"Before we can install Linux on our users' PCs, we must
select an appropriate Linux distribution. Back in part 3 , we
configured an application server, and I made no recommendation
about which distribution you should use. I provided general
guidelines for configuration of different initialization systems
and some of the distributions that use them.
You may be tempted to use the same Linux distribution for the PC
X terminals. Don't. At least, not until you read this
installment.
Certainly, some of you will use late-model machines with far
more RAM than required for the job. If you have 20 350-MHz PII
machines with 64 megabytes RAM and 6-gigabyte hard drives at your
disposal that another department is throwing away, then go ahead
and recycle them as X terminals. If this is your situation, you can
use any i386 Linux distribution. (You may skip most of what follows
and rejoin us for the final configuration of the machines.)
The rest of us will focus on the hardware more often chosen for
X terminal deployments: 80486 and Pentium processors up to 120 MHz,
8 to 16 megabytes of RAM, hard drives as small as 125 megabytes and
rarely any larger than 850 megabytes. This is the sort of equipment
that is now considered obsolete and worthless in many operations --
and usually becomes available during upgrades."
