re-using my old PCs

Hello, I am very new to Linux, but I have a new AMD64 system running SuSE 9.1, and am very pleased. My question is regarding my older PCs. Can I install a minimal installation of SuSE on my old PCs, and allow them to connect to my main machine to run the programs located on it? This would be akin to using an old Windows machine to connect to a terminal server to run programs. I don't think my old PCs will run very well running a full KDE environment. What would the old PC need to do this, and would the main AMD64 system need special packages to allow for this? Thanks