Hi,
Just a few comments on the Common Unix Environment note. Please use
them (or not) as you wish. You seem to have thought of most things already!
Clusters:
I have some experience here with our alpha cluster - 15 machines
are "dataless" clients and 10 or so have their own system. The dataless
machines are MUCH easier for the sysadmin - since there is really
only one system to configure and maintain. The problem in the past has
been network traffic. If the network is busy then these machines are
painfully slow (we solved it by replacing the old ethernet). However, my
feeling is that if there is the network bandwidth this is probably the way to
go for non-critical machines.
For machines that should not hang waiting for NFS servers like data
aquisition etc. but that nevertheless need copies of software (system or
products) rdist can be used.
Mail:
This is the thing that all users use all the time (and so complain about
the most!) and I think it's important to have a robust system. You mention
the use of elm amongst others. Although elm is very popular it is no
longer supported by it's authors and has some serious security problems.
I think pine is a good replacement and will work from any terminal. Pine
also comes with an IMAP package - both server and client.
Although I personally do not use pine most of the group here does.I use
several IMAP client programs to access mail on the central mail servers.
I think pine (or Netscape mail in version 3.x) would probably meet the
needs of the vast majority of users. Pine also understands and handles
MIME formats.
Products and utilities: We can always think of more!
Window managers, CDE etc.:
I have no experience with CDE, but I have heard rumours that it is
fairly heavy on memory. What happens to the server with lots of users
running CDE sessions on their X terminals? We use the fvwm window
manager here for precisely that reason - it is very easy on resources, but
is very easy to use and configure. Of course it is not a complete
environment (really should be compared with Mwm rather than CDE).
I guess that's about it. You mention that the fileserver is ordered.
What is the timescale for implementing this environment?
Cheers,
Ian