request for some help with performance and sound

[Patrick McKnight]

Greetings,

I am new to Edubuntu but not new to linux (using exclusively since 1996).
Recently, I installed Edubuntu in my research lab.  The install was a
replacement for an Ubuntu (Dapper) setup with LTSP that was working OK but
tended to crash a fair bit.  I thought an upgrade was in order so I moved
ahead.  Perhaps my move was a bit in haste since many of the features that
were working before no longer work.  Two features, in particular, are
causing me headaches.  Can anyone out there offer some advice on the
following?

1.  Video performance.  I have 5 clients hooked up to a Gb switch that goes
directly to an exclusive NIC on my dual cpu, dual core server (8 GB of RAM,
80 GB SATA drive, no RAID).  The clients are all PXE thin clients with 512
MB of RAM and via chipsets (most likely they are EPIA boards in tiny cases,
I just never looked inside).  The video performance on my thin clients is
atrocious.  I feel like I have gone back to Windows 2.0 on a 286 - yes, that
slow.  I literally see the screen painted before my eyes.  Running anything
like VMware or Win4Lin is out of the question.  So I ask, what might be the
hangup?

Network?  I figure the network connection is fine.

Server?  The server CPU and RAM are fine but the disk is definitely slow.
That should not make a difference on one test client, or should it?

Clients?  Not likely.  They ran just fine before.

Edubuntu setup?  Perhaps.  But I am not sure how to tune the performance.

2.  Sound.  Sound does not work.  I know to enable sound I need to enable
sound in the lts.conf file.  I have already done that.  Is there another
step that I am missing?  Perhaps software that is not installed by default.
I tried everything.  From installing esound, pulseaudio, etc. to messing
around with my asound.conf file.  The thin client just refuses to see any
sound driver or daemon.

Any help on either of these would be greatly appreciated.  I need to get
these thin clients back up and running so my students can resume their work
(for me).  Thanks greatly in advance for any pointers.

-- 
Cheers,

Patrick
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