Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on April 16, 2005 12:40 AM
... and I have to agree with you about 486s. I've found PII-233s more than adequate, however, so long as they have fast video chipsets. This is crucial. A PII-233 with a PCI NVidia card will seem massively faster than a 1GHz PIII with a crappy old S3 card for most purposes.
There are still some things the 233s aren't so hot at, but they seem quite snappy enough at 1024x768. Like you, I'd recommend newer machines for any new deployment, but if you have serviceable older systems around, don't write them off immediately.
As for NX, you should really check it out. Over high latency, low bandwidth networks it's jaw dropping, though I doubt it's as good as ICA. It does a good job on a LAN too, especially with large images, etc - the things X loves to transmit uncompressed.
With a dual-processor Linux server, expect zero problems with programs that monopolize the CPU. Even on a single CPU it's not a big deal, but on dual processor boxes you won't even notice runaway programs (they happen much more than I'd like). Similarly, with a sensible ulimit memory gobblers aren't a problem. What does become a serious issue is disk activity - make very sure to get a disk subsystem well suited to multiple users with random access needs, and make it fast.
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Posted by: Anonymous Coward on April 16, 2005 12:40 AMThere are still some things the 233s aren't so hot at, but they seem quite snappy enough at 1024x768. Like you, I'd recommend newer machines for any new deployment, but if you have serviceable older systems around, don't write them off immediately.
As for NX, you should really check it out. Over high latency, low bandwidth networks it's jaw dropping, though I doubt it's as good as ICA. It does a good job on a LAN too, especially with large images, etc - the things X loves to transmit uncompressed.
With a dual-processor Linux server, expect zero problems with programs that monopolize the CPU. Even on a single CPU it's not a big deal, but on dual processor boxes you won't even notice runaway programs (they happen much more than I'd like). Similarly, with a sensible ulimit memory gobblers aren't a problem. What does become a serious issue is disk activity - make very sure to get a disk subsystem well suited to multiple users with random access needs, and make it fast.
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