Life after LTSP

[Belinda Lopez]

You would be surprised how many requests for thin-client type systems 
I'm seeing on the horizon.  Thin-clients are a very viable solution for 
both developed and developing countries.  In developed countries it's an 
easy way to implement a campus wide computing solution at a low cost.  
In developing countries you simply do not have the infrastructure to 
support full desktop solutions; think electricity and network savings. 
And now with all this "cloud" marketing, there is a renewed effort by 
many companies to offer thin-clients with all the storage in the cloud 
(google docs anyone).  LTSP is just one of many thin-client solutions.

cheers,

Belinda

Education
Canonical
belinda.lopez at canonical.com
dinda at ubuntu.com
IRC: dinda
Office: Galveston, Texas
-- 
Ubuntu - Linux for Human Beings
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On 11/08/2010 02:44 PM, Robert Arkiletian wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Robert Arkiletian<robark at gmail.com>  wrote:
>    
>> In my opinion,  the days of LTSP are numbered. For a few different reasons.
>>
>> 1)
>> hardware is so cheap now. You can buy a brand new power efficient and
>> fast  desktop system for about $200 (not including monitor).  Thin
>>      
> Forgot to mention I mean a *diskless* desktop system.
>
>    
>> 2)
>> DRBL. This is the route I have taken. It's similar to ltsp boot
>> process via pxe but ALL processes run locally. Only the filesystem is
>> remote via nfs. There is no need for special plumbing for sound or
>> local devices. Everything works like a stand alone system. Except the
>> first time to launch (not run) apps is slightly longer since the
>> binary needs to be downloaded into local ram from the network before
>> it can be run. One user can't hog ram or cpu. Full class of full
>> screen video and flash, no problem. I even have had an entire class of
>> students simultaneously install and run Ubuntu in a Virtualbox VM on
>> top of  the diskless client OS. Local apps with LTSP cannot do this.
>> Although I do have dual gigabit nics for the lan and hardware raid 10
>> for the server. Each client can have it's own nfs mounted /etc and
>> /var so there can still be customization per client.
>>      
> Plus you get the benefit of managing only one system, like LTSP.
>
>
>