Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2006 14:27:30 -0500 From: Derek Ragona <derek@computinginnovations.com> To: =?ISO-8859-2?Q?Nagy_L=E1szl=F3?= <nagylzs@enternet.hu>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Thin terminals for FreeBSD Message-ID: <6.0.0.22.2.20060807142417.02633998@mail.computinginnovations.com> In-Reply-To: <44D79242.3050108@enternet.hu> References: <44D79242.3050108@enternet.hu>
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In these days of commodity PC pricing running X-terminals isn't really cost
effective. You'd be better off buying 10 - 20 identical PC's loading and
configuring one, and then clone the drive for the rest.
Using X-terminals will likely cost more per unit, and produce more load on
the server, the only positive to X-terminals is in configuration and
maintenance.
That's my 2 cents anyway.
-Derek
At 02:19 PM 8/7/2006, =?ISO-8859-2?Q?Nagy_L=E1szl=F3?= wrote:
> Hello,
>
>I need to setup an environment where some users (10 to 20 employees) will
>use terminals to run programs. They need to run a few popular programs:
>thunderbird, firefox, adobe acrobat, openoffice and gaim. This site will
>be a customer service. We decided to reduce the costs by using Open Source
>software and cheap terminal computers. This is a good solution because
>most of the users will read messages and images on the screen and they can
>share the same processor and memory easily. I know that I can setup cheap
>computers and use its X server as a terminal for another central computer.
>This solution still requires new (or used) computers. I would like to
>reduce the costs to the minimum. Here are some key questions that I could
>not answer:
>
>- Is there a more cost-effective solution? (Something that I did not think of)
>- How much RAM will I need? Will FireFox Thunderbird and OpenOffice load
>shared objects and reduce the overall memory usage? Or should I reserve
>256MB of memory for each client?
>- Do I need to use gigabit ethernet? Or is it enough to use a normal 100
>Mbps wired network? I heard that there can be bandwidth problems when
>using many terminals, but I do not have experience.
>- Are there any pitfalls that I need to be aware of?
>
>It would be perfect to provide links to some articles or manuals - I do
>not need anyone to write detailed instuctions and do my job. I'm asking
>for help because the handbook was not very useful in this case. I only
>found this:
>
>http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/term.html#TERM-X
>
>It does not help too much, and there is no know-how. I really need to know
>what hardware I need to buy.
>
>
>Thank you
>
> Laszlo
>
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