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Two Linux PCs Power 12-Station Internet Café

in.sys-con.com — HP, Blueloop And Omni Demonstrate How Upto 10 Users Can Share A Single Linux Desktop Computer

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  • brucebeh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8This is pretty cool, but i'm curious about the specs of the two host servers.
  • tecmec, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Interesting article, defiantly worth a digg. I just wish there were pictures or more details included.
    • knightoptyx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Here is a link with more information.

      http://www.omni-ts.com/linux-desktop/
    • BuddhaChu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you download the Excel file for TCO math, it has these tidbits on the specs of the machine used:

      -quote-
      Tip: By "average," we mean a P4 3.0Ghz w/ 512 MB of RAM
      or similar Athlon machine.

      Tip: What are all these extra costs? With the Desktop Multiplier, you are connecting as many as 10 USB keyboards, mice and monitors to one machine. This means you'll need a powered USB hub, 5 dual-head video cards and a decent machine with some extra RAM (we recommend 250 MB of RAM per user).
      /-quote-

      My question is, if you're jamiming 5 gfx cards on a mobo, they gotta be old skewl PCI cards. How much longer are we going to have graphics cards with PCI connectors being manufactured? When will PCI Express take over the whole mobo? I suppose when (if) that ever happens, you could look for some PCIe x1 gfx cards and fill up the mobo with them (if there ever is a PCIe gfx card designed to ride on the PCIe "slow lane").
  • apache2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Original link seems to be down.

    http://www.duggmirror.com/linux_unix/Two_Linux_PCs_Power_12-Station_Internet_Caf/
  • i440, on 10/12/2007, -15/+1Finally, someone found an intelligent and appropriate use for Linux.
  • godulous, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2nice story but a very similar article was posted a few months back with a 6 headed linux machine, so this is basicly just double :P
    dugg because its still neat =)
  • marthaphoebe, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1how are the stations physically connected? are they using X also ?
    • preppeller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you read the article, it says that each terminal is simply a screen, keyboard and mouse connected directly directly to the linux box (using usb hubs and multiple dual head graphics cards).
  • nofxjunkee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5after reading about people hacking xfree 4.x to do this stuff at home it's cool to see it be adopted into the commercial market. people who say linux has no features on top of commercial OSs (or other commercial OSs) are just not in the know.
  • dipswitch, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4So we've come full round now.

    I remember reading about mainframes that could have up to 8 terminals attached. They had that in the 70's and perhaps earlier. They ran a time-sharing OS like UNIX.
    • rotten777, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1yeah? they had monitors too back then.
      are they anywhere near the same? not unless you had a 30" LCD capable of 2560 x 1600 resolution 30 years before they're mass produced. and somehow i doubt that.

      don't be an ass and act like they're doing the same thing like they were back then ;)
  • maddox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Good story, shame about all of the adverts on the page.
    • Serendipity, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I agree with you way too many ads on this page, but then again totally I understand it is business that needs the revenue from these ads.
    • jer2eydevil88, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Ad's? oh yeah.. sometimes I forget that adblock basically takes care of everything.
  • darshil, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0nice. dugg. only thing. im concerned about the power usage... :S
  • MacSuxWindozSux, on 10/12/2007, -11/+3Heck they should have just bought 12 macs. According to several Digg sources they are the best computers for pretty well all cases.

    ... or is it suddenly ok to say good things about linux here? woot?!?

    You don't like me... just digg me down... it will make me less important.
  • MacSuxWindozSux, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3Woot the power of Unix revisited.
    (had to say something great about linux)
  • jcapogna, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Those little $80 computers seem like they would be better.
    • tingle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yes but that would be harder to maintain 12 little computers when you can just deal with a couple main units.
      Also, there won't be need for configuring each computer and networking then etc.
    • MacSuxWindozSux, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Splitting hairs.
      Maintaining 12 'puters vs. one breakdown killing 6 kiosks.

      The benefit would be better if there were more kiosks, say 20:1 ratio, with obviously better main units.
      Something like you'd see at a university.
    • jcapogna, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1"Yes but that would be harder to maintain 12 little computers when you can just deal with a couple main units."

      From I've heard these multi-head linux boxes are prone to locking up and causing problems. BAM, half your internet cafe is locked up.
  • thydzik, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1now that is just fark'n cool
  • riflemann, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I hope they've taken care of security between the terminals. Unless each 'terminal' is run as a different userid, it's dead simple to spy on applications and other desktops.
    • rotten777, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1they're public terminals. they're dead easy to spy on in the first place. i doubt anyone is doing their banking on them (although it wouldn't surprised me)
  • phlll, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Considering most people were likely just websurfing/emailing, there's no reason the computers couldn't easily handle this. Also a dig to the fact that they're using 10 PCs less power, since only 2 (not 12) are needed.
  • psylence, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2News flash, multi-user operating system with 5 dual-head video cards supports 10 users simultaneously. In other news cars drive, planes fly and dogs bark.
  • zoom1928, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1No Digg due to unreadable content. Why would some moron consider it a good idea to hide 90% of their entire web page behind a pop-up ad? Why go to the trouble and expense to create content if you're only going to prevent users from seeing it?
    • drizek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2i was annoyed, but just click "hide this ad" on the bottom of it
  • drizek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1They did something like this at a KDE confrence a few months ago. They hooked up two stations to one pc.
  • bdmbdm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Holy *****, remind me not to visit that site anymore!

    As soon as I got in 2 ads were overlaping eachother.
  • shumacher, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Very cool. I've run multiuser on a linux box with smarter terminals, but to just use a USB keyboard, video card and USB mouse is very nifty indeed.
  • bedouin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wouldn't it be cheaper to get free 486s or Pentium 1 or 2s and run them as X terminals? They would have no problem accomplishing this task. Plus I'd imagine ethernet cable is cheaper than 20 foot long VGA and USB cables (you can make it yourself).
  • rehanyarkhan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0shouldn't this be possible under windows as well? Whats special about Linux? Its like running 10 Firefox sessions on one PC without anything else running.
  • fdelucio, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I wonder if there is any similar solution for Ubuntu?
  •  

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