[debian-edu-commits] [Debian Wiki] Update of "DebianEdu/BeforeGettingStarted" by WolfgangSchweer

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The "DebianEdu/BeforeGettingStarted" page has been changed by WolfgangSchweer:
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BeforeGettingStarted?action=diff&rev1=29&rev2=30

Comment:
improve formatting

  
  The thin client computers themselves need to be of a very minimal standard. The minimum spec quoted for Skolelinux is around Pentium 1 133MHz with 24MB RAM. They mainly need to have a PXE or network bootable card (which costs about Eur20). They need no hard drive at all.
  
- You can therefore recycle old office computers, such as those typically donated to schools. These can't normally run up-to-date software but can be used as thin clients. Pessimistically, if you needed to spend Eur40 on each thin client and Eur4000 on a thin client server, the total hardware cost of 50 thin clients would be Eur6000 -- that is, Eur120 per computer. So thin clients are very economic too. Summary
+ You can therefore recycle old office computers, such as those typically donated to schools. These can't normally run up-to-date software but can be used as thin clients. Pessimistically, if you needed to spend Eur40 on each thin client and Eur4000 on a thin client server, the total hardware cost of 50 thin clients would be Eur6000 -- that is, Eur120 per computer. So thin clients are very economic too.
+ 
+ Summary
  
  So, the idea of thin clients is that you can place a mouse, keyboard and and monitor at desks all over your network and let users login and work at a central computer. To facilitate this, you place a very small "thin client" computer on each user's desk. This acts as a sort of adaptor between the network and the mouse, keyboard and monitor.
  
@@ -115, +117 @@

  Floppys, USB disks, cameras, etc.
  
  If you think about thin clients in terms of the "very long cables" model, if you wanted to access a floppy/usb drive, you would need to insert the disk into the computer way back in the server. This is effectively the case. So, even if you do see a floppy drive in the thin client, you probably cannot use it in practice.
+ 
  Sound
  
  Just like the monitor, keyboard and mouse signal, it is possible to send the sound card signal (to your speakers) across the network. However, this is very costly in terms of network usage so it is not usually recommended for large scale deployment.
+ 
  Video
  
  In normal operation, most computer screens change quite infrequently (partially, every second or two) so sending the picture across the network is no problem. If you wish to play a full screen video, the entire screen must be refreshed many times per second. Like sound, this is too costly in network bandwidth and really just doesn't work, so video playback on thin clients is not practical.
+ 
  Network
  
  Thin clients use considerably more network capacity than ordinary desktops. It is estimated that each thin client should use an average of around 2-3MBit/sec. On an ordinary (100MBit/sec) network, you cannot indefinitely add more thin clients. Skolelinux deals with this by creating a separate private network for each thin client server and its thin clients. This prevents thin clients from jamming up the network.