So much for history. NetBSD UNIX with the KDE window environment. They are equipped with a 233MHz processor, 64M RAM, and boot over the network. Video is 1152x864 with 16 bits color depth. The StrongARM is quite fast for integer-based work, but extremely slow for floating point.
All software is loaded over the network.
This means that large programs such as XEmacs or GIMP, can take a while to start up, although they seem to run acceptably once started. Even so, it would make more sense to run such applications on the Alpha systems. Once physical memory is full, the system will also swap over the network. This can become painfully slow, so exercise discretion about how many programs to run at once. If you really overdo it, the system can lock up and you will have to power-cycle it to recover.