Games was Re: I need a link to instructions, K12LTSP floppy creation.

[Voltage Spike]

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On Wednesday, September 25, 2002, at 10:56 AM, Mark Berkwitt wrote:

> What R U suggesting?  Although the workstations are using S3 Trio64v+ 
> vids
> the server has a Matrox G450LE w/ 16MB SDRAM. The 2 boxes are 
> connected by a
> cross-over cable so its just one client box. The lts.conf file has the
> xserver=auto. Is that a serious no no?
> Granted, its only 10BaseT but it's totally inadequate. If it were 
> closer to
> our desired performance I think we would try 100BaseT nics.

As I understand the X Window system (which I don't :-) ), the server's 
video card does not play into it at all.  When operating remotely (or 
even locally), "drawing" commands and data are sent across the network 
where it is up to the client to display them.  If the connection feels 
sluggish it could be either a poorly supported card (a category under 
which I don't the S3 Trio64 cards fall), an incorrectly configured X 
server on the terminal (i.e. using framebuffer or such instead of the 
accelerated S3 server), or a bandwidth issuse.  If it is indeed a 
problem with bandwidth (which I doubt with a dedicated 10 Mbps 
channel), then you might want to search for LBX ("Low-Bandwidth X") 
extensions which supposedly will greatly decrease any feelings of 
latency.

A previous post mentioned that chromium was slow or non-functional.  
While I don't know if OpenGL works in the same way as standard X 
commands, I do know that chromium requires hardware-accelerated 3D to 
work properly.  My guess is that this must be done at the client end 
rather than the server.  In other words, if you want to play 3D games 
on a LTSP client, then you probably have to invest in some 
well-supported (nVidia, ATI) 3D video cards.

Good luck.

- -- 
                                                            Voltage Spike
       ,,,
      (. .)
- --ooO-(_)-Ooo--

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