Ellison to Push Linux NCs 68
sneakyfrog writes "Larry Ellison of Oracle made a (supposedly real this time) announcement claiming he would fund an NC effort with boxes running Linux.
"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Ellison to Push Linux NCs
Related Links Top of the: day, week, month.
Do you suffer painful hallucination? -- Don Juan, cited by Carlos Casteneda
Re:NCs have no real future (Score:1)
Remote managment was added to PC systems because of the threat that NCs posed. I suspect that any improved NC will have it's features copied into the PCs, and the NC itself will disappear.
Replacing 1/3 of an organisation's PCs would (in most cases) make things harder, as there would now be TWO different systems to maintain. Maybe if you were large and single site, or you had to support the back-end platform the NCs relyed on anyway....
I *Could* see a Linux distribution that was designed to be remote managable working though. Current systems (telnet, X-sessions) work fine for remote managment of single boxes, but remote mass-managment has a way to go yet. It would counter many of the proprietry hardware and network speed issues in my original post. There is still the issue of application availability, user re-training
And before anyone suggests Citrix for Windows Apps, it's just as hard to tie down as individual PCs, and much less reliable (one user's blue-screen is everyone's problem!) Good for dial-up access though.
This has been done way too often (Score:2)
You see, about 2 years later they started scrapping that whole idea, because the fact was you couldn't get any actual work done that was useful. You could run Windows or XWindows if you really wanted, but the network traffic got so unbearable that usually, you didn't bother. They became e-mail checking machines and that was about it.
Storage is cheap, administration can just as easily be done by some good scripting. No need to waste your bandwidth by an obscene amount.
The NC is dead, man. Rest in peace.
---
Linux needs a browser first (Score:1)
Netscape stinks as a browser, it's slow, buggy and looks particularly bad under Linux (primarily because of the font issues under Linux).
Presumably this thing is aimed at the low end. I know I can't stand to use Netscape under Linux. Will the average user notice how much worse browsing looks on this thing than a PC?
Hopefully KDE will get their browser to a useful state someday (although that won't solve the font problem).
Re:Bring back dumb terminals! (Score:1)
At a cost of maybe 30x the RAM
> FLT. Flashing Led Terminal.
Heh. Where can I get one? Mmmmmm...das blinkenlights...
---------------------
Re:NC's have their good sides, and their bad sides (Score:1)
Actually, all your web surfing and e-mail go through the company servers anyway; thus privacy still exists only to the extent the company chooses for it to exist. In other words, your privacy is often protected by policy, not technology.
With a well-configured server (e.g. Samba or the likes and a umask of 077 (or 037 with well-chosen groups)), though, employees can still have a great deal of privacy (and protection) from one other, and now you can have backup and recovery strategies that make sense (among all the other advantages of NCs or other thin clients). Don't want the company reading your files? Encrypt them.
--
Re:A question... (Score:1)
Actually there is an open source project running which will give you the ability to build an X Terminal with Linux have a look at this
http://www.ltsp.org/
Cheers
Spin Off (Score:1)
Ellison is planning on spinning off the NC offering as its own company.
Re:Linux Terminal Server Project (Score:1)
NCs *are* a good solution.... (Score:3)
I am sitting in the computer support office of a company which puts NT boxes on people's desks. These boxes are used for the usual suspects - Word, Excel, Powerpoint - but also for running Reflection to connect to a big old UNIX box which runs the core business application. I look after the UNIX box, which just runs and runs, which is how I have enough time to post on Slashdot.
The Windows support people around me have a hard time. They are constantly running around installing and upgrading software on people's PCs[1]. Either that or fixing the problems people bring on themselves by changing settings or switching off their machine while the drive is writing. 90% of the problems I have are with users changing their Reflection settings so they can't connect to the UNIX box, rather than with the UNIX box itself - I'd hardly have anything to do at all if they were given dumb terminals instead of Windows boxes to connect with.
