Idiot's guide to Fat/Thick/Chubby clients?

[Joseph Bishay]

Good day everyone,

I hope you are all doing very well today.

Is there an idiot's guide to fat/thick/chubby clients setup?  And even
before that, an explaination of the differences between each of them
and local apps? Are they all the same? Are local apps within those? My
brain is starting to hurt...

Scenario:

Edubuntu server with about 15 thin clients being used on and off.
Everything working flawlessly.  I'll be adding an additional 40 thin
clients so the load will suddenly be much higher on the server.

Many of these thin clients are powerful enough machines to easily run
Linux on their own.  So it makes sense to convert some of them to
non-thin client for the more 'power' users (such as the principal,
secretary, staff room, etc.) but I want to keep the rest as thin
clients.

Applications predominantly being used are:
- Firefox (general and especially youtube)
- Libre Office

So am I looking for a local app solution, or a fat, thick, or chubby
client solution?

I'm a bit stressed out because I'm also teaching full-time now, so
time and energy are in short supply, and I don't want the system to
start to suffer under the load of the new machines and I start to hear
"This is so slooooow" :)

Thank you!
Joseph