On Mon, 29 Jun 2026 21:59:38 -0400 Colin McGregor via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
Thin clients, machines where the client computer, the one a typical end user might use one that has some (very modest) smarts, while a server does all the heavy lifting has always struck me as one of those interesting, BUT, BUT, BUT type technologies. The buts include okay, the client machines can be very light, but the server has to be very loaded with RAM, hard drive, etc., so the cost savings may not be great. The time / effort to set up one of these systems can be significant. Still it is an ... interesting ... technology. Here is a little video about doing thin clients, where the server is an 8 GB RAM Raspberry Pi 5 Model B, with clients consisting of a Raspberry Pi 4 B, a Pi 3 B+, and a Pi Zero 2W.
Colin, I am trying to write up my experiences setting up a Network Computer (NC) back in the nineties. The device turned out to be a nice X-terminal, but it did not work as an NC. The vendors did not understand what an NC was, and I suppose I didn't either. This is ancient technology, but the lessons continue to be valid. Just what is network computing anyway? You could install GNU/Linux on an old 486, and run all your applications remotely from a powerful and up to date server. If your Raspberry Pi can run your applications, it should be able to load its OS from the server, leaving only one drive to administer. There is no free lunch. You need CPU cycles and RAM to do your work, as well as network bandwidth. Here at home, I sit on my front porch or out in my back yard with my laptop. I mount my directories from my primary desktop, and I run my email remotely. For a while, my laptop was fairly new, and my desktop was a very old clunker. If something was computer intensive, I mounted the directories from my desktop, and I used the laptop's superior RAM and CPU. -- Howard Gibson hgibson@eol.ca http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson