How good is the new Raspberry Pi 4 as a thin client?

The lengthy-anticipated Raspberry Pi 4 is here now. But simply just how could it be like a thin client?

The solution? Excellent.

It’s difficult to think that it's been greater than 5 years since i have first attempted Raspberry Pi like a Citrix thin client. In those days, I authored an enhanced decoding and rendering plug-set for Citrix Receiver exclusively targeted at making the very best of that which was on the Pi. This prototype eventually got productized, plus a Pi-zero-based second monitor dongle, and it is currently available from the couple of select Citrix partners.

Go forward 5 years and also the Pi 4 has showed up. Created together with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, it provides native dual HDMI output, that the previous generation boards lacked. In addition to this, it may do dual 4K, quite astonishing thinking about the dimensions and specs from the factor! I received my 2GB model lately and spent a couple of hrs seeing the way it fares like a thin client.

Raspberry Pi 4 like a Thin Client

To start with, I installed a citrix.com form of Citrix Workspace application 1903 and launched a Home windows Server 2016 desktop to determine baseline figures. Performance was mediocre, however this was likely because of getting no HDX optimizations in position. Also, the session was limited one monitor. I soon learned that some window manager limitations resulted in a dual monitor was not really possible, although the native desktop was dual-monitor aware.

Getting seen similar problems previously, I were able to convince the the Citrix Workspace application to “see” both monitors, and that i was soon in a position to launch dual-monitor sessions. The performance was still being poor, and although older Citrix Workspace application/Receiver HDX optimization plug-ins might be designed to work, there have been still some major enhancements that may be done, especially around dual-monitor support. I finished up writing a brand new plug-in, which initially concentrates on optimizing full-screen desktop scenarios.