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On Tue, 13 Oct 2009, Matthew Macdonald-Wallace wrote:
There won't be a central server here, just 3-4 PCs on a shared Internet connection along with a networked printer. I've shown enough people my xfce4 setup on my laptop to be happy to roll that out for them. It's familiar enough for most people, and I can auto-reset (wipe/restore) the user account on a logout/reboot, so no-ones going to get any "surprises" when looking at browser history... We may offer user accounts to allow some people to store some data, but in that case, I'll just nomiate one of the PCs as a NIS master and NFS server.I didn't realise the scale of this. You could quite easily run a 5 workstation LTSP suite that provides a web browser using an old P4 1.6GHz with 2G RAM and all the thin clients really need to be able to do is PXE-Boot (I've known projects use P3's with 256M RAM for this under XFCE!). The central server would also then provide centralise authentication including the ability to destroy account data on logout and the ability to lock the workstation down.I'm advocating this because I've carried out a number of comparisons in the past between windows desktop clients and LTSP/X2GO Thin clients and the LTSP solution always seems to come out on top with regard to cost, efficiency and usability. YMMV.
As a self-confessed space and efficiecy nut here, (I run PBXs in 256MB of RAM, 256MB of Flash on a 500Mhz processor which would support 160 extensions), I know what's possible!
However - these people (a local charity) have money (from a grant) to buy new hardware - there are 1 or 2 old but usable boxes (2GHz celerons with 512MB of RAM) which I may use recycle, but they are already 4-5 years old. This is a project that hopefully will last for several years and eventually become a "community resource" (whatever that is) Personally I'd rather put in new hardware than recycle old stuff that may become unreliable in a years time. It may not, but who knows. I've recently had a Dell server fail after an uptime of 3 years 8 months, but am giving away tonight a big server which is 10+ years old and still working...
The system has to work hands-off (from my point of view), and the people supervising it will not be experts (and have no desire to become so - unpaid volenteers), so it has to be pretty fool proof.
The sad fact is that people are used to fast modern systems - Sure, I can put fvwm (lighter & faster than xfce) on a P3 with 256MB of RAM, but run up Firefox, or OpenOffice and it'll clunk like a clunky thing. Run one bit of flash, or some complex javascript (eg. to edit wordpress!) or view a big PDF file, and you're doomed. Modern software and peoples expectations of how it works on older machines just sucks. I get frustrated with Firefox on my 1.6GHz quad processor workstation - think how your average punter would feel on something a third the speed...
And also, you're thinking "complex" Servers, workstations ... Lets apply the KISS principle: Keep It Simple Stupid... One workstation, one person, networked printer not needing a "print server", no server and if they do want a server with authentication and saved documents, etc., then one nominated workstation running nfs and nis will be more than sufficient with a big label saying: "Use this one first"
Another almost local project is a customer of mine - a charity - who're looking at a new database system for their shops, etc. I'm trying to push them OS, but it would mean I'd have to write their database for them - however I may throw it to the floor if I don't have the time - there won't be much money in it though.. I'mm meeting them this week to talk about it.Have a look at some of the FLOSS software that's already out there such as Adempiere/Compiere, openbravo and ofbiz.apache.org - they may well do what you need them to already.Yes, they might. But their application is nothing more than a simple card-index style database with a bit of schedulling and booking for driver pick-ups and deliverys, php/mysql/apache will be fine for a bit of work to create it all. They already have a Linux server - which is bit old admittedly, but I'm trying to get them to use a hosted solution (for multi-site access) - they have 5 sites and although I'm building a VPN over all sites, putting the database remote would be a sensible thing for them in this case.I know that OpenBravo, Compiere and Adempiere can be used over a VPN remotely because I've set them up in the past to do just that. Personally I'm a big fan of using stuff that's out there before I have top spend time writing my own, although again I'm not really in a position to judge if it's appropriate here! :)
You're going for the complex approach again. They want the VPN to share files between offices. I want to externally host the database because they want to access it anywhere - home, office, mobile phone. No point tying up the outgoing bandwidth of once shop just to host the database when all offices can have equal and high-speed access if it's hosted off-site. (and this also is a charity, so again, they've no money to spend on anything better than ADSL)
Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html