# What we learned from talking to ThinLinc users **URL:** \ **Category:** Blog\ **Created:** [3 June 2026 09:12 UTC](https://community.thinlinc.com/t/what-we-learned-from-talking-to-thinlinc-users/2015 "2026-06-03T09:12:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![per.hagegard](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/community.thinlinc.com/per.hagegard/32/1053_2.png) [@per.hagegard](https://community.thinlinc.com/u/per.hagegard)\ **Post date:** [3 June 2026 09:12 UTC](https://community.thinlinc.com/t/what-we-learned-from-talking-to-thinlinc-users/2015/1 "2026-06-03T09:12:37Z")
**Hi everyone!** Here at Cendio, we always strive to keep our communication practical, technical, and straightforward. As part of that commitment, we recently completed an exciting project together with **Unik Student** —an organization that connects driven students with businesses for real-world projects. In this project, the students conducted focused interviews with many of our current ThinLinc users. They spoke with system administrators, IT managers, and researchers across a wide range of environments—from universities and research institutes to healthcare providers and tech companies. The goal was simple: to get a practical understanding of how ThinLinc is used day-to-day, what works well, and where we can improve. **A big thank you!** We want to extend a sincere thank you to the **students at Unik Student** for their excellent and thorough work during these interviews. We would also like to warmly thank **all the customers** who took the time to talk with us, share insights into their unique setups, and provide us with invaluable feedback. **The Q&A** The students have summarized their key findings and takeaways into a highly readable **Q&A**. We felt these insights were too valuable to keep to ourselves, so we have published the full Q&A below for our community to read. Take a look, and feel free to share your own thoughts, questions, or experiences in the thread! Best regards, **The Cendio Team** **Q&A: What We Learned from Talking to ThinLinc Users** To start, could you briefly describe your project and what it was like stepping into the world of Linux system administrators and IT managers? - Melker Our project was about speaking with different ThinLinc users to understand how they actually use it in their day-to-day work. We talked to people at universities, research institutes, public organizations, healthcare-related environments and technology companies. Most of them were system administrators, IT managers, researchers or technical decision-makers. What stood out quite early was how practical the conversations were. People were not really talking about ThinLinc in abstract product terms. They talked about concrete situations: giving researchers access to a cluster, helping developers reach a central environment, making Linux usable for people who do not work in the terminal every day, or keeping access controlled in more sensitive environments. For us, it was also a good reminder that “remote desktop” can mean very different things depending on the organization. In some places it is mostly about convenience. In others, it is tied quite closely to how the work is organized. **When you asked customers about their Linux remote desktop environments, what was the most common problem they said ThinLinc solved for them? - Max** The most common theme was access to Linux environments without forcing everyone into a command-line workflow. Several organizations had powerful Linux systems, compute servers or HPC clusters, but the users were not always Linux experts. They might be researchers, students, doctors, engineers or developers who simply needed to get their work done. One contact at a large US university described ThinLinc as a gateway to their supercomputers, especially for users who are new to HPC and not yet comfortable working only through SSH. A system administrator at a Danish hospital research unit described a similar situation. Their users include researchers and medical staff, so having a graphical frontend makes the environment easier to use than a pure terminal setup. That was probably the clearest pattern: ThinLinc often helps technical teams make advanced Linux environments more usable for a wider group of people. **Did you uncover any surprising or unique ways that organizations are using ThinLinc today? What stood out to you? - Melker** Yes, the range of use cases was broader than we expected. One Swedish public-sector research organization uses ThinLinc in a very controlled environment, where access to protected HPC infrastructure needs to be logged and traceable. For them, the value is not only that users can connect remotely, but that they can do so without compromising how the environment is controlled. A US healthcare IT company uses ThinLinc in thin-client environments where users move between workstations and need to resume their session quickly. In that context, even a few seconds matter because people may switch stations many times during a day. We also saw more infrastructure-focused use cases. One Swedish technology company uses ThinLinc as a graphical bridge into isolated OpenStack environments, mainly for administrators who need access to internal management interfaces. A small detail we liked came from a Danish hospital research unit. They joked about wanting another ThinLinc penguin figure. It was not important technically, of course, but it said something about the relationship. They seemed to see Cendio as people they had a good connection with, not just as a software vendor. **Based on your interviews, how do ThinLinc users prefer to hear from Cendio? What kind of content, updates, or interactions bring them the most value? - Max** Our impression is that this audience values practical and technical communication. They do not seem to need broad marketing messages. They are more interested in information that helps them understand, configure or improve their setup: release notes, documentation, examples from similar environments, migration tips, and clear explanations of new features. Support also came up several times. A Swedish public-sector customer described Cendio’s support as quick and helpful, even in cases where the issue was not really caused by ThinLinc itself. A US healthcare IT company also said the forum posts and documentation were very well done. Another thing we noticed is that peer examples matter. One Danish hospital research unit originally found ThinLinc through a recommendation from another technical university. That type of word-of-mouth seemed more credible than a traditional sales message. So if we had to summarize it: useful, technical and honest communication probably works best. **If you had to summarize the ThinLinc user community in just a few words based on the people you spoke with, what would they be? - Melker** Practical people running practical systems. That might sound simple, but it was probably the clearest impression. Many of the users we spoke with were not looking for something flashy. They wanted something that worked, that they could understand, and that fit into an environment they were responsible for. A few quotes stayed with us: “Stability and performance were the most important things.” — Architect in a European financial/insurance-related development environment “I don’t think there is any risk of us going anywhere.” — Technical decision-maker in a European development environment “ThinLinc is incredibly reliable.” — President of a US healthcare IT company “They are listening to the customers — not deploying a bunch of stuff customers don’t need.” — US healthcare IT company “It works perfectly.” — IT contact at a Southern European public transport organization “The forum posts and documentation were very well done.” — US healthcare IT company What we take from that is that the community seems quite grounded. They care about their users, their infrastructure, and whether the tools they use make everyday work easier. ThinLinc seems to have found a place in that kind of environment.