LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Malcolm Herbert <mjch@boojum.bf.rmit.edu.au>
  To  : g@netcraft.com.au
  Date: Wed, 9 Jul 1997 17:16:56 +1000 (EST)

Re: APC coverage of Linux

> Have a look at http://apcmag.com/ under "Linux Coverage - Should APC
> add a Linux section to Workshop?"

[ snip! ]

> I think "Yes!".  If you think so too, put your comments in at APC's
> web site.  It will only happen if they see the interest.

... and my post, which I think you all may want to read:

Certainly there are a number of applications (apart from the general
gateway/mailserver/firewall/webserver etc. etc.) that can really only be
performed on a Unix platform.  One of my previous projects involved
feeding three monitors in our main foyer with signal from one machine,
displaying different general information on each, (such as library
opening hours, course times etc.)  The system had to be left in a
cupboard, and was therefore only network accessable.

The staff member who was going to be placing information on the displays
also needed to be able to use tools and software that she was familiar
with, rather than new (possibly Unix-based) tools to deal with it.

I ended up using the Xi Multi-head X server to run three Matrox
Millenium cards, ran Samba to make the Linux machine look like a
printer, used Ghostscript to convert her Win95 PostScript output to full
screen GIFs, and a bit of tinkering with shell scripts to get the whole
thing displaying and cycling through.  To administer it all she uses a
simple CGI interface run under PHP/FI and Apache.

The practical upshot of all this is that the receptionist needs to know
only how to use the CGI script and how to change printers.  Other than
that she can use any application she likes to create the displays
(generally PowerPoint).

So we have a 486 with 64M running Linux, on which every piece of
software (apart from the X server) is public domain and free.  Currently
that particular machine has been up for around 37 days straight (it was
only commisioned around two months ago)

Now that is a specialised application I will admit, however if you
didn't know that Linux was capable of doing those individual tasks, how
could you put it together??  This is why more space needs to be given to
Linux so that people can see that the PC market doesn't have to be
completely MS based, and that there is a definate place (niche though it
might be) for Linux and other x86 Unices out there.

I also doubt that any other system would have been able to come close in
terms of cost or ease of setup ...

--
   _   /|    Malcolm Herbert. Email: mjch@rmit.edu.au
  '\`o"o'    Computer Services Group, Bus. Faculty, RMIT 
   =(_^_)=   Web: http://boojum.bf.rmit.edu.au/~mjch
      U      `Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum ... cogito'

Linux, because raw power can be ... addictive