[ILUG] More Linux in the classroom!

[Niall]

On Fri, 4 Feb 2000, John Gay wrote:

> the schools can pass it up. I recently saw an ad in the Buy-N-Sell for 21 486
> computers for £4,500! This would provide a complete classroom of X-Terminals
> that could be networked to one P III running the software. 

Except that 486s make cruddy X-terminals - they just don't have the
bitblt-ing balls for the job, and they're unlikely to have high end
graphics card to make up for it.

> As Linux's memory management would only open one instance of the package
> and share it between the terminals

The only thing that's shared is the code - each instance of the process of
course requires its own data, which can be pretty large for a big app.

> the performance of 21 terminals off of one PC would not be severe.

Unless they all tried to run Star Office, or the Gimp, or Netscape, or . .

I don't want to sound like a wet blanket, but I'd hate people to rush in
bull-headed and make fools of themselves. Old boxes make fine print
servers / internet gateways, and even file servers if you're not too
pushed about performance, but they won't cut the mustard when people are
comparing them to their 300 MHz home PC running Windoze, even counting the
price.


Regards,


Niall  O Broin