Did anyone consider this hardware setup yet?

[zenga]

Gaming on a budget linux pc = fail

Do you mean gaming on a low end pc in general or did you refer to the linux / low end pc combo? Because for the latter I disagree: on a typical windows system you run a bunch of security apps which cause performance issues. There are many cases where a native windows program (games) performs better under wine/linux than on windows (xp/vista, no clue about 7). Not to mention that linux is very flexible i.e. you can strip it down as much as you want. If you'd see a lightweight windows manager (like xfce) in action on outdated hardware running recent applications, you'd be surprised.

Basically: if I can match the same result (or at least close) with lower costs, increased security and more fun (+ some other advantages as I mentioned earlier), then i'd say its a win.

Let me get this straight. You are using netbooks to run slaves? So this means if I have a gaming laptop for "eye candy" and 9 netbooks, I could be hardware boxing 10 toons? And it's completely portable? Hmm, I am going to research the cost of this. The idea of having a portable 10 box team for business trips and vacations is very interesting.

Drommon

Pretty much. At first I'd go with 4 netbook slaves and 1 main (my current workstation, or a decent laptop when I'm on the road). I hardly ever look at whats happening on my resized screens ( 2nd monitor) nowadays; I do everything from my main (unless i get whacked and have to run back to the corpse of course). If thats a working solution, then the same should work (in theory) for any amount of toons, cause every slave uses the same dedicated hardware specs/power.

What I've tested so far: install/run the game on my EEE with 2gb ram & non ssd HD. The installation is no issue as I can do an install over the network. Running opensuse 11.0 / kde 3.5.9 (49.1). With medium to low visual settings i got 28 fps walking around in ogrimmar. Walked through all fights/duels that were going on without any lag. Pretty sure I can do a lot on the OS end to strip it down/tweak it to get even better performance.

I haven't tested how it acts in raids/arena/bg's, as I'm still leveling up. And that seems to be Fursphere his biggest concern. I did read forum posts from players who play only 1 toon on their EEE: some claim it's no prob at all to raidl, others find it a pain. My only guess is that they use/want/need too much graphical detail. That is no real issue for a multiboxer cause as from what I've heard/read most use the lowest visual settings on their alts anyway. Again: nothing really changes for your main.

Interesting discussion I am surprised you got it to work in the first place.

Depending on your geek level, being crazy and stubborn enough, you can get a lot of things to work

Why RDP at all? Are the screens on the netbooks too small? Just use HKN/Octopus/etc and have 1 mouse/keyboard to control them all

I'd say that the screens are comparable to 1 alt screen using maximizer on my 24" screen (1/4th of a 24 inch). As for remote: tt's just a matter of preference. I'm used to take over remote desktop sessions/vnc for a decade now (not for games). I don't really see issues to use an other strategy, as long as it works for you.

What I have in mind for now is:
- tweak/strip linux on 1 netbook to get the best results, make an image to distribute to other slaves
- use a network key broadcasting tool like synergy (as its 1 toon per comp there is no real need for an aditional broadcasting script)
- run wow either under cedega or wine, depending on the performance (there is no real consensus as to what runs best on linux i've noticed, seems to depend mainly on your hardware)

Again, I can only see advantages. However it wouldn't be the first time that i run with my head into a wall :P (if thats proper english)

Thats pretty much it. Later this weekend it should be able to run some tests with 3 eee's and I'll let you know how things work out.