[mythtv-users] Thin client frontend

Raymond Wagner raymond at wagnerrp.com
Fri Sep 24 17:18:26 UTC 2010


  On 9/24/2010 12:48, Brian Wood wrote:
> On Friday, September 24, 2010 10:21:41 am Raymond Wagner wrote:
>> Of course if it actually were a thin client, you wouldn't be running
>> MythTV on it.  You would install Xorg and a sound server, set up
>> forwarding, and run the frontend on some central system.
> With hardware getting cheaper and more powerful, even true "Thin Clients" are getting "smarter", often with browsers and
> other software running locally on the client itself. The CPU power and RAM of the thin clients is approaching the power of
> full-blown desktop machines of just a few years ago.

A thin client has nothing to do with physical dimensions or installed 
hardware, it's a system architecture paradigm.  It means the programs 
are running on a massive central server, and you only locally use the 
minimum of local resources to access those programs.  Beyond that, it's 
just whatever the cheapest hardware you can find to run your needed 
client terminal software.  If your terminal software is a web browser, 
and you just run a bunch of web applications, so be it.

Disks can be installed in thin clients, but you don't need the storage 
group, and it's usually cheaper and more reliable to use some flash-able 
ROM, or network boot.

Thin clients can be relatively powerful and have lots of memory, as it 
all comes down to economies of scale.  Mainstream hardware is going to 
be produced in bulk and cheaper, so it's cheaper to buy higher end 
equipment than to have custom embedded equipment fabbed.

If as you say, there is very little difference in hardware between 
modern thin clients and small form factor computers, the only remaining 
difference you could claim is which processor the software runs on.  
Once you start running things like the frontend on something, it is no 
longer 'thin'.


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