Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:55:09 -0500 From: Ross Gohlke <developer@grinz.com> To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: recommendations for multi-user X11 Message-ID: <487E602D.50504@grinz.com> In-Reply-To: <436c7eda0807160448g477cbbd8i26423e70a9294f19@mail.gmail.com> References: <487D07AC.4030205@grinz.com> <436c7eda0807160448g477cbbd8i26423e70a9294f19@mail.gmail.com>
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What am I trying to accomplish? A hosted service offering a secure, persistent desktop and file transfers across platforms, devices and timezones. The only applications required on the client end - ssh and vnc - are available (often freely) for every major PC and smartphone OS. There is only one user right now -- me. 10 is an arbitrary benchmark: how much hardware would 10 users require? The hardware will scale, but what is required to get started? Do I A) buy an upgradable computer now and upgrade components piecemeal as demand grows. B) buy a "cheap" computer now and an expensive computer when demand grows. I am leaning toward B) right now. Jonas Lund wrote: >> I'm setting up a colocated server (not yet procured) as a remote X11 >> environment for 10 business users with broadband Internet access. >> It will be their primary work computer, offering a full suite of >> applications. Graphics-wise, they are not playing video games or watching >> movies but will want to view the occasional YouTube clip. >> >> What are the graphics requirements of X11 in a low-video, multi-user >> environment? >> What do you recommend for hardware? >> > > This sounds quite backwards. First the server would get video from > youtube that's compressed at something like 20-50x and then decode > that on the server to send almost raw video over the remote X session? > I seriously doubt anybody with a even a home broadband access would > enjoy that video. > Playing media is the lowest priority of the system. The point was simply that embedded media encountered during the normal course of browsing COULD be played. One advantage of surfing from a remote computer is that your actual location and network are not exposed. One might find a few videos one would prefer to watch poorly yet anonymously. > And to what point? Unless you're giving them personal dummy terminals > they are going to access the remote X desktop from a normal PC. and > that normal pc should itself be able to play the videos. > I can think of some places around the world where a "normal PC" probably can't play videos. The goal is a service that can be accessed as easily from an ancient PC as a new one. > Now cheaping yourself out on ram sounds quite foolish. All the cpu > power in the world won't help you if it's not spent because the > machine is swapping. And besides, it's not THAT expensive. > I don't know exactly what type of apps your people are using but i > guess the main point of a setup like this is to keep the company > documents,etc on the machine. So at an minimum they might be running > some mail and openoffice client? So a few hundred megs of ram for each > client would be a minium, prolly half a gig or so to be on the safe > side for the future (This only counts in the office app + some tiny > mail client, adjust for other scenarios and test!). > A ha! Hard numbers. Thank you. I was planning on 500MB RAM per user. Can we do the same thing with processor MHz? I was thinking 200MHz per user. Typical usage scenario: Get to the office. Turn on your computer. Launch PuTTY (log in). Launch VNCViewer. Your desktop is as you left it - an email is half-written in Thunderbird; Firefox has 5 tabs open with half-finished research on php-gtk. During the day you will use Open Office to draft a sales letter or a spreadsheet; Pidgin to chat with colleagues and friends; an address book and calendar. Anything you need to print is printed to PDF, downloaded with PSFTP and printed out locally. Upload your entire music collection. Manage your playlists on - and stream them from - the server. Ross
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