[K12OSN] Booting older thin clients

[Robert Arkiletian]

On 3/1/07, Rob Owens <rowens at ptd.net> wrote:
> All the advice you've been given so far is good.  Booting from a server
> will give you the best performance.
>
> If you really want to try out a local installation, I've had pretty good
> success with Xubuntu 6.10 on older machines with 128MB ram.  The fastest
> distro I've seen, I think, is Puppy Linux.  It's a close call between
> that and Damn Small Linux (DSL).  Both Puppy and DSL run completely off
> the CD, so you don't even have to install them--and they're still fast.

Okay since we are all talking about small distros I have to mention my
favorite. Slax. www.slax.org. It's a 192MB (Standard Edition)
Slackware based live cd that also runs off a usb stick. It's got
fluxbox and kde and amazingly it actually runs a kde desktop
acceptably on a 450Mhz with 196MB. With 128MB I use fluxbox perfectly.
It's got a plethora of modules (extra applications) you can easily
add. Best of all there is a Windows program you can download called
MySlax Creator
http://myslax.bonsonno.org/
where you can add extra modules to create a customized ISO and either
burn it or make a bootable live USB stick. I get my students to do
this. They love it. OS in your pocket. Don't get version 6 yet, it's
not finished. Get 5.1.8.1 standard edition. If you are running it on a
CRT monitor use the xconf command to optimize X. I am actually in the
process of setting up my thin clients to dual boot with lilo to my
k12ltsp server and slax on the local hd. They are PII 233 with 196MB.
A really nice teaching opportunity is sshfs with Slax. Last point,
Slax has a beautiful UI unlike other small distros. Did I mention it's
got ntfs write support and version 6 will have out-of-the-box wifi
ndiswrapper setup.


-- 
Robert Arkiletian
Eric Hamber Secondary, Vancouver, Canada
Fl_TeacherTool http://www3.telus.net/public/robark/Fl_TeacherTool/
C++ GUI tutorial http://www3.telus.net/public/robark/