[ubuntu-za] Thin Client on Ubuntu 8.04

[Hilton Theunissen]

Hi Gents

It might be usefull develop a solution for telecentres and then one for 
schools,etc.  Document the minimum specs and process on the wiki.


Kind regards.

Hilton Theunissen
Inkululeko Technologies
Tel: +27 11 462 9124
Fax-to-mail: 086 603 5263
Mobile: +27 72 900800 1
E-mail: hilton at inkululeko.co.za
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Barry Wyatt wrote:
> Thanks, Jonathan
> 
> That helps a lot and goes a long way to pointing me in the right
> direction.
> 
> After your previous email I tried a direct install on the PC I mentioned
> using the earliest version Ubuntu I have - 5.10 - and I could not get it
> to complete the install process - even when trying different install
> options. So hardware seems to be the big problem. Mainly broke at the
> configuring xserver-xorg step.
> 
> Edubuntu with LTSP - yes, but what version please? The changes they have
> made in the 8.04 release don't seem to be widely documented. - Hilton
> answered this one for me.
> 
> I am based in East London.  At present, if I can get the solution
> working on three machines (and test run some educational lab software)
> then I will be confident to make proposals for a 2009 community center
> consideration - cause "he who gets the vision gets the job."
> 
> Thanks for your help on this,
> Barry
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, 2008-09-19 at 09:08 +0200, Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) wrote:
>> Hi Barry
>>
>> Barry Wyatt wrote:
>>> The big question - what version of Ubuntu were you running in your thin
>>> client application?
>> Edubuntu with LTSP. At the very minimum we used Pentium II machines. 
>> Later on Pentium III's and 4's.
>>
>>> I am a total beginner at Linux/Ubuntu and am beginning to think the Thin
>>> Client project was a little ambitious to start with.
>>  From what it sounds like, you did everything right, your clients even 
>> booted, it's probably just a matter of some old hardware.
>>
>>> One of my machines is a 6x86L-PR200+  150 MHz  65536K memory   
>>> Bios 1984-96
>>> (Way older than five years :-)
>> Yes, the RAM is enough. The CPU should do ok too. The problem is 
>> probably with the board itself. Many distributions have in recent years 
>> dropped support for things like the ISA bus, which most P1 boards still 
>> used. If it's using an integrated ISA sound card- or perhaps even a 
>> critical device for the system, then it wouldn't work.
>>
>>> Seeing that the machines are older than five years is there another
>>> solution to get these to run a reasonable version of Edubuntu?  This is
>>> the kind of machine that is "freely" available.  If I could buy multiple
>>> units of modern hardware I would not have to go thin client.
>> Where are you based? How many machines do you need? Often, you can get 
>> plenty of old machines that would work fine as thin clients just for the 
>> price it takes to physically collect them. It might be a better choice 
>> getting slightly newer machines from a support perspective as well. 
>> Machines that are past their end of life often cause more problems than 
>> they're worth. You'll find that with an old P1 system like that, you'll 
>> also run into problems where some of them will have display cards with 
>> too little memory to display proper resolutions, and there was a time in 
>> the late 90's where there were many, many different weird display chips 
>> around that will work with nothing anymore.
>>
>> Hope that helps.
>>
>> -Jonathan
>>
>>
> 
>