Linux, Internet Cafe, Haiti...

[Fraser Campbell]

Jamon Camisso wrote:

> I checked out all the donated hardware for the cafe today and found that 
> there are about 10 working computers, ranging from 486dx's to 300mhz 
> celerons. The machine with the most ram I could find had 64mb. With this 
> in mind, my immediate thought is to use a terminal based system and 
> simply purchase a decent server to run the whole operation.

Xterms do sound like the best plan.

> My first question then: how hard will it be to get the computers to boot 
> from the network and how much (if at all) will their aging components 
> affect both their access to the server and operations on the server itself?

It isn't a big deal usually.  Configure DHCP on server, configure 
clients to PXE boot.  Older systems not able to PXE boot themselves 
might still be usable by making (tiny) floppies with etherboot.

> My second question, which arises in part from the first: which distro(s) 
> would work well in this proposed environment? My immediate thought is 
> something like Fedora, SuSE, Ubuntu etc. My reasons for this are in part 
> due to the fact that I'll be remotely checking in and troubleshooting 
> and am familiar with those three distros, both as server and as desktop.

Use whichever you are most comfortable with, I seem to recall that 
Ubuntu has integrated LTSP support ... that might give you a bit of a 
head start.
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