[KLUG Members] Re: Old boxes -- X-Terminals

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Thu, 2002-05-23 at 09:46, Tim Smith wrote:
> I have a few old boxes and was wondering how well they
> would support Linux, X, and an office suite.
> 486/80Mhz
> 16MB Ram
> 480MB HD
> VGA or SVGA video

They are good candidates for old RedHat 4.2 with StarOffice 3.1.
Seriously now, don't consider X if you don't have 64MB of RAM.

*BUT* a better option would be to use them as X-Terminals.  You put the
"brains" on one applications server (dual-processor recommended),
actually run the programs there, but "pump" the display over to those
486 X-Terminals.  The 486s don't require much power, just enough to run
X and a basic window manager.

> I have about 8 of these machines. (only have monitors
> for about 2 or 3 of them... :)
> I was also thinking of putting a 2nd hard drive in
> some of them and doing perhaps RAID-0 to gain some
> disk space/speed.

Naah.  I'd spend the money building a $1.5K, kick-@$$ dual-processor
server to complement the terminals:
  - $100 case/PS
  - $200 dual-Athlon mainboard
  - $300 (2) Athlon MP
  - $250 1GB DDR SDRAM
  - $100 3Ware Escalade RAID
  - $400 (4) Maxtor 80GB drives (in RAID-10 configuration)
  - $200 10/100 NIC and 16-port 10/100 Switch

> I was thinking of using these computers as simple work
> stations for typing up papers or surfing the web.

They won't work very fast.  Again, use them as X-Terminals and put all
the "brains" on a single server.  This is what schools are doing with
their own systems that won't run any OS well.

> Does any of this make sense? :)

It does if you look at the Terminal Server approach.  Most Windows users
don't know about it, even though even Microsoft offers an equivalent for
Windows now (Citrix WinFrame/Terminal Server).

-- Bryan

-- 
The US government could be 100x more effective, and 1/100th the
Constitutional worry, if it dictated its policy to Microsoft as
THE MAJOR CUSTOMER it is, and not THE REGULATOR it fails to be.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Bryan J. Smith, SmithConcepts, Inc.   mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org
Engineers and IT Professionals     http://www.SmithConcepts.com