[K12OSN] Christmas Upgrade

[j.w. thomas]

I've been running a K12LTSP 5EL for a couple of years, and have just 
been donated a newer server.  It has something like 6G of ram compared 
to 2G on its replacement, and a massive SATA drive vs a tiny IDE.

The clients will remain unchanged - 10 year-old Gateways with 256M RAM. 
  We have six of these.

A parent at our school donated the server.  He was inspired to do this 
because late last year the students had prepared some ooimpress 
presentations, and had ten of them running on the six terminals (four of 
them were minimized).  It was dismal.

I don't think that a new server was the solution, but he could not be 
dissuaded.  My guess is that running OOo on the clients would be a 
better approach to solving the bottleneck.

The network is 100Mbit, via an unmanaged switch.

I plan to bring the new server online over the Christmas break.  Is it 
possible to set this up for running an app locally with EL5?  I am 
terrified of upgrading to something newer, especially in light of the 
age of the thin clients.

What should I do with the old server?

Advice solicited and appreciated.

-- 
Jim Thomas            Principal Applications Engineer  Bittware, Inc
jthomas at bittware.com  http://www.bittware.com    (603) 226-0404 x536
A great mind thinks alike.