I'm looking to go into IT, general office server management, and it looks like XenDesktop would be a awesome tool to use. If I get it right, you would store a central image of the OS you want to deploy (in an iso file) on the main server. Then use XenDesktop to pull that image down to the client, and it will then boot the OS inside of the virtual machine.

Does it download the image of the OS and store it locally (like cloning the VM onto the client?)

I'd love to find a free (possibly open source?) alternative to this, I keep on hearing about KVM in Linux and PXE booting a minimalistic OS to use remote KVMs.... Would that be what I'm looking for?


Ideally, I'd like a system..

- That allows me to manage one central image for multiple clients (virtualized hardware)
- Easily boot a thin client OS that connected to XenDesktop.

Would those things be possible with some kind of free alternative? Some guidance would be greatly appreciated.