PROXMOX VDI Client - A Better Approach to Thin Clients for Proxmox

For my new trick, I'm progressing the Raspberry Pi (or Debian) + Proxmox Thin Client forward using a new Python tool written by a viewer of mine. Called PVE-VDIClient, it looks like a login screen but it authenticates via the Proxmox API, queries a list of all VMs the user has access to, and lets you choose which to launch into. Now, you can provision VMs per user and let any user in the system login to any of their VMs from any thin client in your system, without having to individually hardcode VM IDs on the thin client.

I know the Raspberry Pi and Debian are both split in popularity with thin clients (probably because Raspberry Pi's are basically impossible to buy right now), so for this video I again wrote instructions for both Pi OS and Debian in my blog post, but this time I chose to follow the Debian version on video. The result is the same for both OSes, a login screen which authenticates back to Proxmox, using the SPICE protocol for remote access, and SOUND WORKS!

Link to my blog post with the commands to follow along:

Link to the PVE-VDIClient by Josh Patten on Github:

My Discord server:

Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
01:07 - Proxmox Config Recap
04:15 - PVE VDI Client
05:36 - PVE VDI Client Installation
10:30 - Launch on Boot
13:58 - Testing

Raspberry Pi is a trademark of Raspberry Pi Trading
Proxmox is a trademark of Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH

[joshpatten]

Hey it's my project! Great to see someone going over this, and it's neat to see it in action! Looks like I need to figure out why the window isn't centering on Debian...

[joshtimity]

Great content! I'll be tuning in to see the progression of this series.

[jimskyboy]

This is a gem, protect him at all costs.

[octavianvararu]

Very good content! I like your angle about VMs and thin clients.

[WldTangent]

I still think it would be worthwhile to combine this with an LTSP PXE boot server for the thin-client images, especially now that they could all be identical. LTSP provides a ready-made framework to boot a single image on multiple machines, and also would allow a great degree of administrator oversight/assistance to users through it's remote management. This would free you of the need to even have storage in your thin clients at all.

[pkt]

Thanks for making this video. I've been thinking about how to do this. My kids play a lot of XP and old windows games. Instead of them fighting over the computer, I have been thinking about setting up VMs for them instead. Then I can also remotely control things, like if the VMs are on or off.

[rjdiniz]

Hi, my name is Raul Junior; I couldn't find his name, very interesting, from what I've seen I can make it run on an old PC with Windows because it was developed in Python... Very cool project! I'm Brazilian, I don't speak English! Congratulations for the video and thanks for sharing your knowledge... I have Proxmox in production and also in the Lab, and I've been looking for something along these lines for some time! As soon as I have some free time I'll test it and post feedback here in the comments!

[arsalananwar]

This will help a lot of folks! Great explanation, keep making more and more videos.

[ShinyTechThings]

What keyboard/touchpad is that? I've got a ACK-730U that I use a lot from a dead KVM a few years ago.

[djstraussp]

This is great, I'm going to test some Dell wyse 3040 I've been using for thinclient but with win RDS. Let's see how it's go.

[movaxh]

I prefer for users just to connect using VNC to their desktop session (each user with own vm). Spice it has its uses, but I find vnc with tigervnc more efficient in general. I use spice or just proxmox console itself just for administration of vms, occasional reboot if they are stuck. So most users do not even have permissions to log to proxmox UI or anything.

I mean, it is not a bad idea. It works, but I do not find it adding a lot.

[michaelcooper]

You do a very good job, and Thanks for the post as well. I built one in my homelab in about 40 minutes total time. Awesome job thank you again. By the way in nano you can use ctrl-w to searh the file for a word.

[Mandolorian]

I was looking for a think client setup for my son via proxmox ( linux/windows/Mac) that type of thing; thank you for the video. I am dead curious to try with a pi or with a small pc. good video!

[basheerparvez]

Great tutorial but no matter what I do, I always boot into the lxde desktop. I looked at the blog post and it seems that there is a bit of a difference in instructions. I tried both and still keep getting logged into LXDE. Any pointers on what could be the reason?

[Chris.Wiley.]

Just tried this and it works great! Thank you!

[biggjoe]

I have followed the instructions but I am getting the following error when I select the VE to launch --- Unable to connect to graphic server - could not connect to proxy server 23.217.138.110: Connection refused. both the Debian client and the PVE server are on the same network. Thank you in advance for any assistance.

[FrankRulof]

Thanks you for the great work you done for the VDI client, i created 5 VDI clients in a small lab connected to a proxmox cluster, it all works great except for some perfomance issues. (1) when i try to maximize the yuotube screen, the screen on the client freezes and display fragments of the youtube movie. (2) sometimes audio and video on a youtube movie are out of sync. i need to reboot the thin Client to get it right again. Is this anything you have seen before ? Does this need parameters to be tuned ?

[ichilvers]

What's the best way to take the pre-configured debian installation with VDI Client installed and then convert the whole thin client to a bootable ISO?

[redtec]

Hi, everything is very well explained, I was looking for something like that, but my question is if you can virtualize some machines in Windows 10? Does it have any minimum requirements for Windows? Another question is, can you modify where the login is, which when entering the name? username and password enter automatically if you click connect? I remain attentive to your comments, and if possible, could you teach my question how to modify it, best regards

[RoboticParanoia]

Amazing! This will be SO FREAKING USEFUL! I hope I can put Debian in two old 32 bit atom thin clients I have. The kids love them and think they're cute.