Recommended networked filesystem structure?

[Nils Ackermann <Nils.Ackermann@math.uni-giessen.de>]

Hello,

We have four SparcStation4 and an Ultra1.  Up to now we had Solaris
running, the whole System installed on every machine.  I added a
/usr/local hierarchy on the Ultra server with all the good stuff from
GNU, and mounted it as a nfs filesystem under /usr/local on each one
of the clients.

Now I want to switch the whole configuration to debian (that I've been
running at home on a PC for two years).

1. What would be the preferred way to have this kind of distributed
   setup with standalone, but thin clients?  Is there a standard way
   to use the debian packaging system to divide installation up into a
   base system with X that is installed on every machine, and
   applications that reside on the server only, to be mounted via nfs?

2. How difficult is it, to do this in a heterogeneous network?  We
   might be adding PCs soon, and I would like to have a real uniform
   network, all running debian, with only one application/file server.

Thanks,
Nils Ackermann