LTSP - A huge thank-you!

[Matthew Walster]

For years now, I've been wanting to play with thin clients, and have  
always left things half-done, mainly due to the large quantity of  
documentation to read, and the required fiddling required to set-up  
TFTP, DHCP, PXE/NBI, tarballs for a client to use - it's all far too  
much to look at for someone doing it in their spare time.

I recently tested the Ubuntu package "ltsp-server-standalone" and I  
can honestly say that I am amazed. You guys have done a fantastic job  
- with only two commands (one being the install, the other being  
creating the client, neither with long parameter lists) you've  
allowed me to test out LTSP in a way that is absolutely unprecedented.

The LTSP install worked straight of the bat, running on the sandboxed  
network card I have (ie/ running on a different subnet) and I was  
able to run 4 separate thin-clients at the same time, running Gnome/ 
Firefox/OpenOffice to no noticeable detriment.

After demonstrating the system to a fellow network administrator,  
he's now strongly considering testing it on a small, 15 client  
corporate network, where the underpowered 266-450MHz WinXP machines  
struggle with running OpenOffice/MSOffice would make a fantastic thin  
client with etherboot installed in LILO/GRUB, which currently uses an  
Ubuntu machine as it's mail/backup server.

If it were not for the simplicity of the install, and the ease of  
which configuration takes place through the Ubuntu/Gnome interface,  
this situation would not have arisen due to the complexity of NIS/ 
LDAP/Kerberos authentication and NFS shared home and I can not stress  
enough the thanks I have for the team that have implemented this system.

Should any of the developers be at FOSDEM in February, let me know,  
and I'll come buy you a beer or six =)

Matthew Walster