[ale] building a Linux lowend web browsing station

[Jonathan Glass]

On Wed, 2003-01-22 at 08:45, Watson F. McKeel wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I do volunteer work for a local nonprofit, and we have a BIG task that has been set before us. We are going to build 500-700 computers that will serve as web browsing stations. We want to use Linux to do it because it is so configurable. 
> The hardware involved:
> 	many different makes and models 
> 	Pentium 90 to 133MHz
> 	32 MB RAM
> 	500-800MB HD
> 	sometimes NICs, sometimes modems
> 	printer
> 
> We don't want these boxes to do anything other than surf the web and print. 
> My questions:
> What distributions should we look at to get started on this? Are there any out there that pride themselves on their ability to run on lowend systems? Also, I do not relish installing anything 500-700 times, even if it is Linux. Any tips on how to do mass installs (like a generic disk image of some kind, or maybe network installs)?
> 
> 
> Any thoughts at all are greatly appreciated,
> 
> Watson McKeel    -volunteer at Free Bytes

Are these machines going to sit on a network?  Would
http://www.ltsp.org/ be a viable solution?  Set up a semi-powerful box
as a "terminal server", and have the other machines download their
kernel and run from that "terminal server"?  Take that an add in
"autologin" available at
http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=autologin, and limit
X-Windows to launch strictly Mozilla, and you have the perfect,
no-footprint web-surfing box.  

Note: Someone has hijacked the "www.linux-easy.com" domain.

If that is not a viable solution, then you may want to look at
http://www.partimage.org/.  This is a network-aware method of imaging
linux computers/harddrives.  You get one machine the way you want it,
then image it.  

You could just copy the anaconda-ks.cfg file after installing Redhat,
and use it to automate the installs on the other boxes.  Check here for
Kick start details:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.3-Manual/custom-guide/ch-kickstart2.html

For simply browsing the web and printing, you should be able to install
a minimum of packages, and get it to work.  The smallest footprint I've
ever seen on RH is like 380MB, sans X-windows.

HTH
-- 
Jonathan Glass
Systems Support Specialist II
Institute for Bioengineering & Bioscience
Georgia Institute of Technology
404.385.0127

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