Thin client environments are not for everyone, and there are often environments where thin clients should be mixed with "FAT" clients. However, particularly in very large installations (call centers, banks, hospitals, etc.) or in remote installations that have good networking connectivity between the client and the server, thin client computing can make a lot of sense. We set up a kiosk in a library as a thin client. Despite the best tries of the library's younger patrons to corrupt our system, if it does hang at all, a simple reboot fixes everything. We have never had to visit the library....ever. In addition, if you are doing true thin-client computing (only a web browser and perhaps a VoIP client), the CPU power and memory requirements that you need will come nowhere near what you need for a FAT client at the desk, and can therefore be satisfied by a much lower-power (3-5 watt) system instead of the 100-300 watt (or more) FAT client system. Multiply this times 3000 seats in a call center, and you now start to talk about real electricity savings, and real air-conditioning savings, as well as systems that have no fan, no disk, no moving parts, no noise. How long does your radio last versus your computer? Put a disk or fan into it and see how long it lasts. Speaking of fans, hospitals are now realizing that the number one germ breeding area is inside a PC. Germs get into a nice warm environment, breed, then get blown out into the hospital by the fan. A lot of hospitals are now switching to fanless thin clients at nurses and doctors stations, with membrane keyboards that can be wiped clean with antiseptic. As I said, thin clients are not the answer for everyone, but they have a lot of good points in a lot of areas. maddog »

LBX has basically been deprecated due to changes in the protocol over time. Keith Packard gave a talk which described the issues: http://keithp.com/~keithp/talks/usenix2003/ and today tunneling the X protocol over ssh with compression generally gives you better performance than LBX. maddog »