The clients have to boot up something.

Your clients boot off the network using the ROM from the network card.

The network card downloads a small boot image that is usually the
Linux kernel, and enough utilities to NFS mount an export from the
server. This is most likely what the client images are.

The XServer starts, and does an XDMCP query to the server.

The thin client is only the display. Even though the applications are
running on the server and using the server's CPU and memory, the thin
client is still doing the graphics processing. You might want
something a bit faster and a bit more modern than a 386...unless
you're doing just text console. :)

If it works on a 386 though...great.



-- 
Andrew S. Zbikowski | http://andy.zibnet.us
IT Outhouse Blog Thing | http://www.itouthouse.com