server do the heavy work. Booting the thin client to logging into a desktop on the server will be far faster and offer much better performance on the server's cpu and ram.

  But if one chooses to run a full feature OS on minimal hardware:
  2. One needs more ram and a larger hard drive as this video pointed out, but your still limited by the cpu as well as remain limited severely restricted by the amount of ram one can install; and
  3. Both Ubuntu unity as well as gnome are both cpu and memory intensive. Rather, I would suggest using Lubuntu or Xubuntu if one is to use Ubuntu.

• What model is this?

• Amazing. 4 years later and people are literally throwing these $300 things out.

• excuse me, but is that 1.8 pin to 2.5 pin cable…..sorry for my crap question couse can't find it in my place ..thanks

• can i install on wyse c10le windows or poppy arcade linux

• Hi. were i can find the cable micro ide 2.5 to 2.0

• Can thin clients boot from a flash drive? I recently got my hands on one and don't know much about them. Any advice would be appreciated. (Please note I do not have the manual to it)

• Those V90Le go wih max 1Gb ram and can go with Windows 8.1 run on a flash card 16gb plug on ata port.

• Having difficulty finding the cable… Where can these be found in abundance? All I can find is a 1.18 inch length version.

• I installed debian in a usb. Then I installed lxde and works fine. Probably are good to run some server software at home.

• urgente urgente amigo sabes soy del Salvador y he buscado esa cincha para adaptarle el disco ide a la wyse y no he podido encontrar esa bendita cincha es mas en las tiendas de ventas ni las conocen tienes alguna que me la vendas y te pago los gastos es que he tratado de levantar mi wyse y como no tengo ese cable no puedo ayudame por favor necesito ese cable saludos y bendiciones

• I'd throw Puppy Linux or other MUCH lighter distro on such weak hardware, but thanks for demonstrating it will actually run standard Ubuntu. Puppy etc will run from DOM and are popular for repurposing thin clients.

• I've got a C7 Eden 1.2ghz running Lubuntu right now. (guest nettop) It's acceptably fast, but it was snappier under WinXP. I moved it to *buntu due to video driver issues under WinXP. The biggest thing slowing it down is lack of RAM. I couldn't locate a compatible 1GB DIMM, so it's stuck on 512MB, and that really isn't enough for most *buntus once you fire up a few programs.

  Btw, for anyone wondering, nLite lets you strip WinXP down to as few as 15 processes and 70MB boot memory usage.

• Except that he's completely right. No linux distro that I know of that doesn't sacrifice on user friendliness is as lightweight as WinXP – and that's before you tweak it. If you use something like nLite to strip out all the crud, WinXP runs fine on systems as slow as an ancient P2 300mhz. (I know; I stripped it down for an old P2 IBM Thinkpad… 35 seconds to boot, web browser up 45 seconds after pressing power button, only 256MB of RAM.)

  Nothing *buntu based is as lightweight as WinXP, period.

• That's completely untrue. Stop disinforming people. Linux could run up to the last month's version (3.7 release) on a 80386 CPU. The latest Windows OS that could run on that probably is Windows 3.1.

  What Linux gives you is a modern (relatively bloat-free, in any case miles ahead of any Windows sh*t) operating system requiring a very modest hardware. (Linux is run by a huge number of embedded systems,not counting the millions of phones that can easily run modern versions of Linux).
  Try DSL/Puppy

• I tried running xp on this and it crashed every time. From what I hear you need an ide to sdcard reader converter to install the os. Then it can be imaged to an ide drive.
  I have never tried it kuz I dont have a converter.

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