Your feedback is much appreciated

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Sat, 16 Jun 2007, ramonsagullo at yahoo.com wrote:

> I'd appreciate if you could fill me in with the difference between a
> "thick diskless client"  and a thin client.

Todd has summed it up moreorless.  Basically, the thin client is probably
what you want in most instances.  However, in some situations, eg video
playback, scanning, webcam use, cd burning, it may be handy to have sum or
all of the programs run locally on the client.  This is not trivially
available on edubuntu yet (although the web kiosks do it), but it may be
handy for certain instances.

> Aside from money saved from electricity, I really would like to make our
> new computer lab as environment-friendly as possible. 

It's my planet too so I support this idea :-)

> >>2. You can quite script your thin clients to all power off at a certain
> >>  time every day if nobody is logged in.  We could try to think up a
> >>  system to power down thin clients if nobody logs in for, say, one hour.
> 
> 7:20am-8:00pm is the normal class schedule (high school kids most of the
> day, and college kids from 4:00pm), 80-minute lunch break.

You could very easily have all of your thin clients shut themselves down at
9pm.  You could also check if your thin clients have "Wake On LAN" in their
BIOS.  If they do, you could have a script power them all back up at 7am on
weekdays.  Whether this will save much energy is not clear but one would
hope so.

> >>5. Thin clients take very little maintenance time in general, though there
> >>   is a little expertise involved.
> 
> And I trust I am in the right user group in seeking the expert guidance. :-)

Yes and as you gain the expertise you should stick around on the list and
help pass it on to other new people.

> The Board of Trustees got to appreciate the savings on power consumption
> after I gave then a chart of how much the school will save, using a
> 60-unit computers for comparison - CRT vs LCD.

Would you give us access to this data please?  It would be interesting to
plug our cost per kwhr and see how it stacks up.

> >> I imagine that's a 64-bit cpu.  Just the same, I'd seriously consider
> >> running 32-Bit Ubuntu for the time being.  When all is stable and things
> >> like the flash plugin work on 64-bit you can move up.
> 
> My first option was to plug together the components for a server, but all
> I'll get this way is warranty on parts, no service support. The HP option
> was more for saving me the headache :-) Now, am inclined to do the
> former. Thanks for the "wait till it's more stable" advise.

I haven't been clear enough here.  As I understand it (you should check),
pretty much all of the new 64-bit cpus are capable of running in 32-bit
mode.  So, I suggest you run 32-bit edubuntu on the same 64-bit machine.
Then, when all works well and opportunity arises, you can just reinstall
with 64-bit edubuntu.  So, this point shouldn't really affect your choice
of hardware at all.

> One of the suggested specs I found in my browsing stated that 64MB per
> client was the least "doable."   I am targeting a 30 clients per server.
> And like Tod, your suggestion for more RAM, I am now going for as much
> RAM as the school budget will allow me to.

Of all the things to try and optimise, get as much RAM as possible -- if
the processes don't use it all up, linux will use it to cache and readahead
files from the disk meaning performance will be quicker.  I'd say get as
much as you can, even at the expense of a slightly slower cpu.  After that,
disk access speed is important.  You probably want SCSI disks and you
probably want RAID1, RAID5 or RAID10 for extra reliability/performance.

> Our current curriculum has no programming involved.  More on imparting
> proficiency in using a word processor, a spreadsheet and how to
> efficiently browse the web. 

These (openoffice, firefox) are actually quite high RAM usage applications
compared with programming (depending on the editor/IDE they use).

> I forgot to mention that part of the school's planned community service
> once the new lab is up and running, is to provide the parents weekend
> access, preferably with a web cam, so they can get in touch with their
> OFW (Overseas Filipino Workers) spouses, siblings, et. al.

You might want to look at the "kiosk" mode for thin clients which will
avoid the need for per-user accounts, etc.  This is also a very simple
example of a "thick client" in that the application firefox actually runs
on the client not on the server.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EdubuntuFAQ#head-1160489d41f8199cc1c7fcd9850bb5c60863f12b

> I am also coordinating with our local government in rolling out Edubutu
> boxes for the out-of school youth IT program.

Very cool.  Do you mind if I ask where this is?

> It is very reassuring that I know I can always ask for direction in this
> list. We do have two instructors in our current computer lab.  But
> effectively, I am a "lone ranger" as far as IT concerns are in the
> hierarchy of the school's officers. Our present Board of Trustees come
> from a generation before PC was invented :-)

Doesn't everyone's?

Gavin