Low-cost multi-user Linux terminal server?

[Jason Clinton]

webgiant at juno.com wrote:

>I got to thinking about this.  What with the proliferation of used computer hardware which is 
probably too slow to run an effective school Linux computer (these are teenagers, after all, with 
the same attention spans as any other teenager) but which are fast enough to receive X windows 
served up by a much faster central server.
>
>What would, in your opinion, be the slowest set of hardware (one somewhat fast central server 
computer, and four somewhat slower PCs to be used as terminals) you would be able to entice a 
teenager into using for school purposes?
>

As has been mentioned, our company, Lumen Software, does local LTSP
implementations. There are a couple of requirements for the thin
clients: they must have a supported video cards (sometimes this is a
real problem) and they must be able to boot from a NIC (pretty much
anything Pentium or later). They don't really /have/ to be x86 but x86
is by far better supported. We have an assembly line where we program
EEPROMS, insert them in the D-LINK cards and test them. We can sell them
($30) to anyone in the area intersted in trying it out. You can also
download floppy images that allow you to boot /certain/ NIC's but that
process is not as reliable as hardware booting the NIC's.

As far as the server goes, we recommend that you have 128MB of memory
for every person that has access to OpenOffice.org. We have developed
methods to accelerate the OO.o launch times and things of that nature
but certainly processors with high levels of L2 cache and dual+
processor systems with loads of memory can support as many as 50 users
on a 100mb network. In surplus of 50 users, you're talking some fairly
behemoth hardware and gigabit backbones to 100Mbit hubs...

If you're interested in any NIC cards, thin clients, or even if you'd
like us to install LTSP for you, contact me off list and we'd be more
than happy to send you a quote. I can also be contacted for pre-sales
questions.