On Wed, 2009-02-25 at 12:52 -0800, john wrote: > Hi all, > > One of the reasons I originally found LTSP compelling was the modest > specs required of the thin clients. Lately I've been feeling like my > flavor of Linux/LTSP (ubuntu) has entered the same kind of systems > requirement arms-race that I thought I left behind when we moved away > from workstations running XP. > I used to be able to run PII's with 128 mb ram no problem. These days > 256 Mb on the client seems to be the minimum and 512 > is preferred. I still have lots of PII's lying around, and I suspect > vast portions of LTSP's potential user base may be working with older > technology as well. If the future of LTSP means you have to buy new > hardware to use it seems like a much less compelling solution.
One of the big attractions of LTSP was that we would be able to upgrade our entire network by upgrading the server, while the clients would not need to be touched. The thin clients, with no moving parts, would last many years. In terms of hardware, in other words, the server is dynamic, while the clients are stable. While the client hardware hasn't changed over the past year and a half, the software has changed. We updated the server to Ubuntu 8.04 (LTS), which brought a number of improvements, but we also updated the clients, with some unfortunate consequences (the original Ubuntu 7.04 clients ran proprietary VIA video drivers with smooth 3D performance, while updated clients ran 2D openchrome drivers). In terms of software, in other words, server and clients are all dynamic. It seems to me that there is an inherent conflict here, between the stability of client hardware and the dynamism of client software. We struggle with this for stand-alone servers and workstations of course (dist-upgrades are never undertaken lightly), but it seems particularly problematic here. > > Perhaps my complaints are not really LTSP related (I have minimal > experience with other Distros with LTSP packages), and perhaps the > "fat client" approach is an attempt to get around this issue to some > degree. I am sure someone will set me straight if I > am conflating two different issues. :-) > > So is LTSP 4.2 the answer for older clients, or is there something > else to consider here? I don't see LTSP 4.2 as a solution. The developers have moved on, and they'll continue to do so. The latest and greatest LTSP has to support the latest and greatest hardware. What I plan to do is create a stable client (in my case based on the kernel used in Ubuntu 7.04) that I can optimize for start-up time and performance, then leave pretty-much alone. > > Thanks for letting me ruminate! Me babble... > > John -Richard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H _____________________________________________________________________ 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
