[ale] Using OS X as a thin client

[John Wells]

I made the serious, grave mistake of paying $1300 for a miserably crappy eMac about 2 years ago. We've had problems with it since we bought it...in particular monitor whine which lasted for the first year or so (and which Apple refused to acknowledge as a problem).

It's my wife's computer, and I was suckered into buying it with the promise of it being a great media computer. hah! iPhoto is by far the slowest imaging program I have ever used. It was "ok" when we were taking 3.2 megapixels shots but still noticeably slow. Now we're taking 5 mp shots and it's absolutely unusable.

I should've known better. Apple is crap as a computer company...they make decent music devices, but that's it. And they've pulled the wool over a whole crowd of otherwise intelligent people and made them think OS X and Apple machinery is "it". I beg to differ. 

Ok...I feel a bit better. ANYWAY....we're stuck on OS X 10.3.9 because I refuse to overpay Apple another cent. I'm ready to switch my wife to Ubuntu...she's tried F-Spot and Picasa and loves them. However, I'm not quite ready to buy her another machine (yet).

SO...I have two questions:

1. Anyone used an Apple machine as a thin client to a Linux box? I know there's X servers for OS X, so it should be possible, but any experiences/words of wisdom would be very much appreciated. Complicating this possible setup is the fact that I run the eMac over an 802.11G connection encrypted with PPTP.

2. Is there any way to hack an eMac to just use the monitor and built in speakers, yet plug up to another machine? I have another machine I could sneak in under the desk...I just don't want to buy her a sexy monitor right now if I can help it. For all its uselessness, the eMac at least looks decent (likely where $800 of my investment went).

I appreciate any insight you can provide.