This past year I have traveled to a lot of schools who have had their
budgets cut or .. who didnt have one to begin with, who needed to do
something with their systems.

I dont want to seem negative here but, when you start talking about 32mb
of ram, you (the school) need to stick with what is already working and
just add more ram. I have seen various Linux with GUI's run in 32mb but
- what for? If 98 is filling the need and its just slow, add some ram.
Updating to a modern OS of any sort means having some sort of base
requirements, and 32mb of ram .. well... thats crazy low.

I know you yourself have no control over this so please dont think Im
aiming this at you. I have seen schools still running Win95 and they
want to move to Vista or some linux variant. Can it be done? Probably.
Im not the one to do it as the time involved to stablize the OS and make
it work on a system like that ends up taking a lot of time.

You might try Puppy Linux. There are several variations which would allow you
to customize your OS to a certain extent. It's small and fast.

About more ram. I may be able to get the ram up to 64 mega by finding
old ram from obsolete computers. The problem, as you probably know is
that those computers use sdram which is almost extinct and costs a
fortune if one can find them. I have 25 computers in the room.
Have you any info about connecting to a windows 2003 TS? I'd especially
like to hear about making these computers a thin client using their own
hard drives OR trying Citrix ica - which as I said I've only just read
about.

As a school you'll have to weigh certain costs:
The cost of staying where you are VS where you want to go.
The cost of updating ram vs not.
The cost of ram to get a bit more life out of the computer vs getting
new computers.

Ram for the older machines is horrifically expensive. But, think about
this: I have looked at several times this past year setting up thin
clients for various schools/club/etc and it pretty much comes back to
this: To set up a "lab" of any type you need one really good computer.
It needs to be a decent work horse of a machine. It should have a good
amount of ram.. like 2GB or more. The cost of a single new machine vs
updating all the old ones... there variables there I wont get into here
that need to be addressed.

I read a lot of papers about people doing it on less (ram) but no one
showed me it worked very well. And in the end, if the end machines, the
Clients, are so anemic of ram, it might not help you much to do so anyway.

25 clients can run from a single machine but you're going to need a
pretty powerful Head computer.

I think if I explain the setup I have now your advice will help me more.

I have one computer room with 25 computers running windows 98 as a
method of connecting to a windows 2003 terminal server (whichis also the
main server (DHCP and general connecting to a domain). There is another
windows 2000 server which serves as a file server. We don't have or need
exchange. The windows 98 is ONLY used as the "desktop" to connect to the
terminal server via remote connection. The 2003 server has 4 giga memory
and when connected to works well at providing Office and internet for
the client computers.

There are two problems that we have and they both relate to the clients.
The one is the start up time of the windows 98 and the other is the
login time to the terminal server. Once there everything works ok.

I was thinking to change the client computers to linux as "thin clients"
and in that way connecting to the terminal sever. I hope my explanation
helps.

www.itinfusion.ca/.../

Check that out.

Ok.. makes much more sense now.

Also, read this one:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=419901

Yes, you can do ubuntu terminal.. though I would use Xubuntu but on the
ram provided, its still iffy.

Here is a thread on Xubuntu and ram:
ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-101129.html

DSL will probably be a better way to go.

You might check out this blog. Its about making ubuntu lean - or various
versions of it leaner.

You might want to check this site out.
http://www.k12ltsp.org/

Citrix ica if I'm not mistaken will cost you.

If you have at least one decent computer with enough ram and hdd space
LTSP will be your best bet.

On a Pentium 2 Damn Small Linux would run OK. But 32 MB RAM is still a little
too weak. At 64 MB RAM you can surf the WEB without trouble. I had some issues
accessing my Jetflash stick under Damn Small linux, because I did not know how.
Now I managed to find out how and it is OK. I am running Damn Small Linux at the
Office now on a Pentium II. I ran it on a Pentium II but that PC is defective
now.

As i recall, there are two machines available running Win Server 2000 and 2003,
one of which, I believe, has 4G ram. Shouldn't those be sufficient to support
the 25 clients?

I don't know if this will help but I have some old PCs out in the shed that
probably has some SDRam in them I would be glad to send them to you.

I think it wouldn't be worth while sending
sdram. I live in Israel and shipping probably costs a lot. I'm sure I'll
be able to find old sdrams here if 64 mega will be enough. When I wrote
about getting sdram for the 25 computers I was referring to the
(obviously incorrect) thought that I needed at least 256 mega to run
K/Ubuntu. Getting an extra 32 mega shouldn't be a problem here.

Whow isn't the World Wide Web great I had no idea where you live.
The shipping probably wouldn't be to bad but since I am a private citizen I
would probably find the customs procedure interesting and pricey. Even so to
help a school I would still do it.

I haven't sent things to the UK but my experience in receiving small parcels
(mostly computer/PDA accessories) from Hong Kong is that if the customs
declaration states a low, but believeable, value it doesn't attract any duty
or taxes.