[2993] in linux-net channel archive
Re: CPU at Workstations
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Louis Mandelstam)
Fri May 24 15:17:58 1996
Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 20:21:05 +0200 (SAT)
From: Louis Mandelstam <louis@sacc.org.za>
To: Info Engineering Services <infoeng@trinidad.net>
cc: linux-net <linux-net@vger.rutgers.edu>
In-Reply-To: <31A1B7EB.4D0@trinidad.net>
On Tue, 21 May 1996, Info Engineering Services wrote:
> I have a client with 25 386/486 PCs that are to be used as workstations
> in a Linux environment (after I convert from Novell).
>
> The question is this: Will the CPU at the workstations be of any use, or
> is all of the processing done at the server? My client is concerned that
> their investment in the PCs will be lost somewhat.
Finally someone else doing this.
After looking around a bit I found it makes more sense to use proper
hardware X stations - they can be cheaper than PCs, and are designed
especially for this purpose so they are faster etc.
Some makes I've looked at are:
HDS (www.hds.com)
NCD (www.ncd.com)
GraphOn (www.graphon.com)
Tektronix (www.tek.com)
Sun (www.sun.com)
HP (www.hp.com)
Phase X (www.phasex.com)
If you already have a couple of PCs which you definately want to use for
this purpose (notwithstanding the fact they aren't as well optimized for
the job) Linux with XFree86 will serve you just fine.
In any event, in answer to your question, it depends on you, especially
if your X terms are running the same architecture as the server (and can
thus run the same binaries).
In practise, you'll usually find things like the X window manager, and x
clock clients running locally on the X station, whilst applications will
run from the server.
Regards
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L.Mandelstam - System Administrator louis@sacc.org.za
S A Council of Churches, PO Box 4921, Johannesburg, 2000, South Africa
tel:+27-11-492-1380 x145 fax:+27-11-492-1448 mobile: +27-82-301-4307
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