[EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [030122 05:52]:
> connected via 10BaseT to the server.I want to run a 386/40 MHZ with 8 MB of RAM as workstation,
That is feasible if you stick to low color and low resolution displays.
However, probably the majority of modern X applications don't run right
when in 4 bit color mode (basic EGA/VGA) and a lot of them don't even
like 8 bit color. They insist on a big palette and thereby either get silly colors or force the card to dither and make everything fuzzy.
The trick is to be carefully selective about choosing your applications.
So what? Why would you want to power your terminals down at all ?The trouble is that the whole boot process is duringsome 4 minutes. [...] Is a 386 PRACTICALY useable as a workstation?
Ok, so you'd like to turn off the classroom at night; fair enough ...
If you're using low-end terminals, probably the LTSP server is scaled down and therefore takes a while to boot. My suggestion is you get all LTSP working, then segregate all the services by runlevel on the server.
The priority is to get DHCP and TFTP up, so terminals can do boot stage one, _then_ pause a few seconds, _then_ change runlevels so that NFS and XFS servers are started, _then_ pause a few seconds, _then_ change to the final runlevel that brings up XDM and all the other services. If you take this approach, the terminals will be just getting ready to ask for the login screen (or chooser or whatever you're doing) around about the time that the server machine is getting ready to accept users.
X works well on a 486 terminal (it's what I normally use every day),
but you have a lot less compute and memory bandwidth on a 386 box.
It'd suggest you configure your LTSP to enable the terminal users
to switch between the default graphics mode terminal on console 2 and (for the people who've learnt the keystrokes) the text mode terminal on console 1. Let this feature spread by word of mouth among the users. Most of the linux based software can be used efficiently (and usually runs faster) on a text display. LaTeX and Emacs for example.
From: Jan Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I normally run out of disk space on a 386 before I run out of processor power. If you migrate /usr/share to a central server under NFS, and offer a large chunk of network NBD swap with a tiny local emergency swap file, the 386 makes quite a comfortable machine for many purposes.Someone with more time and even less money might draw the line at lower capabilities, but there really should be a line somewhere. A 386/40 with 8 MB of ram is getting to be a museum piece ;-)
Of course, it's much easier just to boot it into an LTSP terminal.
As I've mentioned before, I find it handy to put GLX on all the terminals, whether they have hardware 3D or not, if swap is available. During the login script on the server, the X display configuration is checked to determine whether the GLX is hardware or only software. If the latter, the library search path is changed to put server-side Mesa ahead of server-side xlib-GL so server side rendering will normally occur. That way, even if the user manages to get the library search path wrong (by putting it in a script, for example), the 3D will still work correctly ... and just be slower than otherwise expected.
People used to do Mesa on 486 machines, so GLX is still _usable_ on one.
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