What's your opinion on:

1. Diskless workstations
2. Linux running off a game console like Playstation 1/2, Sega Dreamcast, X-Box
3. Linux distributions that run directly off a CD-ROM.
4. Linux distributions that run directly off a floppy diskette (3.5 inch (90 cm)).


Also, where is the best place these could be used? I heard that firewalling is great for the floppy ones but, what else? I haven't heard the usefulness of running Linux off game consoles yet except that it looks cool to be using Linux on a DC! :-)

All your questions seem to point toward the same direction, but I'll try to give you my 2 cents on every one of those:

1) A diskless workstation is osmething I would almost call "disgusting".. The fact is that the network that feeds the "terminal" its data (and processing too) is usually not up to the standard: even with a Gigabit ethernet, your system will lag behind in user responsiveness (even if compaired to primitve conventional computers)...

2)That's... umm... fun.. But limited.... I guess. Although I see the appeal of turning a crappy 200$ xbox into a fully fledged computers, it just means that you'll be spending all your time recompiling software to use it... Brkkk.. Moreover, as far as I know, there is no way of making xfree use the gpu of these consoles (xbox, ps2), thus very limitting graphic performances.. ;(

3)That's.. dumb... I mean, ffs, that would mean I cannot edit my shell configurations, for example (and many other factors.. how the heck would I be able to create new users?).. You cannot really run an OS and expect it to be usable in read only mode... Period.

4) The floppy distributions are cool and limited.. Cool, as basically it implements a linux kernel and a shell (plus usually a router software, etc) on a single 1.4 MB floppy... Uncool is that beyond this designation (router, firewall, whatever), it's not really a pleasant tast to set up the computer to do anything more... Just configuring a modem with such distros might be altogether impossible... But some of them are really useful... I'm thinking mostly of Freesco, which is a very good router, for example...

That being said, I'm not sure about your "used" question.. The "disck-less workstations" would be your average terminals connected to a pwoerful server in many work enviroments (you find those in schools, etc)... The console linux thing might be cool if you're into developping specifically on xbox hardware (though it's 99% equivalent to your standard average PC), for example... Running a OS from a read-only media is plain stupid, unless you try to salvage a disk... ;(

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