Aaron deRozario wrote:
>
> Thank you all for your advice - I am looking at MuLinux and VNC at the
> moment. In my current setup I have a 1gig hard drive that currently holds
> an unused Win95. I am thinking of getting rid of this and using it for
> Linux instead. I am thinking of perhaps installing this drive on one of the
> 486's.
Please remember that Mandrake doesn't run on 486's. Just a warning so
you're not frustrated when you can't get it to work!
> There is one aspect that I am not sure I completely understand - the
> question is probably more academic than anything else - but I'm always eager
> to learn more. Can X-windows be used to display information from a
> programme that is being run on a remote machine? Could the 486, using X,
> just display the graphical information of Applix, being run on the server?
> >From the responses I am presuming the answer is yes. Is this so? (sorry I
> am a newbie)
Yes, of course. I previously owned an old Sun 3/50 machine. Not much
was ever going to run very well on that machine, so I used it just as a
display for applications that ran on my more powerful Linux machine.
All in all, it was a nice setup until the 19" monitor blew up like the
4th of July!
> The potential practical application is the GF and I are forever wanting to
> type letters/assignments/etc at the same time - the old 486 could then be
> useful.
>
> We can play networked games of Civ - CTP (this is her idea - she believes
> she can kick my arse) - the old 486 could then be fun.
>
> Does the same server/client principal work for SVGAlib (maybe leading to
> networked Quake sessions one day in the future)?
That's a completely different thing at that point. You run a quake
server on the Linux machine, then connect to it with Quake clients. The
SVGAlib version on the 486 and the X version on the larger machine.
> If I can use the 486 to run remote applications would I need to use a 100Mbs
> network or will 10 suffice?
The only thing that will be coming over the network is just display
information. You should be fine with 10.
> When operating like this does the filesystem on the client machine (486) use
> symlinks to the directories on the server (with the exception of essential
> local files I assume) - eg does /opt become a symlink to {ip address of
> server}/opt
They're completely separate typically. The 486 has it's own
installation of software separate from the bigger machine.
You CAN, however, link them together. Say you get ready to install
Linux on that 486, but realize that it just doesn't have the HD space
that you'd like. Well, you can share applications between the two, so
mount the big machine's /usr directory onto the 486's filesystem.
> I have not discounted using MuLinux or VNC - just trying to learn a bit
> more. I also realise that it might be cheaper to buy a new MB for the 486
> cases and be able to run everything locally, however part of the excercise
> is to set up a LAN.
And what better way to realize all of the completely cool things you can
do with Unix that just aren't possible under Windows! You can't
typically run your application on one machine and display it on another
under Windows, you can't run diskless clients easily under Windows, but
you can under Linux.
There's a really big competitive advantage to running operating systems
that allow you to tailor your setup to your available resources. Want
to run Netscape on the 486, but there's not enough memory? Use the
server to run it and leave the 486 dedicated to displaying the output.
It'll be plenty fast at that. People are fighting tooth and nail about
thin-clients and this and that, but it all comes back to the fact that
they're talking about technology that the Unix world has had available
for 20 years! Those thin-clients are X terminals in disguise!
--
Steve Philp
Network Administrator
Advance Packaging Corporation
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