It seems to me that in this kind of environment, NCs would make a lot of sense. No local data storage. No local configuration to be mucked about with by users. All the advantages in terms of reliability and manageability of dumb terminals, but with plenty of local processing power. So the data stays where it belongs - in the center - but the processing is with the user.
Just think what a difference it would make in here. Software upgrades? Just do it once. Users screw up their configuration? Well, they can't.
Not that it is ever likely to happen. Oh well. Life as usual.
[1] Yes, I know with NT you can go a long way towards centralised applications and protecting the workstation from the actions of the local user. In fact, I believe that this has been done on this network as completely as it is possible to do so. And users still screw up their PCs. And techies still have to go around to do upgrades - to make sure those precious DLLs are in C:/WINNT or whatever.
Regression seldom works (Score:1)
The whole network computer thing is old, and it is a dead end. It might look good in theory, but in reality, it just isn't practical.
foo,
-davek
Linux Terminal Server Project (Score:1)
It has not been done by what I'd call Linux experts (ahem), but sure it is interesting.
Now, if I only could find an IBM RIPL implementation that works on Token Rings cards... 8-)
Bye, Rob!
.. Oracle Pricetag on this? (Score:1)
If this is like anything else from Oracle..
.. Expect it to be expensive and complicated
I am anxiously waiting for someone to come up with a good *nix/windows terminal server solution. I can use X fine for working on our big Unix server here, but it would be great if I could ditch VM-Ware for a windows terminal..
Does anyone know of a Java/X based windows terminal client/server solution? (Besides Citrix..=) I have already paid for VMWare, I don't want to spend a fortune on Citrix... or Windows terminal server. (Citrix == WTS??)
Bring back dumb terminals! (Score:1)
Although the technological idea behind this is sound, there is a problem with network bandwidth if the number of users becomes high.
I myself always thought that hard-wired dumb terminals were the best idea. Little maintenance, less power consumption, and no distracting things to play with. I also felt that monochrome screens were easier to read and did not affect the eyes as much. Modern GUI applications cause a tremendous loss of time, and generally produce dreadful output, particularly if the user has too much control over font placing. I also find that having to use a mouse slows the user down quite considerably.
When at home, I do all my web browsing with Lynx - albiet sometimes under X as I can run two large screens simultaneously. I don't need any more. Unfortunatly a lot of web sites require something better.
Graphical prettyness hides content, wastes CPU power and network bandwidth, and attracts people to sites for the wrong reasons.
What I would really like to do is to find a working ASR-33, and wire that up to my Linux box. I did find an old teleprinter at a boot-sale last year, but the only interface was an accoustic coupler.
What took you so long, Mr Ellison? (Score:2)
--
Re:NCs *are* a good solution.... (Score:2)
disclaimer: I can't speak for SMS but I presume it provides a reasonably similar feature set to ZEN.
With ZEN (2.0), I can package up new applications, or service packs, or even O/S upgrades, and deploy them automatically, even whilst the workstation is unattended. With NT workstations it can perform the installs as administrator so that you can lock down normal users. It can automaically repair some forms of "damaged" apps (such as when win9x users delete DLLs. It also allows you to apply policies (both the MS ones, and others) to lock down the PCs, and applies them much more reliably than MS policy files (they are stored in NDS) Coupled with Ghost [ghostsoft.com] which lets you deploy a standard image quickly, or a small stock of swap-out PCs, you can have any sort of damage fixed very quickly.
If you run a Novell Network, go download a copy of ZENWorks [novell.com] (the starter pack is free, and has *most* of the features.) It's most useful if you deploy a new SOE (Standard Operating Environment - OS and Apps) where you can lock everything down, but can reduce headaches even in existing environments. Standard desktop managment doesn't even run any server side components! (not counting NDS)
I have serviced and worked on NC based networks too, and have found that, in general, they are as much, if not more, work than a well-designed, locked down PC based network.
