dumb terminals and Red Hat Fedora Linux 2 (Thanks for the Help!)

[Jeff Kinz]

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.