On Wed, 18 Mar 2009, Nathan Andelin wrote:
From: Jeff Young
the client insists that they have only green screen access.
What about thin clients? No hard disk. No CD or DVD drive. Firefox
and Google Chrome offer word-wrap and spell-check bilt in. Go with
browser-based email client?
I think it is likely that the client doesn't want to allow any of the
possibilities that having a web browser enables. There are good reasons
for that. Locking down web access or a web browser may be more trouble
than it's worth. I think there can be legitimate reason why a business
wouldn't want to allow anything like that.
What about a solution that is for all intents and purposes all green
screen? I'm thinking you could have a linux machine that doesn't run X.
On one VT you run tn5250 in console mode, on another VT you run pine or
elm. Using only VTs, everything is basically green screen - i.e. it is an
old ASCII terminal.
Another possibility is to use twm or some other basic window manager and
run X. You could configure twm to only launch x5250 (for a much nicer
experience than tn5250 in console mode) and an xterm for pine. A basic
window manager like twm doesn't support icons on the desktop or many of
the things in a modern desktop. With an appropriate system configuration,
there wouldn't be any web browser to launch or any games or anything else
at all - x5250, xterm, and pine are all you get. Nothing for the users to
waste time on.
Of course, if the client wants to stick with 5250 only because of the
simplicity of the hardware then the above suggestions don't really help.
The second suggestion would work with a thin client configuration, though
most thin clients today also include a web browser built in so you'd have
to find a way to lock that down. Both suggestions use so little resources
you could literally run them on a 386 (I've run them on a 486 with no
slowdown at all). So reusing old machinery is a possibility.
James Rich
if you want to understand why that is, there are many good books on
the design of operating systems. please pass them along to redmond
when you're done reading them :)
- Paul Davis on ardour-dev
midrange.com
