Help Old Computer Linux Network Planning

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1 System target: computer shop with cyber cafe, free multimedia interactive business education courses, Surf & Dine Combinations
2 System target: Garment factory, supply garment, accessories: hats, shirt, jacket to the computer shop
1 System
The flow:
2 System
The flow:
Purchase material
Production
Transportation
Define data
1 System
The flow:
2 System
The flow:
Purchase material: material data
Production: design data; manufacture data
Transportation: goods data; invoice data
3 Define information structure
U
C
What's the system function?
Performance requirements: storage limit, time limit, speed limit, security, etc
System environment and resources requirements?
Reliability requirements?
Security requirements?
User interface requirements?
Cost and development requirements?
Extend requirements?
There are many cheap used computers.
I can purchase more RAM.

Maybe I am not state very plainly.
Some friends running P-II 350 MHz server without complaining. They get some extar ram. They say you can install DSL Linux.
I can not run photoshop or illustrator on Linux.
Some friends say also for my requirements I either need more powerful machines each with large disks, or to run them as thin client machines from a very powerful server. Drives under about 80 GB are useless for my purposes.
One of my friend say I would try to set up one really powerful machine with opensuse as a server (many users have Suse servers ) which can be used internally with Samba service for Windows, this can be set up as a domain controller to control network security. You then use this as a file server. A less powerful machine with Suse can act as a firewall and router with internet access, it could serve less serious files giving access to external machines if ever required. I will need some Windows machines for Photoshop and Illustrator, these need to also be powerful, as both these are heavy on resources. For the rest of the network Ubuntu may be a good option due to memory limitations, anything under 64M is now useless. All the workstations can have internet access this way if required. The thin client server machine will need quite a lot of disk space, as it will require different OS images for each machine since each will have different hardware. It also needs plenty of ram. "The answer is ONE. It's much like the problem of you have 4 apples and I take away 3. How many are left. If you use protocols and such that Windows works with. It's your choice. At this point a book on English and business planning. so try to get the correct sources. "
Linux distros for older hardware Linux.com :: Linux distros for older hardware
"Download it from the OpenSuSe site, there should be no viruses in the torrent file. Yes you can file share with windows clients no problem, You can printer share to windows via CUPS, Yes, linux can burn CDs. How do you want the computers to "cooperate"?"
"you may want to turn the older computers into thin clients. linux--help.org - Linux on old PCs"
"I use Damn Small Linux as a headless server for file sharing. It will work on your 128 MB and 64 MB machines. It's small (50MB) and presumably virus-free. You can log into the other machines (the ones without a monitor) using VLC to set them up and add software and change configuration. You might want to purchase a 4-way KVM. This is a keyboard, video, mouse extender that allows 4 computers to share one monitor. That way you can switch between the machines quickly to make configuration changes. Your older hardware will work fine, but investing in RAM will help. 256 MB for each machine that can handle it. 128 MB is really a minimum for Ubuntu with 128 MB swap drive. Although this combo is perhaps too slow for daily use--you will have to try it see if its acceptable. You may want to try a lighter version of Ubuntu on the other machines: Linux Mint XFCE or Xubuntu or Fluxbuntu. Either way, you will need more RAM to really get the performance out of the PIII processors. You can accomplish all of the functions that want, but it will take some configuration. Take one machine at a time and focus on that until it's set up the way you want, then move to the next. I've used SLED 10, not opensuse, but Ubuntu is definitely easier to configure than Suse, so you may want to convert the opensuse machine to Ubuntu in the future, so you will have a consistent computing environment over all of the machines."
The last 3 don't have enough RAM to run OpenSUSE well. You'd be better off using them as thin clients (Google for LTSP). The 2nd one could run Puppy Linux. The 1st could run OpenSUSE, just. But you don't have a sufficiently powerful machine to be the LTSP server.
"Such as your Old low ram computers could run Puppy Linux or D-amn Small Linux"
The first computer should work ok with opensuse (with graphical system) machines with less than 128 mb are not gonna work with Graphical system (or at least very easily) maybe try Damn small linux, or maybe puppy on less than 128MB of ram, you can get opensuse Software.openSUSE.org damn small linux -- Damn Small Linux - DSL information or you can expand that memory and run opensuse.
"You can use one of the PIII computers as an internet router. You put two network cards into it and install a small, firewall distro. I use ClarkConnect. You connect the first network card to the DSL and the second to a network hub. You then connect any computer that has a network card to the hub to allow access the internet, and have them get their IP address from DHCP. You control the firewall computer through a browser on another computer. Since you have only one monitor, you would connect it to the main computer. Then, you can use ssh to access the other computers across the network. You would be remotely controlling them on the command line. You can also set-up NFS to move files between them. Unless you want to move the monitor back-and-forth between computers, you wouldn't be able to have a computer that wasn't connected to the network / internet. But, the firewall server would be there to protect your network. Yes, the network would be able to work with Windows. A Windows computer would be able to use DHCP to access the network and internet. Linux can run SAMBA to allow sharing of files with Windows. What the "cybercafe" and "garment factory" have to do with the question? that'll be because it's just any old question written to link to the flash site... "
"I'm a little confused by your abundance of information and the way it is given.... I get from the first part of your post that you want a copy of OpenSuse that is on a virus free CD... Except it is more than one CD. You'll find a lot of information on that site besides the downloads. This includes a discussion forum for assistance with the product. I'm just barely familiar with OpenSUSE - still learning it all myself. You may find the answers to some of your questions there."
"1. If you download a distribution CD, check it's MD5 sum against that which is advertised on the official distribution homepage, that assures what you received is legitimate. 2. You'll want a very lean distro to run reasonably on such low spec computers. If it will run/install at all. That is a very low amount of RAM, and you will have issues with booting to a live cd. I know "Arch Linux" only requires 64mb to boot a minimal install disc, but to actually run the installed environment it might be very sluggish, and will absolutely require a swap partition and expect a lot of hard drive activity. You'll also need a lightweight WM, don't be expecting full installs of Gnome or KDE to cooperate. Gentoo is another lean distro, but is probably not for you.