[K12OSN] Just got approval

[Robert Arkiletian]

Hi ,
I teach C++ programming and I am VERY happy to announce I just got approval 
for a K12LTSP pilot project for my lab (30 clients). I am planning on using 
Anjuta for the C++ IDE and Nautilus as file browser. I would like to have 
gnome 2.4 or better as the desktop. I want to run version 4 of K12LTSP. 

My clients are 30

233 PII's 
196M ram
440LX Intel MB
Riva 128 video with 4 megs
3com 3c905-TX pci NIC
ensoniq 1370 sound
4 gig hard drives with Windows NT (ntfs)

Proposed server:

dual opteron or xeon
4 gigs ram
2 sata hard drives
(contemplating raid 0/1)

I have 3 questions:

1)
I know Nvidia has dropped binary driver support for the Riva 128. But xfree86 
has support for the Riva 128 with the nv3 driver. Fortunately, I only need 2D 
acceleration. However, nvidia has a note about the Riva 128

"nv  is an XFree86 driver for NVIDIA video cards. The driver supports 2D 
acceleration and provides support for the following framebuffer depths: 8, 
15, 16 (except Riva128) and 24. All visual types are supported for depth 8, 
TrueColor and DirectColor visuals are supported for the other depths with the 
exception of the Riva128 which only supports TrueColor in the higher depths."

So it looks like I can't use 16 bit color depth. Just wondering if anyone has 
had problems using 24 bit color with this card? Is 24 bit color a burden on 
the network? I don't think 15 bit is going to look very nice. Both the server 
and clients will only have 100Mb/s ethernet cards. Anyone think I will 
definetly need a gigabit NIC on server?

2)
The NIC's in the clients are 3com 3c905-TX pci cards. I am going to use 
rom-o-matic to etherboot the clients from the floppy drive. Wondering if 
anyone has had problems with this setup?

3)
What's the ETA on kernel 2.6 to K12LTSP? I ask because I am thinking of using 
SATA instead of SCSI. Also, contemplating if I need SATA RAID or if I should 
just buy 2 drives and put /home on one and / on the other. If I go RAID I 
will buy a 3ware 8000 series Escalade true raid card. Anyone have this setup?

Robert