NCs have no real future (Score:2)
-A- The "Reincarnated X-Terminal" Type
Such as the NCD explora (alright, they *can* run some local apps, but they mostly don't)
-B- The "Reincarnated diskless workstation" Type
Such as the Sun Javastation
I couldn't be *certain* which were being talked about here, so I have tried to address both. Please bear in mind that some of the below points don't apply in both cases however.
My thoughts are as follows
1. Price
- Non-standardness Raises the price
- The price gets kept down only by removing essential functionality.
- PC prices get reduced to match NC price gains.
- Type As require hefty servers which are expensive and depreciate quickly.
2. Administration
- NCs usually introduce a new, and different way to administer the Applications on them.
- By the release of the NCs, PC software had cought up with any new ideas in it. I suspect this will be repeated in the next round.
3. Speed
- Transferring all your programs and data across the wire always winds up slower than reading them off a local disk. Much better to pre-transfer them to local storage, and load from there.
- Type As are terrible for any multimedia application. And too many standard applications have multimediaish bits in them.
3. Maintainence
- PCs are easy to replace. Changing brands may be difficult if the environment is really tied down, but being locked into some propritery technology is worse. (this applies more to type Bs)
- Networked PCs can work in some sort of limited "stand-alone" mode if the network dies.
The concept of NCs has been useful, however. It has forced software vendors into creating products that make WinTel PCs less of a nightmare to administer. I use Novell's ZENWorks a lot, and it can be used to provide "NC-like" administrability (have I just made a new word?
Another Idea PCs might usefully steal now is to make a machine at a lower price by only having iMac type expandability. Most corporations and govt. depts don't care about expandability for most of their PCs.
So, I guess although I think NCs will die, their useful components will be merged into PCs.
Re:NCs *are* a good solution.... (Score:1)
(*) Even the "no local storage" idea can be done with software. I think you do want a hard disk to cache files from the network, but you don't want the user to be aware of it.
Swapping through ethernet/modem? (Score:2)
The NC is already here. (Score:3)
It is ANY system with a web browser. The web browser is the "new universal interface" in the same way telnet still is.
Build/modify your applications to be web enabled and you have a NC available application. And I don't just mean Java here (PHP, CGI, ASP etc).
This announcement is completely irrelevant and about as near to useless as you get these days from the big boys.
Isn't practical? (Score:1)
I been in companies where we have used both.. our R&D uses X windows runing on a single linux box..
That -one- box is backed up daily..
That -one- box is upgraded occasionally..
That -one- box -never- has problems.
I could setup a linux box and have it running in minutes without so much as my K-Desktop theme...
Not to mention, I could get near same performance out of a 486 with 64 megs of ram as I do with my PentiumIII-500 w/128.....
I simply append onto the end of my startup script
X -query 192.168.1.1
and thats it...
of course I use Xwindows on my own machine because I can.. but the point is, we have StarOffice installed for any interaction our group needs w/business apps.. we have a Postscript TCP/IP printer..... etc.
No problems..
I have VMWare installed on our Linux Server as well for when we need to use PC-Anywhere to (more often than not) work on our NT-Servers at the server farm, or use other misc. Windows admin tools.
Right now we operate with almost 0 IT support...
Oh, and the cost of all that software and setup? Well, we paid for our VM Ware and our NT Workstation
I have also seen a similar setup with the Citrix Winframe software, and frankly.. I think it is damn neat..
If we had a real reason to -need- to be running Windows on our desktops, I would almost demand some type of terminal solution..
I would hardly call it unpractical or archaic.. especially when one PC (Not mainframe) can serve that.. You forget that a normal PC is quiet powerfull... and obviously more than theory.. because a lot of companies use it.
$.02
A question... (Score:3)
I mean Xfree, nfs/code etc, nis/kerberos, telnet/ssh. Not every package mentioned is perfect, but I want to know about fundamental problems. Isn't - in this context - the "network computer" just a buzzword? Take a large ramdisk and boot over the network using something as nilo. [openprojects.net].
