Used thin clients sell for little once companies replace them, and they are quiet, small and frugal: good Remote Desktop terminals for an office or for home. Often they come without their operating system, or with a licence that ended with the old owner (ThinOS, IGEL OS, HP ThinPro). OpenThinRDP is a free thin client OS for them: install it from a USB stick and the device starts straight into a Windows Remote Desktop sign-in, with no licence per device.
Yes if it has a 64-bit x86 CPU (Intel or AMD), 2 GB of RAM and 8 GB of storage (none to run it live from a USB stick). That covers nearly every x86 thin client sold since about 2014. Drivers are not a worry: the system has the complete Debian 13 kernel and every Debian firmware package (hardware).
Not supported: ARM thin clients, and older ones with a 32-bit only CPU, which Debian 13 no longer runs on.
The quickest test is to start it live from a USB stick: nothing is written to the disk, and the hardware test shows the network card, the address and whether your Windows server answers.
Our production devices are Dell OptiPlex 3000 Thin Clients. The models below meet the requirements but have not been tested by us yet: if you try one, a line in the discussions moves it to the tested list.
| Model | CPU | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Dell OptiPlex 3000 Thin Client | Intel Pentium Silver / Celeron | tested: 14 devices in production, sign-in form about 6 s after the firmware |
| Dell Wyse 5070 | Intel Celeron J4105 / Pentium J5005 | the most common used thin client; RAM and M.2 SATA storage can be upgraded |
| Dell Wyse 5060 | AMD GX-424CC | older and slower, fine for office work |
| Dell Wyse 3040 | Intel Atom x5-Z8350, 2 GB soldered | at the minimum: 8 GB eMMC models are tight to install on, run them live or prefer the 16 GB ones |
| HP t630 | AMD GX-420GI | two RAM slots and M.2 storage, quiet, no fan |
| HP t640 | AMD Ryzen R1505G | the fastest of this list, the one for video calls and several monitors |
| HP t620 / t520 | AMD GX series | older, fine for office applications |
| Fujitsu Futro S740 | Intel Celeron J4105 | popular in Europe, one RAM slot, M.2 SATA |
| Fujitsu Futro S920 / S940 | AMD GX / Intel Celeron | as above |
| Any office mini PC | 64-bit x86 | Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny, HP EliteDesk Mini, Dell OptiPlex Micro: more than enough |
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Download the ISO and write it to a USB stick
with Rufus (DD mode), balenaEtcher or
dd. - Start from the stick. Usual keys at power on: Dell Wyse F12 (setup F2), HP F9 (setup F10), Fujitsu F12 (setup F2). Enable USB boot in the setup if the stick is not listed. A Wyse that ran ThinOS often has a BIOS password set by its old owner; Dell's support documents the factory one.
- Try it live, then choose Install: it shows the disk it will erase and asks first.
- Set your Windows PC or your RD Connection Broker and sign in.
Coming from Dell ThinOS with many devices: replacing Dell ThinOS. Coming from an old PC rather than a thin client: turning an old PC into a thin client.
- For office work and Remote Desktop: any of the list. RDP draws the screen on the server; the terminal only shows it, so a Celeron is enough.
- For video calls, video and two large monitors: a newer CPU helps (HP t640, Wyse 5070 Pentium, OptiPlex 3000).
- Wi-Fi: many used thin clients come without the Wi-Fi card. A USB Wi-Fi adapter that works on Debian works here.
- Storage: 8 GB is enough to install; a 16 GB or larger module leaves room for updates and the way back.
This page is docs/guides/used-thin-client.md as published on GitHub, where the documentation, the releases and the discussions are.