Migration LISCON to NoTouch

It is very easy to migrate from LISCON-branded OS images and/or LISCON Management Console Enterprise edition to NoTouch OS and/or NoTouch Center. Both variants feature the well-known polar bear in various places such as boot up screen and are similar. LISCON was the traditional name and brand for the system before NComputing began its international expansion and devised the NoTouch Desktop product.

Client OS Migration

There is nothing special about "migration" purely on the client side. Simply perform a Firmware Update, updating the to a NoTouch .lfi file.

The standard NoTouch OS is feature-wise equivalent to the LMD-512 (LISCON Managed Desktop, the PC OS) images. NoTouch OS is not a replacement for BASIC-*, BROWSER-* and TC-* and other Thin Client images! Even if it may run because the target Thin Client has enough disk space, NoTouch would (as would LMD) request an endpoint license, whereas the Thin Client OS images did not.

However, in case of Thin Client images, there is no reason to migrate - NComputing maintains the OS and builds both flavors equally, there is no disadvantage in using LISCON OS images.

Management application migration

While it is technically easy to cross-grade from one product to another, you there are a few default values different in the product. So for example, when the LISCON product range was born in Austria, it had traditionally been set to German keyboard layout by default. NoTouch however was devised in California, starting with US English keyboard layout as default setting. Fortunately, not much is to be done, just a few settings that every computer user has to set when setting up their machines.

One peculiarity of LISCON Management Console however is, that by default it will set the client user interface to use Control Center and disable the regular taskbar and desktop icons (tcstartup). Explanation: Both LISCON OS and NoTouch OS by default have a task bar and desktop icons. If you use NoTouch Center, this won't change. However, for history reasons, LISCON Management Console disables taskbar and desktop icons, and enables Control Center. For historic reasons. You can of course get the "new" behavior with LISCON Management Console also, it's very easy to configure, just three values. Or you can of course make NoTouch Center to configure the "old" behavior. Our recommended method is to switch over to the new, default user interface of taskbar and desktop icons, i.e. if you cross-grade to NoTouch Center, you just let it happen. Only if for whatever reason you want Control Center to be your client home screen, then configure it.

Should you have redefined your "Desktop settings" (_tcstartup) connection to something else, say an automatically starting Citrix connection, there is nothing to worry about, nothing will change besides that for the very short moment while this is connecting, the user might see the taskbar on the bottom of the screen with the "new" settings. Again, if you don't want this, simply set taskbar to off.

Actually things are very simple. Check the table below for the different default settings.

Central management different default values

The following table lists default values and their different counterparts in the other product. If you migrate, please set these parameters explicitly to you desired values before migrating.

Parameter	NoTouch Center	LISCON Management Console
Keyboard Layout	English (US)	German
Time Zone	US/Pacific	Europe/Vienna
Screen Resolution	Auto	1024x768
Taskbar	On	Off
Desktop icons	On	Off
_tcstartup automatic start	Off	On

Note: "_tcstartup" is the hidden connection behind the "Desktop settings" in NoTouch Center and LISCON Management Console. Its use is deprecated but it will still be generated by the system. It will disappear in future releases entirely.

Example migration

Say you have LISCON Management Console installed and you use it only with contemporary client OS images (later than OS 2.30). So might want to get rid of the Control Center based look&feel anyway and rather use the taskbar. If you use connection autostart, you won't care anyway since your users go directly into a server-side connection.

1. Backup your installation
2. Log in to LISCON Management Console
3. Set these value explicitly - i.e. make sure the checkbox is checked, even if the value equals the current default value.
   • Your keyboard layout
   • Your time zone
4. Optionally, decide about Desktop settings/_tcstartup resp. the user interface - keep it as it is, or modernize?
5. Update your LISCON Management Console, using the NoTouch update.jar or migrate your standalone installation into the NComputing Virtual Appliance