good FPU needed on client?

[Hans-Peter Jansen]

On Tuesday, 20. November 2001 17:47, Erik Sjölund wrote:
> I want to build a thin client, i.e. an
> linux-box with nfs-mounted filesystem (no hard drive).

Like me...

> I was thinking about a VIA C3 processor with
> 800 MHz because of its no need of fan. It is
> rather good at normal desktop applications,
> but for Floating Point calculating-
> intensive work it is about a factor 3 less than
> an intel processor.
>
> review here:
> http://www.dansdata.com/c3.htm
>
> Now to my question:
> Is the vlc floating-point-calculation-intensive?

Don't know. Sorry...

> Other questions:
> What are the advantages of having the vlc being run
> on the client in comparison with it being run
> on the server and displayed as x-client on the
> client side?
> If the client has bad FPU then this
> might be better (because the server does the mpeg decoding)?
> Are there linux supported graphics card that
> can decode mpeg-streams, and in this way off-load
> the client?
>
>
> Thanks & Regards,
> Erik Sjölund

I haven't tried to run vlc on the server, but it won't
work with the XVideo extension, if I recall correctly. 

I tried to use vls for this, but failed to compile it 
(and got no response from the mailing list, when reported).

I tried vlc on a AMD K6 500, which sucks. Running it on
my 1.2 GHz K7 works fine (both diskless ;-)

My best bet is transcoding the dvd to divx4, and try
to play it with mplayer on the slow machine.

Good luck, and keep me informed on your advances in this
respect. (I love diskless environments)

Hans-Peter