UK charity builds Linux network on a shoestring
At the Open Source in the Voluntary Sector conference in London on Wednesday, charities described how they'd managed to make the most of their IT budgets by using Linux, including a London-based charity which saved more than £28,000 by using Linux Terminal Server to build its network. Homeless charity Alone in London spent less than £2,000 to set up a network of 30 PCs from scratch, compared to a similar-sized charity which spent £30,000 on building a network using proprietary solutions and new PCs, according to James Holland, who ran the project at Alone in London.
Holland said the network was based on Linux Terminal Server, a free open-source add-on package for Linux that connects low-powered thin client terminals to a Linux server. Applications appear to run on the clients but really execute on the server. Holland pointed out one advantage of this set-up is that software runs faster than it could if the clients were running as full PCs.
"The thing to remember is that thin-client PCs run over the network at the speed of the server -- so you can have old 486 or Pentium PCs running as fast as much more expensive computers," said Holland.