Or don't use the all or nothing approach and use a local harddisc + apps over network.
Larry and Bill sitting in a tree . . . (Score:1)
I have an idea -- maybe Larry was secretly on the side of the fat clients all along, and the whole thing was a ploy to buy time for software vendors. After all, Oracle is a software vendor. The plan was for him to loudly and vocally proclaim himself an advocate of NC (which he did), and then to marshal the resources of the NC backers to his banner (which he did) and then to cause said resources to flounder badly (guilty) thus giving the incumbents YEARS to address the shortcomings in their offerings revealed by the NC concept. ^_^
Terminal Servers (Score:1)
At the last show I went to.. Windows 98 or somthing (anything for a free day off work) they had some rather nifty workstations from IBM. Basically they were X Terminals with the WinFrame client in.. You could have your X app next to your Win app...
And I'm not at all surprised at he uptake of NT Terminal server. The licensing pushes the cost up more. You're basically paying for Terminal Server (which costs more than NT server anyway) + a WinNT workstation licence, even if you're using one of these terminals, or, in fact if you're using Win95.. Microsoft win-win situation..
NCs are even better for... (Score:2)
- classrooms
- hotel rooms
- public places like airports, freeway rest stops, etc
- public labs in libraries
- and so on...
basically, wherever you don't have a one-to-one relationship between users and computers, NCs are a no brainer. when there is that 1-1, then i guess it's a matter of religious conviction: were ya raised on a single-user OS or a multi-user OS?think of the internet (Score:1)
Re:NCs have no real future (Score:1)
>of the threat that NCs posed. I suspect that any
>improved NC will have it's features copied into
>the PCs, and the NC itself will disappear.
If they only copy features, we won't be much better off. Windows needs a serious redesign, and from what I've seen of W2K, it's not what I need.
>Replacing 1/3 of an organisation's PCs would (in >most cases) make things harder, as there would
>now be TWO different systems to maintain. Maybe
>if you were large and single site, or you had to
>support the back-end platform the NCs relyed on
>anyway....
Yeah, but if one of those systems could be maintained without all of the agony of looking after Windows, that's gotta be progress. But everything has to be 100% interoperable, i.e. my NC must always be able to read a spreadsheet composed on your PC.
>user re-training
You change stuff on your users all the time anyway. In the last 5 years they've gone from Win3.x to 95 to maybe 98. They've gone from Word6 to Word95 to maybe Word97, or maybe even migrated from WordPerfect.
I don't know your business or your users. But in most offices I've seen, the vast majority of the users have a box on their desk that has Email, Netscape, a word processor, and maybe a spreadsheet. As far as they are concerned, the box is a magical device, they have no idea how it works. If you give them a different "magic box" and tell them that they don't have a "C drive" any more, they should save everything to "H drive", they'll be just as happy.
Good discussion, BTW. Nice to chat with someone on
Re:The NC is already here. (Score:1)
Nowadays, browsers have actually become more common than telnet clients. But as long as you have a Java enabled browser, you can always use Shell in a Box [shellinabox.com] to telnet out. N.B. this is still a very early release, feel free to submit bug reports.
Re:The NC is already here. (Score:3)
Nope. It's a universal interface for simple applications. Anything that requires conditional processing is out unless you go the Java route, and given how slow/flaky the JVMs in most browsers are, that's probably not a good plan. JavaScript and DHTML help to some extent, but they don't go far enough. Try changing the entries in a form menu based on an earlier action in anything other than Java. PHP can do it, but only with a page reload which is unacceptable for performance reasons. I'd love to do a web font end for my current application (which is written in Tcl at the moment), but it's too complex to do without using Java (which we're not allowed to use anyway, because we don't have enough Java expertise on site to support the applicaiton).
We've had the NC before and chucked it (Score:2)
No? Well get your own PC and start doing your own thing, and make sure to network it, so that you can still collaborate with the rest of the organisation.
