Linux, Internet Cafe, Haiti...

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 08:41:28PM -0500, William Park wrote:
> I doubt such vintage machines can do PXE boot.  Since they won't have
> USB ports, even USB boot is out of question.  Your options are
>     - floppy boot.  That is, load the kernel from floppy, then do
>       NFS-root, then do thin-client.
>     - harddisk boot.  Install bare minimum Linux on local harddisk, and
>       boot from that.  Once booted, then do thin-client.

Until onboard network ports became common, network boot was pretty rare,
unless you bought a boot rom for the card.  A few boards will netboot
specific types of network cards though.

> Since you're setting up "Internet browsers", you really don't need
> central server at all.  Just install bare minimum Linux needed for
> Firefox.

Well upgrading 10 machines is slightly more work than upgrading one
central terminal server.  But the terminal server costs money to build,
and unless you have decent network speed, thin clients are not fun at
all.  10Mbit really doesn't cut it.

> Just use your favourite one.  But, minimum install.

Many distributions won't run on a 486 anymore.

> Last time I used 10base2 (co-ax), it was okey.  You say, "some with coax
> and other not".  Then, the cheapest way is to bring bunch of cheap
> network cards with you.  FactoryDirect flyer says Netgear 10/100 $9.98
> for 2.  I'm sure you can them cheaper.

Assuming the 486's have PCI slots.  Most don't.

Len Sorensen
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml