School using Linux

[Brian Kelsay]

  > I guess I'm just not comprehending how much of the X system (including
> the desktop manager) actually "runs" on the thin client.  I'd think there
> would need to be some base system on the thin client concerning X. 
> Nothing but X would be the lowest RAM hog, but could you still run
> KDE/GNOME on a 64MB thin client (100Mhz Pentium) without tearing your
> hair out at the (lack of) speed?
> 
> Also, say you're running IceWM as the window manager on a Pentium 100Mhz
> with 64MB RAM.  The application server (lets say a PIII with 512MB RAM
> and only three clients) serves up OpenOffice.  How fast is OpenOffice
> going to run?  Will the speed of the thin client make any difference in
> the speed of OpenOffice?  Or is the thin client just serving essentially
> as a video feed from the server (with the only speed consideration being
> the keyboard and mouse inputs on the thin client, as well as the network
> bandwidth to deliver the inputs).
> 
> I'd like to see OpenOffice run fairly quickly on a Pentium 100Mhz system,
> just for once.  No more StarOffice 5.1.

Actually, I believe it can run 2 ways.  Normal thin clients boot to a OS 
  and application image.  The image (like a drive image) is the same for 
all users or a group of users.  The image loads into ram and you use it 
from there the whole time and save your data to a file server somewhere 
that is mapped for that users' profile.  The profile can also contain 
user desktop customizations (.xconfig, .bashrc, etc.) for that specific 
user or group.

The other way would be to load a baseline image of say the OS with 
minimal extras, bash and screen.  Then the thin client displays apps 
that are actually running on the beefy server.  A lot like a Citrix 
server.  In fact you can run a Citrix for Linux client in such a setup. 
  I read about some guys (maybe on the Morphix list) that were building 
a boot CD for this.  In this setup you want ram (32 or 64) and a real 
good video card, like a 16MB card on up.   But the server probably needs 
to be a dual P-III with a lot of ram and you want a hot spare.  Really 
both setups require a hot spare or people are going to sit there w/ 
nothing to do if the server is down.

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