Some people really think that users abandoned the mainframe in large numbers, just because it had dumb text-based terminals. Wrong. As a matter of fact, they left the mainframe, at the time, for a system that was text-based too (msdos). What really matters, is that the users rather help themselves, than be at the mercy of the autocratic, self-serving lords of the central system.
Since the nc brings back the situation that users desperately wanted to leave, it will continue to fail miserably.
Any company that installs NCs, will see PCs popping up all over. And users will have 2 monitors on their desktop, one for the NC and one for the PC; and in the end all the real data will reside in the PC, and the NC will just be decoration. A bit later, some smart company will come up with PC-based terminal emulation for the NC-server and the NC will disappear completely. Bye bye.
Since we've been through all that, I can only see totally brainless managers trying this again...
Re:NC's have their good sides, and their bad sides (Score:1)
Please do think "backups", but from a different perspective. Just think about what can go wrong if you have to backup several tens or hundreds of PCs every night! There simply are too many potential problems, and as an admin, if you rely on such a system, you simply cannot guarantee anything about your backups.
For years now, central data storage has been a standard in any shop that takes its IT support seriously, independent of the NC drive
--
Re:We've had the NC before and chucked it (Score:1)
Most of the headache in looking after a modern LAN come from stupid s/w that the users install, or viruses that users bring in, or misconfigurations that the users do to their own machines.
Ever supported a few hundred users? I've supported (relatively) standardized environments, and I've supported ridiculously unstandardized environments. Guess which one is easier to look after?
I did support for a university for a while. Each prof had their own research budget, so they bought whatever the hell they wanted, no standards at all. One prof had 3 machines on his desk... A PC, a Mac, and an SGI. We supported MSDOS, PCDOS, Windows 3.x, and OS/2 2.x PCs. We had NetWare, OS/2 and WinNT servers. Unix? Sure, would you like Sun, SGI, or IBM? Documents might be composed in MSWord 2 or 6, or perhaps WordPerfect 5.1 (DOS) or 5.2 (Windows), or maybe good old fashioned TeX.
Pretty good variety, eh? This was a faculty with 20 profs and 5 or 6 labs! There were 2 sysadmins and a gopher (me) looking after this unholy mess, it was a fscking nightmare. Fortunately the sysadmins were really cool and sharp guys... They had to be.
As a result of this experience, I've become a big fan of standards. In my shop, if you want to bring in unsupported s/w... Fine, go ahead, but you're on your own. If it breaks, you get to keep both pieces.
Re:We've had the NC before and chucked it (Score:1)
The other side of the equation is that users are free to produce the creative solutions that in the end pay for all the hassle. The remainding is called "profit".
The idea should be to introduce just enough standardisation to be able to support this heterogenous environment that stimulates creative solutions, without standardising away all opportunities that this creativity brings.
Sysadminning environments can never be a goal in itself.
Kick out the lords of the system ... (Score:1)
Re:NCs are even better for... (Score:2)
This was perfect, no maintenance whatsoever, they
always work, and the students were always amazed when I told them after a few hours that they had been editing and compiling programs with 10 people on a single pentium computer.
Apart from that: I've always worked in UNIX environments. Yes, we have NT computers now, but 95% of the time they're running an X-window server in full screen mode, giving you the idea (and convenience) that you're working on the UNIX servers via an X-terminal. I find that NC's (X-terminals) are perfect also for cubicle land.
My previous job there were 500 developers working on a few UNIX servers, all through X-terminals. There was 1, just 1 system administrator for the whole lot. I guess that a PC network for that many people and a couple of servers needs many many more system administrators.
Re:A question... (Score:2)
In my wired home, I practice the NC-esque "Monster-in-the-Closet" approach, where nearly all computer resources (and thus expenses) are concentrated in one master server, while the rest of the network are little more that SSH and/or X clients. Even an old and very feeble notebook of mine runs DOS and Kermit's Telnet client.
