thin client?

Question

hi:  is there a thin client that[a] is silent, small, and has sxga VGA output.[b] comes with a reasonable linux distribution in flash drive; (basics only, primarily firefox, thunderbird mozilla and plugins;openoffice; ssh;  emacs would be nice.)[c] boots up almost instantly;[d] keeps its distribution reasonably safe from destruction bythird-party users;   If something goes wrong, a "hit-the-button"mechanism should restore the system.[e] can be easily connected to an ordinary broadband vendor (dhcp),etc.[f] is cheap.I would like to get something like this for my elderly parents, whoare internet novices, and who want minimum fuzz.   (no, this is not athin client for a corporate network!!)  I know all the necessaryingredients exist.  Has any vendor put this all together?sincerely,/iaw

Linnix · Accepted Answer

Try the VIA EPIC NLX board.Mozilla/Openoffice would not be basic at all.  Mozilla require 256M Flash Drive and 256M Ram.  Openoffice requires 512M Flash Drive.With 512M, we might as well put in KDE/konquer.Our 512M Compact Flash Drive w/KDE boot up in about a minute.You can have 2 partitions.  Mount the system partition read-only.Mount /var on the second partition read-write.  Save and restore /varregularly and on boot.DHCP upstream/downstream are ready.Depends on the Flash memory needed.see

ivo welch · Answer

thanks for the suggestion. may I reciprocate?

are there not files on /etc/ (like mtab) that are written on? of course, this one, I know. I am more worried about others I do not know. does your distribution take care of such snafus?

the via epia NLX with 1Ghz Eden processor seems to cost around 0.
given the price of memory, and the fact that the Epia NLX can also play DVDs, I now think that storage should sit on a CD, and a DVD player should be included. (a flash card could be the user storage device.)

the problem is still that we need a vendor to put it all together and support it, so that if stuff goes wrong (software or hardware), I would have someone to ask.

Linnix · Answer

/etc/mtab is on ramdisk. Others are either on ramdisk or copied from flash during boot.

It is difficult to rewrite a CD while running off it. So, you are talking about two CD drives. One for booting and one (CD-RW) for saving data.

CD/DVD drives have moving parts. Occasionally, they need to be fixed. We had CD drive that crushed the CD (loading misalignment) and drive/CD that go bad after running for a while (heating up the CD). Some CD drives are louder than hard disks.

If you have an FTP server, you can just download the run-time images with your broadband connection. You can build a working clients with perhaps a

64M or 128M Compact FLash Drive. A 128M CFD ($33) is approxmately same as a CD-RW drive.

Michael Schnell · Answer

Using CD instead of flash drive, perhaps: Any PC with the "Lindows CD" (now probably called "Linspire"). -Michael

thin client?

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