Several thin clients have been working at our university since 2006, based on Sun Solaris.

37 units used for lessons, 20 units for teaching and 90 units for other terminals, not for class scheduled activities. Currently these software environments are obsolete. Nowadays, the fact that many animated content (mainly flash) and new file formats are used in the web based applications demanded the system thinking over.

A quick solution was needed not only for the technological pressure, but also because the load of thin clients increased continuously during and outside lessons. More and more complaints came from students and teachers, that they could not reach the published contents. The increased load was caused by the e-learning service, operated by the SZIE KDKL, which became a widely accepted learning support at the university. This demand had to be served by an appropriate technological solution.

Several, typically technical problems came up, such as the wearing of card readers or breakdown of chips in the student's identity cards. Although there is a Suse Linux version of Sun Ray server, but the Debian Linux was spread at SZIE. There is a conversion solution between the versions (sourced from internet), so we did a test to run Debian Linux on the servers.

After the successful installations and test, the library of SZIE KDKL was the first place to run a pilot project, where the outworn PCs were changed to Sun clients. 7 public terminals were built here. After finishing the catalog room, some teachers were involved to the project, and then tests were run in schoolrooms too. The number of pilot terminals grew to 30.

The presentation can give an overview about the demands, the technical, technological and educational problems, show the steps of installation and the work processes following installation, what difficulties were encountered during the tests, how they were solved, also discuss some important steps of configuration.