[K12OSN] speed question

Tue Apr 3 16:14:29 UTC 2007

If you're running apps locally on the thin client, then yes.  Otherwise,
I haven't seen one whit of difference.  The CPU's on my thin clients
range from Pentium-133 to Pentium II-300.  Not a single one of them
"feels slow."  I do MPlayer video and all that good stuff on the thin
client, at 640x480, with no framedrops.  Remember that, in pure LTSP
mode, your CPU is pretty much only running Linux, dhclient, bash, and
X11, and you can do that with a 486-33.

Here's what I *have* seen make a difference, though.  The first is the
use of 100BaseTX on the client.  Yes, you can do it with 10BaseT, but
not if you want TuxType or ChildsPlay to actually play smoothly.  :-) 
The second is the need for a good--and FOSS-friendly--video chipset. 
That means that any nVidious chipsets are *OUT*.  Why?  They're just too
closed, even with their specs, just like ATWhy is in recent years. 
Either of these issues can make your thin client feel sluggish.

Here's a case in point.  I got my hands on a recent nVidious card,
thought, "hey, plug it in and go!", and discovered that even 2-D
performance was D-A-W-G S-L-O-W.  The reason was that the universal, but
slow, VESA driver got autodetected, since nVidia is definitely *not*
FOSS-friendly.  Oh, I'm sure that I could've made a manual entry in
lts.conf to point to the 2D-only nv driver.  But, since I use multiple
types of old PC's with multiple video card types, I chose not to play
that game and simply went with a video board that actually is F/OSS
friendly (ATU Radeon 8500 and previous, Matrox Millenium G400's, and so on).

--TP
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Daniel Kuecker wrote:
> I was wondering if anyone could tell me if there is a big difference
> between an 800 mhz and 200 mhz cpu for thin clients? I have devonIT
> 6020's and they seem to be smoking fast. I just got some eBox-2300 and
> they are pretty sweet, but they seem awfully slow compared to the
> devonIT. Is it the CPU difference?
>
> Thanks.
> Daniel
>
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