14 Dec
2001
14 Dec
'01
9:49 p.m.
On Sat, 15 Dec 2001, Tony Duell wrote:
Firstly, I'll accept that X needs a graphics
display, but surely you can
run the applications on a linux box and the X-server on another machine
(including a dedicated X-terminal). So the linux box only needs a
graphics card if it's running the X-server
What about the print-only X-server? I've used it with a cardreader and
lineprinter. It's painful, but it works. I suspect it would be much less
painful on a CRT terminal.
Secondly, running linux does not imply running X.
Plenty of programs will
run on a text-only command-line type of system. You'd need a video card
for that, although not a graphics-capable one.
I believe Linux will now run with a serial terminal. NetBSD certainly
does.
Thirdly, is there any good reason why you can't
use a serial terminal
linked to an RS232 port any more? In which case the PC wouldn't need a
video card at all, unless it needs one to pass the POST (and you don't
know how to patch the bios to get round it).
This should work just fine. You just have to compile the kernel with the
necessary options.
Peace... Sridhar