X terminal distributions?

[Brian Kelsay]

Looks like with using Small Linux you need 4MB for an X Windows system.  It's going to be pretty basic. (More inline.)

Brian Kelsay

>>> Leo Mauler <> 12/02/04 09:53AM >>>
>I just wanted to mention that a lot of older CD-ROM
>drives don't like miniCDs and business card sized CDs
>(or at least don't seem to boot from them).  So even
>though DamnSmallLinux does fit on a miniCD, go ahead
>and burn it on a full-sized CD for those older laptops
>that still have CDs.

Correct.  And some old CD-ROM drives won't boot to CD.  YMMV.  You can still do a boot from floppy and hand off to CD.  The full-size CDs have a greater chance of working in the old drives and burn to CDR not RW at 4x or under.  Again, YMMV, but this is from my experience.

>From: 	Jonathan Hutchins <>
>Date: 	12/2/04 10:14AM
>The problem I've encountered with this idea is that Xwindows itself is pretty 
>resource intensive, and many of the older systems have video cards that don't 
>have Linux drivers.  At best, you may get 640x480x16 colors.  You can 
>off-load most of the work to the server (talk to the Lumensoft guys), but you 
>still have to get a basic Xwindows setup going.  4M of RAM is going to be a 
>distinct challenge.

On the Linux driver issue, most will work with a basic vesa driver, even the old ones.  There are a very small number that don't.
http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/kdrive.html  The KDrive Tiny X Server
Kdrive is used on DamnSmall Linux.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/links/LK6129039469.html  Short Tiny X article on embedded hardware.  "Typical X servers based on Tiny-X can fit in less than 1MB on x86 CPUs."
A 386 Twinhead laptop with 4MB RAM, 81MB hard drive:
http://www.superant.com/cgi-bin/smalllinux.pl?Small_Linux_Notes_By_Levi_Waldron
http://www.superant.com/cgi-bin/smalllinux.pl?SmallX  FAQ and Howto

>From: 	Gerald Combs
>Date: 	12/2/04 10:26AM
>Are there any VNC clients that can use the console directly?  If so, you
>could run your X11 server remotely.

If you have an LTSP setup, you are using remote X.  From that you can run some form of VNC, like Xvnc.  Without a full LTSP server setup you can do this manually.  Set your machine with X running to enable XDMCP.  
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/XDMCP-HOWTO/  Their example starts X on connection via shell or ssh
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/XDM-Xterm/
 http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6713  http://probing.csx.cam..ac.uk/about/xdmcp.html  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XDMCP  http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ug/using-remote-session.html
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue27/kaszeta.html  a decent example  
http://www.superant.com/cgi-bin/smalllinux.pl?Remote_X_Display
Connect to the server from the console of the old PC.  If you have your session automated, then X will just auto start your session when you login.  Other wise you will need to run "X --query <ip address or hostname>" to get a specific server or "X --broadcast"  to connect to any listening Xserver.   Then run whatever VNC program is on the PC hosting the Xserver.