BSD is rather good at running over a network. I don't think
you need the
terminal server. For something light, you might as well let
the local
processor do some of the work.
You could netboot the machines, then use NIS or LDAP to
share the user
database. Home folders would get mounted over NFS. As each
user logs in,
the machine would mount their home folder, and launch all
their apps using
their personal settings, no matter which machine they sat
down on. You can
customize the workstation and speed things up a lot. Use a
simple window
manager like mwm or fvwm. You can write a common .xinit
that will launch the
browser, the softphone, and whatever else they need. The
menu can be set to
only include things they should have access to. I find this
is very fast and
efficient, and makes it more like an embedded device than a
computer.
If you don't want to netboot, you could use a CompactFlash
to IDE adaptor, and
boot from a CF card. Even if you only put the root
partition on CF, you can
mount the /usr and /var partitions from the server using
nfs. This allows
you to have a common /usr for everyone (makes software
upgrades really easy),
and by having an individual /var on the server for each
machine, you would
have ready access to all the log files on the server.
I haven't tried a softphone on BSD yet. There are lots of
nice browsers. I'm
partial to Firefox, but there are others as well. X-lite is
available for
Linux - it would probably run fine with binary compatability
mode turned on,
since it is a self-contained binary. There is also
GnoPhone.
-Tim
On Tuesday 06 February 2007 02:07, Roland Giesler wrote:
> In a call centre environment, an Asterisk telephony
setup, which would
> be better to use with a FreeBSD client? I'm hoping to
use an eBox
> 3800 (http://www.compactpc.com.
tw) with a Via Eden-N processor and
> 256M RAM as operator machines. The application is
browser based and
> we pretty much control the whole environment.
>
> Questions:
> 1. Which softphone is best for this kind of setup?
> 2. Should I run a terminal server client (like LTSP /
does it have a
> BSD equivalent?)
> 3. Wouldn't a minimal OS, with a browser and a
softphone running on
> the client OS be better than a terminal server client?
>
> Some comments and input would be great.
>
> Thanks all
>
> --
> Roland Giesler
> Green Tree Systems cc
> Stellenbosch, South Africa
> +27 (0)72-450-2817
> http://www.thegreentre
e.za.net
> _______________________________________________
> Asterisk-BSD mailing list
> Asterisk-BSD lists.digium.com
> http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-bsd
--
Tim St. Pierre
IP telephony specialist
sip://5101communicatefreely.net
Toronto: 647 722 6930
Toll-Free 1 888 488 6940
timcommunicatefreely.net
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