Your feedback is much appreciated

[Kai Wüstermann]

Moin Mon!

Am Samstag, den 16.06.2007, 20:20 -0700 schrieb ramonsagullo at yahoo.com:
> These are valuable info and considerably guiding me in the right
> direction in "stitching" together our new lab.  
> 
> Kindly correct me if I am wrong: so If our students will be using
> OpenOffice as an example, I have to go with a thick client? Or, is it
> possible for the diskless thin client, with the kids using their thumb
> drives, to run OpenOffice, and just save their work in the server?

Todd described the differences between thin and thick clients very good.
If you use a thin client, all the programs run on server. So the kids
get all the performance of the server at the thin client. The thin
client can be old and slow. If one kid starts openoffice it will be
_very_ fast. If there are 20 kid who start openoffice at the same time,
if will get slower because the server has to work for 20 persons at the
same time. I think it will be faster to start openoffice 20 times on a
dualcore withe 4gB ram than on 20 win98se 500MHz with 128gB.

> The current lab we have are using Windows; this licensed OS came with
> aging desktops. It is a mix of XP and 98SE.  We have an existing
> "server" that came with XP Pro.  I was brought in to help minimize the
> overall cost - hardware, software and power consumption, while still
> being able to stay true to the vision-mission of the school.  I have
> touched FOSS, and I am comfortable enough with it.  I gave a Live-CD
> of Edubuntu to the existing instructors we have a couple of months
> ago, so they can familiarize with it.

This looks like our school lab. I am just testing if all our win-pc work
with edubuntu as a thin client. The lowest performance I have tested was
a 500MHz with 64mB. It starts very slow and needed a swap file over net,
but after locked in it was as fast as the other clients.
> 
> One advantage I have is, the new lab will be from scratch. Of course
> the other priceless advantage I have, is this sort of cooperative
> community.
> 
> Aside from getting a decent switch, are there brands out there that
> are "unfriendly" to Ubuntu? Locally, we have Linksys, D-Link, Zyxel
> and 3COM.
> 
There are no problems with the switches if they work with windows. They
have to be 100mbit. Then you get a performance from 12mB/sec. My tests
with a 1 GHz Server with 728mB showed, the thin client need from 1mb/sec
to 5Mb/sec (very short peak) when the start. After lock in it is mostly
<200kb/sec.

If the port to the server has 1Gbit it will increase the performance
when many clients start at the same time.

> I will be presenting my "packaged idea" to the Board of Trustees first
> week of August.  Their primary concern of course, is the cost. So, I
> am focusing my presentation on that. Mine is to find the balance
> between 3 factors: direct benefits to the students' learning
> experience; 2nd would be less headache for me, and of course, the
> cost.

1. The student will learn all the things you can do with PCs, but no
MS-Office ;-)
In Germany you get to each "Unterrichtswerk" (learning book) special
software. They are build for windows so the most would not work on
edubuntu. You should make a decision in the meeting with all teachers.
This will make your life easier when a teacher says "here is a nice
software, would you please..." 

2. You will get much headache. If you only know windows, you have to
learn very much, even if edubuntu-ltsp runs nearly out of the box. But
you have to think of dhcp, squid, user management...
But when the system is running, you only administer the server and not
40 stand alone PCs. The jokes of the Kids like mouse for left handed
people have only effects for them self. How boring...
If you'll get a new client you only connect it to the network and it
(should;-) works. You do _not_ install openoffice, firefox,
grafik-program, programing-software, learning-software...

3. I calculate 
-1500 Euros for the server 
- 500 Euros for new net cards with pxe and thinks I don't remember yet
for all the old win98 and xp PCs
-potentially 500 Euros for a new switch with 1Gbit

Kai Wüstermann