Reliability -- WAS: Schools Linux distro

From: Ian To: SuSe Subject: Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Schools Linux distro Date: 02 February 2002 11:08

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Hmm. But you wouldn't try XP on a couple of old dodgy boxes and XPect much. Linux _will_ run on an old machine. It will turn a redundant box into a very useful bit of backend kit very happily (router, print server, file server ect). Linux on the desktop, at least in the sense that me and you want, will run on something a little more up to date. I know exactly what you are saying, BUT I no longer have a Windows installation at home - which for me is very significant. KDE is _so_ much better than the Windows desktop.

We have a Windows 2000 network with a pretty high spec server - dual processors, 512 meg, SCSI RAID etc. As a bit of an experiment we gashed together an AMD 450 with 256 meg using LTSP set up and stuck it on the network using cygwin for a login. The perception was that it was quicker

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the main server! Ok lot's of issues about like with like but it just goes to show you can prove just about anything about anything if you want to.

Funny thing, that. Last summer, as an alternative to spending £1200 on a couple of new drives for our netserver (twin 350 PII & 512MB, NT4) I cobbled together a couple of K6-500 (512MB) under SuSE. Logons are via NT4 until next summer, but the files are now served from Linux. The network speed has gone up - W95 logons (including the behemoth scripts) is down from 2 minutes+ to 30 seconds at peak times. Not perception, but a measured improvement only partly accounted for by load sharing ;) Incidentally, the general reliability of the network is right up - and we havn't crashed NT4 once this year (unlike previous years!) Rgards, Paul Ellison

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