Re: [seul-edu] linux needs

[Harry McGregor <micros@azstarnet.com>]

On Sat, 20 May 2000, Michael Viron wrote:

> We've currently got 2 486/66's that we are using XWindows on with no
> problems (32 MB Ram, 1 + GB drive space) and before that we ran a
> relatively nice install off of a 486/66 with 16 MB ram and a 400M hard
> drive (including X).

486 is a little slow for an Xworkstation, but it can work.

One of the main labs I am working with is 32 Pentium 90MHz systems, 64MB
ram.  They take a good 2 minutes to load The GIMP (check out some of the
artwork the students did, http://www.osef.org).

For AbiWord, I can see a 486 working as a station.
 
> The lowest configuration I've ever personally installed X to was a 486/33
> with 8M Ram and a 300M hard drive.  (X was slow, but it did work).

Xterm is about all that can do.  All you would need to do is setup one
GOOD system (probably a K6-2 or faster, 128MB ram) and then have the
clients run X -broadcast or X -query to find the Xserver.

XTerminals are not exactly as ideal as you might think, in that the power
of the server required for many things can outway the cost benifit.

For netscape, abi word, etc it would be fine.  Don't try to run StarOffice
or anything through WINE, or even The GIMP.
 
> I'm pretty sure it would also be possible to run them as X-Terminals if you
> can't get the performance you want from installing X directly to the
> machine--anyone have an idea where documentation on that might be (been a
> while since I fiddled around with x-terms much)?
> 
> Let me know if I can help either on or off the list!
> 
> Michael Viron <mviron@wsdo.sao.uwf.edu>
> Chief System Administrator
> Web Spinners


		Harry

--
Harry McGregor, CEO, Co-Founder
hmcgregor@osef.org, (520) 202-OSEF (6733)
Open Source Education Foundation, http://www.osef.org