[Lancaster] Folly Terminals are go!

[Andy Baxter]

On Thursday 27 May 2004 11:11, Ken Hough wrote:
> Martyn and others,
>
> Yep! That about sums up last evening.
>
> I have two more points to make.
>
> The first point comes from more than a few years working with hard nosed
> project engineers/managers. This has taught me that to make good
> progress it is neccssary to clearly define actions to be taken, who will
> do them and when. Otherwise matters drift, become vague and eventually
> dissipate.
>
> I am quite happy to do whatever work I am able to do. I have time and
> enrgy, but am limited wrt some of the expertise needed.
>
> WRT producing advertising/publicity literature, I could do this using
> the likes of SCRIBUS (I've already used this). But I'm not familiar with
> the world of 'advertising'. Who can help me on this one?
>
> WRT the server, we need a clearly defined 'spec' for the server setup.
> As far as I can see, the only active persons with sufficient expertise
> are Martyn, Andy and maybe Max. We need a clear 'spec' if only for
> maintenance purposes.
>
> The second point relates to the idea of providing CD writer facilities.
>   Andy favours having the possibility to download software via the
> server for burning to CD. Is this viable? If, for example, a CD sized
> ISO were to be downloaded via a 10Mbit/sec network, this could hog the
> network for maybe 10 minutes or so. Other users might not be too happy.
> If we had a 100Mbit/sec link to the server, Could the existing server
> handle all the network traffic? I don't know, I'm showing my ignorance
> here.

I said this because I remember before I had adsl, it was handy to be able to 
come in to the folly and download long files like isos and then burn them to 
CD to take home. As far as the network goes, the main thing is not to 
interfere with the X sessions. The ideal setup would be to use one of the 
network cards in the server to run the x terminals, and have the other one 
free for connections to the rest of the folly network and the internet. This 
might not be possible though if there is only one ethernet line down to the 
kitchen.

> Alternatively we could provide a library of CD ISOs on a standalone (?)
> PC which would be readily available for burning to CD. An 80Gb hard
> drive could hold over 100 ISOs. One of the existing PCs could be used
> for this duty. All we need is a CD writer. I suggest that this be at
> least a 20x burner, otherwise there might be a queue for CDs. Don't even
> think about burning DVDs.

Not sure - there's a lot of free software out there - maybe we could keep a 
'top 20' on the server, for people to burn straight off though. I remember 
going in to burn a CD of 'dynebolic' (http://dynebolic.org/) to have a look 
once, which is quite an obscure distro, and we couldn't keep all stuff like 
this without getting into running a complete mirror service.

One way to do this would be to put a usb cd burner on the file server, and run 
the lead out of the cupboard to a table at that end of the room, so anyone 
could use it. Or else find a decent machine capable of running standalone X, 
and put a CD burner in this like you're saying. The reason I wasn't keen on 
this is people using the room might not know the difference, end up using it 
for web browsing, and then there would be hassles swapping machines if 
someone wanted to burn a CD.

> I like Martyns idea of providing ISOs of MS Windows versions of 'Open
> Office', 'GIMP', etc. What better way of weaning people off Bill Gates'
> offerings. Also, a standalone PC providing CD burning makes the point
> clearly that Linux is not just for complicated networked setups and is
> just as well suited to Mr(or Ms) Average and his requirements.
>
> If we were to venture into the realms of sound and video processing, it
> seems to me that a standalone setup (ie not remote X) would be the way
> to go. Even on my own Athlon XP 2200/512MB RAM, these tasks can take
> significant periods of time to execute. The existing server (Celeron
> 1GHZ ? / 128MB RAM) would stuggle. Also, as Max has already pointed out,
> it's not easy to setup sound cards for 'remote X' operation.

Audio playing over the net isn't too bad - I've been streaming mp3s to and 
from my pentium 133 without too much trouble, and CD quality PCM audio is 
176Kbyte/sec, which isn't much of a 100 Mbit/sec link. But it would be 
complicated to set up and maintain, so maybe better to start with a 
standalone machine and then network it later as an experiment. Raw video 
streaming is something else - 800x600x24bitx50fps makes about 500Mbit/sec, so 
it would have to be a standalone machine.

-- 
Please don't send me html mail or un-notified attachments. These will be 
automatically filed under 'probable spam' unless I'm expecting an email which 
hasn't come.
If you do need to send an attachment or html mail, put [attachment] or [html] 
in the subject line.
Thanks, andy.