Howto run WindowsXP on a Pentium/486, using Ubuntu LTSP

Posted on January 1, 2008 by liferedux

This post for reviving your old hardware has been moved to a new location. Please access the new location by clicking here

Filed under: Remote Booting, Revive | Tagged: , , , , ,

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11 Responses

  1. Dick Clark, on January 5th, 2008 at 9:57 am Said:

    Why not boot off a local 1GB drive. Those a practically free these days. Net boot capable NICs are a lot harder to find. Boot into DSL or whatever and use XDCMP to log into the remote X session. Why all this fiddling around with the other stuff?

  2. liferedux, on January 6th, 2008 at 7:42 pm Said:

    Thanks!

    I was trying to keep all the software / OS related stuff at a single location (Server). In that way , I wouldn’t have to update the client OS / patch it / ensure its virus free, etc…

    Anyway, your comment is cool. Didn’t think about that approach, will surely use it in cases, where i cant find a Net-boot capable NIC :)

    But hey, its tougher to find a 486/Pentium with a motherboard capable of booting from a USB drive! I’d rather plug in a net-boot capable NIC.

  3. Mduduzi, on February 7th, 2008 at 10:26 pm Said:

    I was specifically attracted to the article:

    Howto run WindowsXP on a Pentium/486, using Ubuntu LTSP
    Posted on January 1, 2008 by liferedux

    …sadly, it stop short of explaining what is the difficult part to me: How to launch Virtualbox on the terminal.

    I have the WinXP virtual machine running on the server. However, I click on VirtualBox on the terminal–nothing happens!
    Can you please help me out?
    Mduduzi.

  4. liferedux, on February 11th, 2008 at 11:05 pm Said:

    Mduduzi,
    if you have installed virtualbox from the .deb file, you should be able to start it by typing virtualbox in the terminal or selecting Applications > System > innotek VirtualBox.

    do let me know if you are facing any specific errors… need more info , before i give up and point you to the virtualbox forums :)

  5. ripperzane, on March 20th, 2008 at 5:28 pm Said:

    Interesting in the method.
    I am currently setting up an LTSP scenario to bring me up to speed on yet another cool technology.
    All in all, I am using Xubuntu as my main method of deploying this. It is fast, light weight, and I like sticking to linux. Coool guide and keep it up.

    @ DickClark
    By going LTSP, you have no data running on the local box that will stay there. Also, you update the server, and you can update the clients, making doing OS updates and patching centralized. So basically, you keep up the server, and the clients will follow. It takes a little bit due to (at least in Ubuntu) you have to update the image the clients will run, but it beats having to up date (and eat bandwidth) all the clients just for one security patch.

  6. Paul Roach, on April 14th, 2008 at 12:14 pm Said:

    Nice article….looking at doing something similar for a couple of old machines I’ve got lying around, as currently building a Ubuntu server…

    Cheers :)

  7. liferedux, on April 20th, 2008 at 11:51 am Said:

    @ripperzane
    Thanks! All the best with your LTSP project! Do blog about the Xubuntu setup. If its faster than a normal Ubuntu (GNOME) LTSP, I will update this article :)

    @Paul
    Yes Paul, this is the best way to put old machines to good use. Revive them!

  8. Jean Brodeur, on April 21st, 2008 at 7:05 am Said:

    Well…the answer to my question is here! I think that my old P1 will have some duty soon! Nice article and a Green way to keep those oldies back to work!

  9. Charles Almond, on June 4th, 2008 at 6:11 pm Said:

    Thanks for the article – I have been working with the K12LTSP project recently in an attempt to do the same thing, and was wondering if you have gotten local (thin client) USB devices to show up in the virtual machine. This is the only thing I can’t seem to get working. I use VirtualBox a lot, but haven’t tried it for this setup.

    One other thing you may look into is with LTSP, you can set up an rdesktop session as the X window manager in lts.conf for each client. Since VirtualBox has a built in RDP server, you could bypass the whole step of logging into Linux and starting the VM manually. Just start the VirtualBox VM with the VBoxVRDP or VBoxHeadless (depending on version) command through rc.local on the server.

  10. heri, on June 7th, 2008 at 2:16 pm Said:

    Thank’s for the post.
    I’ve been looking for ubuntu ltsp guide for newbie, and your post have helped me a lot.
    All the best.

  11. liferedux, on June 9th, 2008 at 11:58 am Said:

    @Charles,
    Sorry, I haven’t tried using local USB devices, on VMs over LTSP.
    Thanks a ton! for the input on VBoxHeadless, will experiment soon, could use your help :)

    @heri,
    Thanks. Do try the setup and let me know, if there is any improvement which could be done. :)

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