Thin Clients

[Wade Smart]

Rashkae wrote:
> Wade Smart wrote:
>> 20081007 1112 GMT-6
>>
>> A school system local to me asked about the possibility of moving to 
>> linux. Of course I talked that up right away. But then this older bloke 
>> asked about setting up Thin Clients at each school and linking the 
>> server from each school to the main server. I thought about it (on the 
>> spot of course) and while it sounds good in theory, I personally dont 
>> know if that would work OR if the overall benefits pan out.
>>
> 
> It works really well and the benefits are great.
> 
> Now, to run full desktop environments, you will need more than a few
> application servers.  If using commodity hardware (as opposed to dual
> Xeon with over 20GB of ram), You'll probably only want 10 to 20 clients
> per application server.
> 
> It becomes impractical to use removable media on the clients, so clients
> that need to access removable media might not be appropriate for this setup.
> 
> The benefits are being able to use any old computer as a thin
> client....even on the desk I type this, I'm running a full Gutsy Gnome
> Desktop from my client, which is the oldest pc in the office, a PII 350Mhz
> 
> Latency is absolutely not noticeable for regular office applications,
> web browsing and audio.  I can even watch small size movies without
> issue.  (latency becomes problematic for videos over 500x500, and
> obviously, you wouldn't be able to play videos on more than 1 or 2
> clients simultaneously)


20081007 1205 GMT-6

Alright then, those are some good answers.
Questioning the admins of the schools, most work is on MS Word, net 
research, and super minor watching of videos. So nothing that would take 
up massive bandwidth.

Great, well, I think Ill have to setup a test system them.


Wade