On 11/4/05, Nick Cummings <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, 4 Nov 2005, Mathias Stearn wrote: > > Installing a simple gentoo setup on those machines can be done in about > > a day. > > ...ah yes, the famed ease of Gentoo. Suffice it to say, I'm looking for a > solution that's a bit less fuss than that, if possible.
Its actually not as bad as some make it out to be. In fact, the whole thing can be scripted. The only two "sticky" points are partitioning the hard drive(which is necessary in all distros), and compiling the kernel. If you use a "stage3" install with the GRP you wont even have to compile anything. In that case the install can probably be done in 1-2hours depending on the speed the computer can extract tarballs. The advantage of gentoo in this situation is that you can easily build a very minimalist setup. > > Much less if you use pre-built packages. Basically all you need > > is the base system and X11. Then you could run a full kde or gnome > > session off of another box. To make it usable, remember to use ssh -YC > > instead of -XC. That will enable RENDER and all sorts of other goodies. > > > > -matt > > You're talking about using XDMCP? It's not something I've messed with > much before. I take it essentially everything runs remotely (as opposed > to running X locally with ssh X11 forwarding) and only display > instructions are sent to the desktop. I need to read up on what I have to > do to get XDMCP work, I guess. > > Thanks, > > Nick I've never used XDMCP. To get an idea of what i mean try this: Xnest :1 &> /dev/null & DISPLAY=:1 ssh -YC glue.umd.edu startkde At this point you should have kde running in a window. Try using it and you will find that it is very responsive. For some reason however, it looks a lot worse when doing this on the glue server than from my desktop to my laptop. Either way, it is still far more usable than alternatives such as vnc. When implementing this, you could set-up an Xsession that runs the ssh command to allow the user to logon through a display manager and skip the terminal. -matt
