[K12OSN] oldest feasible client pc? p166 reasonable?

[Jim McQuillan]

light being wrote:
> I installed a P166 as a client that for some reason seems ridiculously 
> slow, even doing odd things.
>
> What's the oldest client that's actually reasonable to use normally?
>
> Long ago I had read tall stories about 486 and 386 clients, but 
> nowadays it seems that the Celeron-300  / 32mb ram I have is about 
> actual minimum... even they crash unless I enable the NFS-swapping in 
> fact.

I still consider that anything with a PCI bus and at least 16mb of ram 
is a suitable LTSP thin client.  You'd definately need NFS swap for that 
low amount of ram.

The reason I say 'PCI bus' is so that you can have a PCI video card.  
The ISA video cards are way too slow.

Even 10mbit network cards are fine.

BUT, you have to keep in mind that 'SLOW' is a relative and subjective 
thing.  Sure, a 16mb 166-Pentium will seem slow to somebody who is used 
to a 1Ghz thin client with 256mb of ram and a fancy video card.  BUT, 
that 16mb 166-pentium will be running way faster than it would if you 
had left Win95 on it.

For an awful lot of people, slow is better than nothing at all.

Jim McQuillan
jam at Ltsp.org


>
> Ideally I am noticing the a client needs a 400mhz CPU and some 64mb 
> ram...
>
> Is there some thinner kernel or X.org to use somewhere that is still 
> practical?
>
> Seems there is some fat to cut in these kernel images.
>