[Gllug] The netwroked house - a terminal in every room >;)

[gluug at mikebanahan.com]

On Mon, Mar 07, 2005 at 06:12:23PM +0000, M.Blackmore wrote:
> But to the "terminals". Rather than sink money into a number of new 
> personal computers, the idea would be to sink money once into a recent 
> (but second hand preferably) powerful server. The only reason to run 
> windows is on a machine or two for the kids to play games upon, which I 
> will confine to the kitchen or similar so I can keep an eye on them. I 
> also want to restrict their ability to browse sites unsupervised, but 
> that is another issue for now though will become more pressing to find a 
> vetted access to websites, like what the schools use.
> 
> How should I go about doing this server/terminal system?
> 
> One option is to use a number - 3 or 4 I think -  400-500mhz 
> motherboards around, with enough atx cases for them, and enough ram for 
> 256-384mb ram for those, more if I denude the grownups PC's of a couple 
> of 128mb sticks. Though the cases are large, clunky and not exactly 
> quiet. Could do for the kids' "playroom" for example.
> 
> Can these be pressed into service? I'll have to invest in some new 
> monitors as there are none associated with these, all being boards left 
> over from upgrades, and cases from long dead atx format p133 era machines.
> 
> Or should I invest in some new or second hand dedicated "terminals"? If 
> so, what? ( Or mini-ITX 'pooters? If so, what specs?

At GBdirect we used pentium P90 boxes with 32MB of RAM running the Linux
Terminal Server stuff. They were 'adequate' but you wouldn't use them
for anything involving animation.

The work I've done recently for a school (see http://cutterproject.co.uk)
uses old-ish boxes with, say 300 MHz processors and more ram and a decent
video card. You definitely need more than 10Mb ethernet to each terminal.

There the ratio is 40 terminals per X server, but those are twin Xeon
boxes. The lesson is that the X 'device' doesn't have to be too clever and
neither does the X server if it's not being asked to do too much. In the
school they are all using Star Office and it's hard to find a slower and more
bloated application. If 40 kids can use that per X server ... well!

The trickier bit is to get them to do sound and video well and that might
be your sticking point. It can be done but I'd have to defer to my colleague
Andy Trevor who isn't on this mailing list for the gory details.

In general, thin-clients are great for general applications but become
less attractive as you go multimedia.

Mike
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