In such an environment, NFS is unnecessary and in fact becomes a maintenance and security burden. My example lab is too small to gain much from NIS, but a larger network would implement either NIS or some means of sharing relevant configuration data. Kerberos, done right (dedicated server, etc), can be useful for environments large enough to justify its requirements, but keep in mind that it requires client side support, which means custom versions of commercial software or custom compiles of Open Source packages. Much of Kerberos' functionality is available through SSH, anyway.
In a larger environment, I would implement multiple server-class systems for performance reasons, using either failover or individual servers dedicated to certain functions, with mirroring between them.
In short, the main benefits of NC architecture are available to the standard Unix and Linux system. NC's have been deprived of success in the market largely for 2 reasons: first, their market (DOS/Windows/OS2) can't grasp how a centralized network is *more* reliable that their current situation, second was the way NC's were prematurely associated with Java and Web browsers, neither of which were ready to serve up the goods at the time that the NC idea was first being promoted.
---------------------
Re:Bring back dumb terminals! (Score:1)
I could open up 4 xterms and display more informaiton that you can with just a dumb text terminal.
Perhaps you would prefer to read off flashing LEDs?
FLT. Flashing Led Terminal.
The Linbox architecture (Score:1)
Re:The NC is already here. (Score:1)
You want get crazy with stateful information and talking to a database or whatnot? Then put your javascript in a frame, and use another frame for submitting forms. Use your javascript to build and submit forms to a server and have your javascript parse the results. You can tune this to get a robust app that uses the server like CGI, but is as responsive as pure client-side javascript. Try it. It's fun. Really.
Hmm, don't know where I was headed with that... oh yeah. It's a universal interface for some pretty damn complex applications, you just have to put some leverage into it.
Re:Bring back dumb terminals! (Score:1)
This is perhaps why advertising never works with me.
Meanwhile... (Score:1)
Re:NCs have no real future (Score:1)
I honestly don't know how people manage PCs without ZEN or SMS or some similar tools. But why is it that we need add-on tools to provide basic management to client PCs?
Win95/98/NT is a fscking nightmare by design, because of the relentlessly "single user desktop" mentality of the OS designers, and also the application designers. From a maintenance perspective, the only thing worse then the Windows OS are the typical applications, in all their registry diddling, DLL overwriting, splendour.
If I want to deploy an app over ZENworks or SMS, I have to carefully test the install on several of my "typical" machines to make sure that I don't bugger a crucial DLL or registry key. Have you ever looked at the amount of registry changes made by an install of MS Office? Mind boggling. It's amazing that any of this fragile garbage works at all, ever.
Have you ever done something inadvertant during an unattended install to a few dozen workstations? I have, it's easy to do, and not fun at all.
Presumably, NCs will be designed to be manageable, instead of tacking increasingly convoluted hacks onto an already incoherent mess of kludges. Policies and profiles and ZEN and SMS are far too complicated for the functionality they deliver. The fact that we are glad to get these tools is an indication of how completely unmanageable Windows has become.
Windows 3.11 sucked in almost every detail, but at least I could have a standard "image" for the typical user. If someone was having strange s/w problems, I could boot from my magic boot diskette(TM), which did a FORMAT C: and logged on to the network and did an XCOPY of the generic install. Edit one
NCs won't be for every user, but even if you replaced a third of your PCs, think of how much easier life would be.
NC's have their good sides, and their bad sides. (Score:2)
Why does this happen? Well, as far as I can tell, there are several reason. One - the most obvious - being that people want the same system that they've got at home. They want to be able to install programs. They want to be able to set the system up to their preferences. The problem with this is of course managing computers with individual setups.
Also, there is a privacy issue. You cannot possibly belive that the workers use all the time *working*. They surf the web, they write personal letters, and so on. Furthermore -- they don't want this to be stored on a central server. They want it to be stored on "their" computer.
