Royal Oak Intermediate wrote:
> My thought was to use ARMLinux, run StarOffice, other Windows apps (read
> CD-ROM based things) under WINE and then all machines, old and new could
> share data and talk relatively freely. All for a lot less than buying a
> school-ful of new machines.
You can't do that (not realistically, anyway: running StarOffice on a
RiscPC with an x86 emulator would be unusably slow). You might be able
to "re-use" the RiscPCs by running X servers on them with the clients on
one or more new x86 boxes (if your network can take the strain). You
could run the binaries that won't run in ARM-Linux on the x86s and
display the windows on the RiscPCs.
That would save you some money: you would only need some powerful x86
boxes (a K6-2/450 costs next to nothing these days) on which you would
install the office software, maybe even using WINE (don't expect
miracles though, WINE is not stable yet). It would look as though the
programs run on the RiscPCs, but all they'll be doing is running X and
receiving the window contents through the network and displaying them
(and returning keypresses etc.).
You can't have too many of those sessions on a single 10Mbps ethernet
though, because it generates quite a lot of network traffic.
I don't know if this would work (I've never tried it), but I think it
might be worth a try.
'bye,
Mark Koek
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