freebsd stable - Jun 2010 - Setting up X Terminals: What about audio, Pulseaudio or NAS?

Hi,

I'm currently thinking about reconfiguring my wives and my laptop as X
Terminals. We're using them most of the time mostly, and my server is
a Athlon X2 with 4GB RAM. The only thing I'm currently wondering about
is what audio system to use. Both pulseaudio and NAS seem to be an
option. Pulseaudio seems to be more widely supported, while I heard
some bad things about it that indicate that the Network Audio System
has been implemented more cleanly and thus is easier to setup.

Has anybody used one or maybe both ports and is willing to share the experience?

Regards
Christian Walther

On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 2:47 PM, Christian Walther
<cptsalek@gmail.com>wrote:
> I'm currently thinking about reconfiguring my wives and my laptop as X
> Terminals. We're using them most of the time mostly, and my server is
> a Athlon X2 with 4GB RAM. The only thing I'm currently wondering about
> is what audio system to use. Both pulseaudio and NAS seem to be an
> option. Pulseaudio seems to be more widely supported, while I heard
> some bad things about it that indicate that the Network Audio System
> has been implemented more cleanly and thus is easier to setup.
>
> Has anybody used one or maybe both ports and is willing to share the
> experience?
>
How powerful are the laptops?  Are they good enough to run FreeBSD + X +
apps locally?  Do they have at least 1 GB of RAM?

If they have fast enough CPUs and enough RAM to run things locally, then
look into diskless booting via PXE instead of thin-client setups.  You get
all the benefits of thin-clients (central management as everything is on the
server, the benefits of having nothing installed locally so no moving parts,
etc)  ... along with the power of running apps locally, and minimising the
network load (only time network is used is to boot, and to load apps).  This
also allows for accelerated 3D and easy sound configuration.

If they aren't fast enough to support X locally, then you'll need to use
thin-client / X terminal setups.  NAS was created for just this purpose.  It
works in virtually the same way that X works across a network.  Definitely
look into NAS first.  Only if that fails, should you go down the dark,
twisted path of PulseAudio.  :)

We (School District 73 Kamloops/Thompson in BC, Canada) started out using
thin-client setups with P2 333 Mhz clients with 256 MB of RAM.  Worked well
as a base to start from, but we quickly ran into issues with online Flash
games, 3D accelerated programs like Blender and CAD apps, full-motion video,
educational games like TuxMath, TuxMath, TenThumbs Typing Tutor, etc.
Within 3 years, we had started a migration to diskless setup with apps
running locally.  We now run strictly diskless, even on teacher, office, and
admin desktops.  :)

-- 
Freddie Cash
fjwcash@gmail.com