Another thingie. With one central server, the companys work is much more vulnerable - if an evilminded cracker breaks system integrity. Don't think "backups!!". If a cracker really want to be bad, he trojans the backupsoftware, and let several weeks pass, before he erases everything. The result? Several weeks worth of work lost. If workers store their work at individual machines, everything won't be lost at the same time. (But, it is a much greater chance of machines getting cracked from time to time).
Finally - I think the NC have a future at the workplace. it's much more easy to configure / maintain for the administrator. But - only in workplaces where the workers know unix. I don't think the NT users are 'ready' for this. They want everything to be the same way as 'at home'.
--
Re:It's been here for a long time... (Score:1)
The original Oracle NC was a *486 running *BSD with a fluffy X-based GUI on top. What's going to make the 'new' Oracle NC any different? A *686 and *Linux?
IBM came the closest to the NC concept, with a box that actually ran a Java-based OS and had some Lotus Java productivity applications. I think the goal was to provide a replacement to their (apparently still profitable) mainframe terminal business.
As a point of trivia, the old Oracle Network Computer division has been spun off as "Liberate" (big building on US101), and no longer makes NCs, but instead set top boxes and webtv things. The article was unclear if Liberate whould make the new Oracle NCs.
NC is the same idea over again. (Score:2)
Re:Kick out the lords of the system ... (Score:1)
As for "tyranny of the admins", at this company the NT machines are also under remote administration, and the users bitch constantly about it, since it does all sorts of strange things to their computers. Oh, and they STILL can't just log in to someone else's machine.
OTOH, with everyone running around saying how cheap NCs are going to be, I say: get a clue. The only difference between a PC and an NC is the possible lack of hard disk, and hard disks are only about $100-$150. Also, if you're running Linux, you'll probably need the local disk for swap. All the expensive parts of the computer (CPU, memory) are still there.
Not Suprising (Score:1)
Its what most IT managers do now with NT, soon it'll be Linux, after that who knows what.
Point being is that Oracle isn't stupid, they've already had a lot of the NC work done by NCI, now they just have to port the stuff over. They already have Oracle 8 ported to Linux, chances are they have their 'embedded' Oracle 8 ported over as well. Spending a few hundred man hours to port all their crap onto Linux based NC's is a no brainer. Its free money if it takes off.
Re:Bring back dumb terminals! (Score:1)
Having iconic representations and graphics for drawing and tiling windows and seperating information is useful. As far as I see it, GUIs have those added advantages in addition to text type advantages like keyboard shortcuts instead of icons etc.
Re:What took you so long, Mr Ellison? (Score:1)
Is this supposed to work over POTS? (Score:1)
It's been here for a long time... (Score:1)
I've had the (unfortunate) opportunity to play around with a version of the original NC (remember the first time Larry tried this ?). I had always surmised that these were no more than a glorified X-terminal. My suspicions were confirmed when, upon power up, the old familiar X root desktop appeared for a few seconds.
Apparently, the manufacturers of these NC's simply bootstrapped some browser on top of the X client and continued producing their X-terminals with this new facade. I remember the late 80's glory day(s) of the X-terminals and am somewhat perplexed at this re-emergence of a solution that doesn't expand upon the X-terminal, but rather limits it to java-based applications. Real network computers with the real ability to run X-based apps have been around for nearly 20 years now, and they work.
Re:Regression seldom works (Score:1)
A LAN's *hardware environment* is a combination of stand-alone computers and main servers. The software environment of traditional PC's (DOS, Windows, OS/2 and their applications) is very much dedicated to the 'single-user, local configuration in real time' architecture, making any attempt to apply effective networking strategies to them a failure from the start.
> Most have a main file server where everyone's homedir is, but everyone's desktop machine has the ability to live apart from the network.
And do what? Access their files, access shared templates, read e-mail, print to a network printer? Server downtime is a catastrophe in any environment, but it is much easier to implement server redundancy than to maintain reduncancy throughout the desktops of an enterprise.
