[TriLUG] OSS citrix alternative? VNC, perhaps?

[Greg Brown]

Hey all, got a call from a buddy in Florida asking me about OSS
alternatives to Citrix.  This is WAAAY outside of my comfort zone as I
know next to nothing about Citrix, or VNC for that matter (past having
used it once or twice).

Buddy Jeff is opening a second office and he wants to keep his servers
and data at the primary office (I know very few of the actual facts
past this).  Assuming his applications are on Windows servers what are
his options here?  Can he run a Linux desktop with a VNC connection
back to his primary office over a WAN connection and pull up a Win
"desktop" with access to his business apps?  I'd even like to know if
that is possible.

I am sure that even with a good size point-to-point circuit this type
of operation would be painfully slow, or would it?  Has anyone
installed anything like this before?

Greg