minimum requirements, will it work?

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008, Ismael Farfán Estrada wrote:

> Hi, I would like to ask whether someone has used pentium2 with
> 32M of shared video RAM.

32MB of video RAM is tonnes.  32MB of primary system memory is definitely
not enough (whether or not it's shared with the video).

> I remember readding somewhere that you could use a 486 with
> 16M of RAM and that 32M of RAM woul be OK, but I may be wrong.

Older versions of LTSP might have managed alright but in my LTSP5 won't
work well (if it does at all) with 32MB. 

http://www.edubuntu.org/GettingStarted

"The minimum requirements for a thin client computer is a Pentium II with
48MB RAM and a 2MB display card. Recommended specifications is at least a
Pentium II/300 with 64MB RAM and a 4MB display card. You will also need a
method to boot over the network."

Ubuntu 6.06 (aka dapper) is still supported and uses LTSP4 which has lower
system requirements but it's quite old and probably won't be supported for
all that much longer.

> Also I read (wich is the past of read?) that you need about 50M of
> RAM per client...

That tallies better with the above alright.

The past tense of read is read :-)

> But now I see that edubuntu sais the minimum is 64 of client RAM
> and 150M of RAM per client.

Yeah, that's about the recommended amount.

> I have 18 computer with 32M of shared RAM and a server with 2G
> of RAM. Do you think it may work? Will it be a failiure?

32MB is probably not enough for the clients, though it _might_ work with
dapper.  2GB RAM on the server is probably a little bit tight to run 18
sessions at once though it depends on the applications in use.  You might
be able to stretch this further by using the XFCE desktop instead of GNOME.

I don't know what your situation is but if you can find someone with some
old 32MB SDRAM sticks for your thin clients and another 1GB ram for your
server, you'll be much better off.

Gavin