---------------------
Year of the NC (Score:3)
1994 - "Oracle chief Larry Ellison proclaims 1994 to be the year of the Network Computer" - PC Week
1995 - "Oracle chief Larry Ellison proclaims 1995 to be the year of the Network Computer" - PC Magazine
1996 - "Oracle chief Larry Ellison proclaims 1996 to be the year of the Network Computer" - Network Computing
1997 - "Oracle chief Larry Ellison proclaims 1997 to be the year of the Network Computer" - Thin Client Today
1998 - "Oracle chief Larry Ellison proclaims 1998 to be the year of the Network Computer" - Farmers Journal Quarterly
1999 - "Oracle chief Larry Ellison proclaims 1999 to be the year of the Network Computer" - Linux Journal
I hope Slashdot doesn't become another magazine to fall into this moronic trap of falling for every Oracle press release. Overall, prophet Ellison has proved himself a little short on vision.
Swapping not needed (Score:1)
The solution is to not run out of memory. Since NC's are really glorified terminals and the real apps run on the server you know how big your app is before you start it running - the app on the NC app is just a big fancy XTerm or whatever. On the other hand, if you also support Java capability you just toss any code that doesn't fit in cache any more and reload it as necessary - for most users this won't happen (put in enough memory so it doesn't happen) and network traffic won't increased very much at all - perhaps it will still be less than the db accesses that happen constantly when the apps run on PC's.
Re:NC's have their good sides, and their bad sides (Score:2)
Maybe, but I doubt it. I don't know many people who want to replace their NT box at work with 98 because that's what they have at home.
They want to be able to install programs.This is absolutely the Number 1 thing you don't want users to be able to do.
They want to be able to set the system up to their preferences.I don't see any reason NC's prevent this. I certainly am able to configure my own themes and desktop layout under X.
Also, there is a privacy issue. You cannot possibly belive that the workers use all the time *working*.Having your files on your own box doesn't help. Unless you have permissions on the file system. But the server allows you to set file permissions too, so I don't see what the difference would be.
If workers store their work at individual machines, everything won't be lost at the same time.Storing your work on your own PC may be fine for a very small company ( less then 15 employees). But in that case, NC's probably wouldn't be a viable solution. Show me any large company that would keep employee's work on their local hard drives? The idea is preposterous.
-Brent--
missing the GUI (Score:1)
After reading a few posts here I think that everyone is missing the entire point of a GUI.
Everyone statues that using a GUI is slower thatn using the console. While this is true the purpose of a GUI is to make learning to use programs easier. Take any Microsoft product. They all have File, Edit, and Help menus. You can go to just about any product that they have done and they all have then and they are all in the same place. This makes going from Excel to Word, to Project adn other programs a bit easier for yes 'newbies'. This uniform interface is something that does not really exist in command line interfaces. For each command line program you have to learn a new set of commands. While this is fine for many of the Linux and UNix users out there as they are accusomed to this way of life. Many people who are new to computers, are really not intereseted in learning that much about computers.
If you ever watched/read Dilbert, think of his boss. Do you really think that Dilberts boss cared one way or another about grep -i or rgrep -ir? NO! He'd want a simple GUI that he has to learn very little to use.
Now to get back on topic. NC's NC are in a way similar to the old Unix dumb terminals. However in the case of an NC the true idea is to make them smart terminals. They should have a cpu a little memory, and no hard drive. Basically a diskless machine. If the network application is done in perl, or cgi then chances are the network computer will nt be doign to much. However if the applicaiton is done in Java nd the whole system is set up correctly it should use its own cpu, which is what is supposed to make it smart. THe difference form setting up a network copmputer and a diskless machine is supposed to be cost and space. A NC should be small, as it has very few parts, and disposable.
I have yet to try these and am actually wondering if there is anyone out there that is uisng them and what results they have?
just my 2 cents...IMHO...
moderate me .. meta moderate me.. ohh.. isn't that a song by Rush?