[NTLUG:Discuss] to sum it up...things have come full circle.

[Mike Hart]

these networked boxes may be easier to manage, but
they are hell to use. 

I experience disk-free networked workstations at work,
and I vote for network terminals any day over diskfree
workstations. (For this discussion, a terminal is
defined as a box that gets screen information only
from the network, where a diskfree workstation loads
apps into memory and uses the local CPU for more than
writing screen.) 

When the network becomes the pipeline between
everyone's virtual memory and CPU's, the observed
speed of the user's desktop drops to zero as your
memory intensive operations get backlogged behind
Joe's MP3's in the next Cube. The Cable internet
spoofs by Southwestern Bell remind me of what I
expereience daily at work. 

Unfortunately, my experience as a user is only with
NT4 Terminal Server and office 2000, but the same
scenario would apply to any version of linux trying to
open a star office session with mainly diskless
workstations on the network, or any of the favored
Office apps in linux.  In my experience, delays of 2
and 3 minutes are noticed waiting on MS word menus to
appear because the apps are stored remotely, run on
the local CPU, but save off huge chunks to virtual
memory remotely as word 2000 has to load in some
ungodly huge module to recompile each menu every time
you open it (the grayed out menu items all appear on
the bottom of the menu in 2000....) resulting in a
very overloaded network. I notice the same type of
delays (not the time, but the huge amount of disk
access) when using Star office locally at home, and
would expect a diskless workstation to have the same
dismal performance. Any comments?

My guess is that strictly allowing remote X sessions
would result in better network speeds (and therefore
better observed terminal speed) than putting all disk
access thru a network. That is, move all the computing
to servers, and only update the screens as needed. If
you're writing a novel, the total amount of network
activity on a network terminal may exceed that of a
networked workstation, but for generating an email, or
loading an average webpage, only networking the
screenwrites keeps the network usage down by quite a
bit. This method does require beefier servers, but
frees you to use next-to-free boxes and would only
need repairs... no upgrading. Pentium 100's could
easily handle the load to be an X-terminal, and are
supported by most linux distro's still. For that
matter most 486's could handle the load, but generally
built in support for 486's on linux is an afterthought
anymore, and why redesign a wheel if you don't have
to?
 


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