Re: using Linux on limited 486s

[Mike Lamasney <lamasney@mlode.com>]

Have you considered using dos/windows-for-workgroups on the 486 clients
instead
of W95 or W98?  Takes lots less space and works just as well for a school lab
on a tight budget.  I've used this approach in 2 labs and am building one
more right now.  A Linux/Samba box can handle your logins nicely, or if you
don't 
need them, simply use a W95/W98 box to handle printer sharing; although Linux
workes very well there.  I've found WFW thrives on NE2000 clones at $10
each.  The big advantage of including Linux/Samba is for a file server,
allowing each
student his/her own home directory that can be always mapped to the same drive
letter (we use H: for "home"), and the student can therefore sit at a
different
machine each session.  The 16-bit versions of Netscape are not at all as huge
as the 32-bit ones.  For a reasonable word processor at no cost, use Write
that comes with WFW.

	Mike

>X-Authentication-Warning: apache.utdallas.edu: michaelh owned process
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>Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 13:55:03 -0500 (CDT)
>From: Michael A Hamblin <michaelh@utdallas.edu>
>To: seul-edu@seul.org
>Subject: Re: using Linux on limited 486s
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>On Thu, 5 Aug 1999, Ray Olszewski wrote:
>
>> I'd welcome any feedback that others have at this stage, either on the list
>> or privately (as you prefer). I'd especially welcome hearing from anyone
who
>> actually uses such a minimal setup on a regular basis. If anyone knows a
>> ***GUI-based*** Web server worth trying (please, no more suggestions of
>> lynx), please send them along -- trying to get Netscape to run on these
slow
>> machines has, so far, been the showstopper. 
>
>Might try looking at gzilla (GTK browser not based on Mozilla), or seeing
>how well KDE's file manager browses web pages. If KDE's file manager works
>OK perhaps one of the developers would be willing to repackage kfm as just
>a web browser w/o the object handling backend. 8Mb though is barly enough
>for X, if it isn't swapping constantly... 
>
>I'm curious to see what you will come up with though :)
>
>--
>Michael Hamblin            http://www.utdallas.edu/~michaelh/
>michaelh@utdallas.edu      http://www.ductape.net/
>UTD Linux User Group       Engineering and Computer Science Support x2997
>                           "Two, Four, Six, Eight - SMP is really great!"
>
>