Re: [school-discuss] Rescuing a School Technology Program: Linux Thin-client Overview

[Lincoln Peters <sampln@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sunday 25 September 2005 11:20 pm, Damir wrote:
> Integrated graphics cards on clients!!
> It's sis6502. I found no X driver for that card and used vesa driver.
> Slow. Slooooow.
> Well, it's slow in windows95, too, you can see that slow scrolling efect
> and it was much worse in X.

If it's a Pentium I or better, there should be a PCI bus that you could use to 
install a better graphics card.  Most modern graphics cards (except for the 
really high-end ones that you won't need anyway) are still available in PCI 
form.  As long as you don't get a video card that is not supported by Linux, 
you'd probably be fine with the cheapest cards you can find.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, we have a few organizations, such as the 
Computer Recycling Center, that take donated hardware and provide it to 
schools.  I don't know if there would be anything similar in your area.

>
> Server is P4 3.0GHz, 1GB RAM, 100Mb/s network card connected to 100Mb/s
> switch, Linux Mandrake 10.1.
>
> Clients (12) are HP Vectras VE (P166, 32MB RAM, sis chipset, integrated
> sis graphics and 10Mb/s network cards).

Your use of 10Mb/s network cards on the clients might be a factor.  I once 
tried a similar thin-client approach in my school, except that everything ran 
client-side and the server was only used as a file server.  My original 
server (a 486SX with 16MB of RAM; I had a very tight budget!) had a 10Mb/s 
connection (the fastest I could get on its ISA bus), and it was SLOW!  I 
later upgraded to a Pentium II with a 100Mb/s connection, and it was much 
faster (still noticeably slower than a local hard disk, but usable).

I don't know whether or not this kind of bottleneck would apply when you're 
using your kind of thin-client approach (run everything on the server with 
remote X sessions), although I've occasionally run remote X sessions on a 
much smaller scale (only one thin client) over an 802.11b WiFi network (which 
maxes out at 11Mb/s; usually run at more like 6Mb/s).


-- 
Lincoln Peters
<sampln@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

You love peace.