[ILUG] Home LAN

[John P . Looney]

On Thu, Sep 21, 2000 at 10:00:12PM +0100, Tiarnan O Corrain mentioned:
> I recently changed to Red Hat Linux 6.1 (kernel 2.2.12)
> from Windows and charged with possibility, I'd like
> to create a local area network at home. I know nothing
> about networking, unfortuntely.

 Great opportunity to learn then ;)

> I have a Pentium 500 Compaq with loads of hard drive space
> and memory, running Linux. I'd like this to be a gateway
> to a dialup connection to the net. There are four other
> machines, which were rendered useless by Microsoft bloat
> (low spec 486s). Is it possible to use the Pentium as
> a server, and the 486s as (almost) dumb terminals
> with a minimal installation of Linux? If so, can the
> Pentium serve X sessions to the 486s (with all applications
> and most processing done on the Pent)? I was intending
> to use ethernet for the internal network.

 I'd nearly go for one of the 486's as a server, and the pentium as a
workstation with X, if you can get it up to 16/24MB RAM.

> I'd appreciate any pointers, documents, hints or
> vague indications. I've read the Networking
> HOWTOs, and saw no light.

 Hmm. It's really a case of installing stuff on the machines, and then
reading the xdm/gdm manpages to find out how to get it to query the local
network for X (protocol sounds like ICMP only I can't remember) hosts...

Kate

-- 
The words of the unwary are apt to cause needless pain and bloody violence.
                                                        - Zen Master Greg