[K12OSN] LTSP and Macintosh

Matt Ross mross at esd165.org
Tue May 4 22:29:02 UTC 2004


Greetings.

I've been looking for a way to put to use our growing collection of old 
macs in the tech lab. Since we've been playing with LTSP, the idea of 
macs used as thin clients came about.

I spent some time researching the subject. Obviously, this is not a new 
idea. I have read a lot of archived traffic about the idea, and can see 
that it might be harder than it seems.

So, what are the compications of using Macs as X11 terminals?

I see 3 diffrent ways of making this possilble:

* 1. The Mac boots Linux for it's archatecure (either 68k or PPC) off 
the harddrive and runs linux's X to connect to the LTSP.
* 2. The Mac boots MacOS (Version 7.5.3 is free, I think) and loads a X 
server nativly, thus connects to the LTSP.
* 3. The Mac boots MacOS, loads a VNC program and connects to the LTSP.

I just learned of VNCing into the LTSP today. Cool beans.

At what levels would memory be a problem? Would swap space make up for 
any deficianies? How is sound transported (I'm clueless here)? Could 
sound be pushed over options 2 or 3?

Are there current prodjects which are working on these solutions?

-Matt





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