<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Jan 25, 2008 2:43 PM, Jim Hutchinson <<a href="mailto:jim@ubuntu-rocks.org">jim@ubuntu-rocks.org</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Greetings all,<br><br>We currently have an edubuntu thin-client lab running on some very old<br>client hardware (new server). We will be getting some upgraded client<br>hardware this summer. They will be HP D530s which are 5 years old but<br>
a big jump up from the 10 year old stuff we have now.<br><br>I suspect these will run the edubuntu desktop edition just fine. The<br>question I have is, what are the benefits and drawbacks to desktop<br>install vs thin-client? </blockquote>
<div>I have tried this both ways, but with much newer client hardware than it sounds like you have. I set up the thick clients (Edubuntu installed on the local disk) to use LDAP authentication and NFS mount the home directories from the LTSP server. That way, students could use either thin or thick clients and be able to save and access their work from any machine.<br>
<br>I eventually got this to work (first time out with LDAP, it took me a while), but the login process was very slow on each machine. Apps also took some time to load, I suspect because of network congestion in reading conf files from the home directory of the user. In frustration, I PXE booted all the former "thick" client machines, and they ran much faster as thin clients (no changes to the network environment - Cisco 2950t, gig uplink to server, spanning tree disabled). Your mileage may vary.<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">How do we decide which way to go? It seems<br>that desktop installs would offer a speed advantage but would be<br>
harder to install, upgrade and maintain. <br></blockquote><div>You could keep all of the thick clients updated with some cron jobs, but troubleshooting individual problems is more difficult because of the distributed environment. With a thin client system, there is only one box to troubleshoot and keep clean.<br>
<br>Also, for what it is worth, I did not realize that the Edubuntu/Ubuntu client software does not install openssh-server by default. Coming from a Fedora environment, it was a minor frustration to have to install it on each machine.<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Given a choice, which way<br>would you go?<br></blockquote><div>Hope that helps,<br>
Charles</div></div><br>