more client suggestions please

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi Joe,

On Tue, 31 Jul 2007, Joe Rowe wrote:

> I am about to setup a small test lab of 5 clients
> 
> Desired client:
> =======================================
> - Mass produced, commonly found high volume Dell, Compaq, HP
> - Works without manual config with EdUbuntu and possibly Ubuntu also
> -Pentium 3 1000MHz or faster
> - Can be a large tower or small form factor
> - Sound chip on motherboard works with Edubuntu out of the box
> - Network card can boot to server, no floppy, no HD, No CD or No USB 
> booting needed.
> - Accepts SDRAM  100   DIMM  I have tons of that.
> - Fan noise not an issue
> - mouse and keyboard can be USB or PS/2 connector
> - One free USB port after connecting mouse and keyboard

This is a slightly odd list of requirements.  SDRAM was rarely used on
anything above P3s (I believe Via made a motherboard that paired a P4 with
SDRAM, but Intel used Rambus and then DDR only) and the vast majority of
P3s were under 1000MHz.  1000Mhz is also way faster than you need for a
thin client and any late P3 should come with >128MB RAM which is enough for
a thin client.  The vast bulk of regular sound cards just work, ditto with
network cards.  You just need to get a machine that has a PXE booting
network card.

If the idea is to dual boot windows and PXE boot edubuntu, then any mass
produced desktop which has PXE booting (that's most these days) should
work.  Chances are it'll be fine, but you can't really assume.

> What I do not want in a client
> ===========================
> - network card needs driver adjustments
> - sound card needs new driver downloaded, only works with some apps
> - motherboard has quirks that can be fixed by manually editing config files
> - hard for students to properly shut down the client
> - has no USB ports
> - Only accepts some rare RAM type or rare RAM MHz.

Again, most modern desktops (if that's what you want to use) will pass all
of these.  The only way to be certain though, is to test one.  In my
experience the occasional non-standard, older (Pentium 1 and 2) machine
which might fail one or more of these tests, but P3s rarely do,
particularly not mass-produced ones.

> I have tons of experience with Ubuntu 5,6,7 and Moodle.  But I'm new 
> to Edubuntu.

The main differences are the artwork, thin clients and some extra
educational software so your experience should stand well to you.

Gavin