dumb terminals and Red Hat Fedora Linux 2 (Thanks for the Help!)
Jeff Kinz
jkinz at kinz.org
Fri Apr 1 19:50:38 UTC 2005
On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 01:47:03PM -0600, Jack Taffar wrote:
> Looks like the WT3200 WinTerm is Windows only. I am now looking for a
> good X-terminal. I have used HDS Network Solutions and Wyse in the
> past. So I will look there first. Thanks to all for the help so far.
> I will have more questions once I get an actual X-Terminal.
>
Jack - you may already have the hardware you need for use as
X-terminals/thin clients.
see http://www.ltsp.org
This is a "semi-distribution" (you add it to something like fedora)
This software lets you use multiple PC's as X-terminals from a single
server. (A 1.6 GHz Celeron w/1GB RAM can run 10 clients,YMWV )
How it works:
Using any old PC clone hardware (486 or better) with at least 32MB
of RAM (more is better) you set the PC up to boot program called
"etherboot" or "PXE" . (Can be booted from a floppy, hard drive, cd-rom,
ROM or from any ethernet card with a Boot rom on it)
Both etherboot and PXE use the network interface to:
A: get a DHCP IP address
B: use tftp to fetch a small, bootable linux kernel over the LAN
Then - the small kernel boots, load X-Windows, and viola - instant
X-terminal.
In addition to old PC's there are new boxes designed from scratch to be
thin client X-terminals. Both will work superbly well.
Where to get ethernet cards with etherboot roms on them:
http://www.disklessworkstations.com
http://www.disklessworkstations.com/cgi-bin/web/scan/fi=products/st=db/co=yes/sf=category/se=10%3A%3A100%20Mbit.html?id=vwFZK5RZ
A guy who works at that (above) company started and leads the LTSP Open
Source project, Jim McQuillan.
--
http://kinz.org
http://www.fedoranews.org
Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA.
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