Hallo, Marvin
It depends how responsible system do You want to have. I'd assume approx. double the users that Craige suggested, however I have no direct contact with such a large installation.
It also very depends on some decisions, settings and tweaking. One big decision is WM/DE. For example if U use IceWM, the number of running users could be about double than with KDE or GNOME. Not allowing background images could also significantly reduce network traffic. Even KDE can be set to use less effects, shadings and so, and the well-thought decision what effects are necesarry can also help a lot. IceWM has one more strong advantage -it is very stable and almost incorruptable. User is not able to break his settings. Settings are quite easy to share between users, it's enough to save the default settings to /etc/x11/icewm and all users will have them. The special per-user settings can be saved to particular home directory to ./icewm dir. If U want just desktop that just works and dosen't eat valuable resources, than IceWM is good enough. I agree that hard-weighted desktops are nicer, cooler,... but this depends on how much do You want to spend on "coolness" and eye-candiness.
There are also some nice themes for IceWM so that it dosen't look bad.
The key issue with network is that any graphics eats the most bandwidth because it is transfered as uncompressed bitmap. Text goes with no problem. Example: Average work in OOo may eats 30kilobyte per second (mouse cursor motion, repainting the icons etc, some text changes on screen..), but opening an image can temporarily lead to 1megabyte ps, and webpage with running animation could easily permanently consume several megabytes per second! So be the Web -if U'd filter flash animations and set Mozilla to display animated gifs only once, it will absolutely reduce as network traffic as well as CPU load (even ONE flash eats LOTS of CPU in Mozilla). This is why I was talking about efects in KDE (or other desktop) -not only they eat CPU, but if the button goes smoothly translucent and changes colour etc, every frame of change goes thru network as bitmap. If app window changes colour when You go with mouse over, the whole frame is bitmapped and sent thru network. Do it with 30 users and Your network will scream ;o)
You said that the network is the thing You must treat carefully, so take these things to decision. I strongly suggest You install some network traffic monitor, even XOSVIEW can display network load if ran with -n (I hope) parameter, and it shows memory and load info too. Run some apps, labor with them on client and watch the results. It will be very interesting for You and Your decisions will be much clearer. This is the best thing I can suggest You.
If U compile custom kernel of 2.6 series, it could also help the system. Setting parameters such as SHMMAX to higher value could help share libraries in memory so that they would be better shareable between user sessions.
I just say that even little tweaking and clever decisions could save money on hardware :o)
Peter
Marvin T. Pascual wrote:
Hello all,
Can anyone share their opinions on to how many workstations does LTSP supports with the following setup:
Server: IBM xSeries 345 Processor: Dual Xeon 2.8Ghz Memory: 4GB RAM Hard Disk: 2 x 73GB SCSI Workstations: Intel Pentium 1 to 4 with 100Mbps NICs Switches: 3Com SuperStack 10/100Mbps Applications: OpenOffice.org, Novell Evolution, Mozilla Firefox, etc.
Any advise for this kind of setup?
Thanks in advance.
--- MARVIN T. PASCUAL E-mail: mpascual AT qsr DOT com DOT ph Tel. No. +63 2 9200189 Mobile No. +63 918 4115188 Yahoo! Messenger ID: bintut GNU/Linux User No. 247127
------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Sybase ASE Linux Express Edition - download now for FREE LinuxWorld Reader's Choice Award Winner for best database on Linux. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=5588&alloc_id=12065&op=click _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net
------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Sybase ASE Linux Express Edition - download now for FREE LinuxWorld Reader's Choice Award Winner for best database on Linux. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=5588&alloc_id=12065&op=click _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net
