From: hagan@freya.cs.umass.edu (Craig I. Hagan) Subject: Re: X terminals: Suggestion for projects like SLS, MCC, etc. Date: 14 Jun 1993 11:20:38
Actually, if you only use a linuxbox for X, the maintenance is zip.
(from experience, i have had a 386 up and running X for about 4 months,
running only X, and minimal OS stuff). Since there is little filesystem
activity, i don't worry about the disk being corrupted.
As for time of setup, for linux machines, its actually pretty fast.
The first machine takes ~1/2-1hr. The rest of the machines
can be setup by copying the harddrive of the first machine,
which is about 5 minutes. (I setup my 386 by doing this off
of my linux development machine).
I feel that the extra amount of admin that is required to be
performed on a machine running X vs an Xterminal isn't that
high (all you need is one backup, routines aren't necessary).
It pretty much comes down to the question: do you prefer
X in prom, on your local harddrive, or on a remote harddrive?
Since linux can run X in as little as 5.5MB for the Xserver,
libs, and a few local xapps (if anyone has doubts, i will
gladly tar up my X directories and provide them),
and there is room for it to be stripped even more than what i have
done, X can be run on as little as a machine with as
little as a 20mb hard drive, and 4mb core (i know...),
if it is going to be solely an Xstation.
-- craig