What can be done with linux?

[eddie]

I am getting tired of the old this distro vs that distro, this computer vs that computer talk. What can we do with linux?! I am really interested in say using linux for robotics, linux in the medical industry, linux for the physically or visually impaired. How can we put the new breed of processors such as the arm and the atom cpu's to work. I am also interested in taking older technology and putting it back to work. Even the space shuttle still uses i486 cpu's. There has to be a way to put all the old mb's and etc back to work so they do not have to go to a landfill or etc. I bet they can be steam lined to use minimal juice, The show about home automation was really interesting. Maybe their could be a followup show.

[Claudio]

Well, I've got some old PCs laying around at work and I've thought about taking some of the old switches that were replaced by new ones and using the old switches and computers in some form of distributed cluster computing environment through Beowulf (if this is even possible). My thought was to put one PC in each IDF as well as the MDF and have them connected in a separate network through these old switches to run the FreeRADIUS service I'm using to manage our wireless APs. This way, in the event that one IDF goes down (which has happened in the past), the rest of the PCs in the other IDFs continue to provide the FreeRADIUS authentication. I hope to implement this sometime during summer vacation when school is out at one of the schools I work for. I also hope to use AD authentication through Samba/Winbind this time around to allow for teachers and staff to use their AD login accounts in order to authenticate with the wireless APs throughout the school.