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Aptus clients boot with a special kernel image. Kernel images are CPU and network adapters dependent. Aptus prebuilt network bootable client kernel images which compatible with most of the common x86 CPUs and Linux supported network adapters,
Client CPU requirement is Pentium class or above. Aptus works with most of the common x86 based architectures. List of processors types are known to work with ShaoLin Aptus 2.0
AMD K6/K6-II/K6-III/Thunderbird/Athlon/Duron/K7
Intel Pentium/MMX/Pentium Pro/Pentium II/Pentium III/Celeron/Xeon/Pentium IV/Xeon
Cyrix - VIA C3/5x86
IBM - 6x86/5x86
If your server and client use different type of CPU, you have to make sure application binaries installed at the server are binary compatible with the client, see Section 2.4.4 for more details.
The latest release of Aptus (version greater than 2.0.6) supports all of the network adapters which as a valid Linux driver in kernel 2.4.19. It also has support for PXE clients. That means client machines which has equipped with a PXE enabled network adapter does not need extra boot ROM or boot media to boot Linux with Aptus . Most of the branded PC's such as HP, IBM and Dell do have a PXE boot ROM built-in as a standard option. Also Intel and 3Com network cards are also equipped with PXE boot ROMs.
If you don't have a PXE enabled network card. You will need a standard floppy drive at the client to load the Aptus client boot disk which contains the Etherboot firmware. The boot program can later burn into a boot ROM for diskless clients, or copy to the hard drive as a DOS executable binary. For more details, see the section called Chapter 6.
