There are many parts to the VMware View solution. The main parts you are asking about are:
The Client Access Device: What you use to access your remotely hosted VDI or RDSH desktop
The VDI Desktop or RDSH Host: The Virtual Machine you remote into and work from ( What is displayed to the client )
Zero clients are a client access device which are VMware Ready certified for VMware View and are listed on the VMware View Client HCL. A zero client can be used to access a VMware View virtual desktop using PCoIP as the remoting protocol.
We also provide VMware View software based clients that run on a wide variety of client devices and OSes such as Linux Distros, Thin Clients with custom Linux installs from our partners, Windows Clients, OS X clients, iOS clients and Android clients. Our open client is just a client for Linux based devices typically used by our thin client partners to build clients for their specific needs. It's just the client you use to access your remote VDI Desktop.
The only host OS's or remote VDI desktop / RDSH OS we support connecting to from any client access device using RDP or PCoIP is Windows. We do not support of provide an offering for connecting to Linux based desktops. Our core platform vSphere does support Linux servers / hosts ( No Linux Desktop OSs are listed ) so you could use another desktop solution as the connectivity part and use vSphere to virtualize your Linux VMs.
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