[Ubuntu-PH] Fwd: commenting about thin clients

[Jerome Gotangco]

Check the thin client stuff that you can do with Edubuntu (Ubuntu
Education Edition). This was built with LTSP in mind and it is pretty
easy to implement. You can even use it with old computers as long as
you have a bootable NIC.

Jerome

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 8:09 PM, Yosif ali Roque Morales
<queroph at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi freinds, Does ubuntu have a solution to thin clinets and does somebody in
> the group understand how this goes in Ubuntu?Can anyone comment and react on
> this:
>
> Thanks.
>
>
> Thin clients provide an incredible number of advantages over traditional
> PCs:
>
> They consume very little power
> They are generally silent
> They are easy to secure
> They have little value alone, so tend not to be stolen
> Central management of the server saves a lot of time in client management
> They tend to be less expensive than regular PCs
> Linux and Windows solutions, including virtualized desktops, are mature and
> plentiful
>
> Frankly, they're just plain easy for even a single IT person to manage;
> software gets installed in one place, patches are applied to one computer,
> anti-malware is managed at a single point, etc.
>
> So since they're apparently the best things since sliced bread, why am I
> considering another computing model as I look at deployments around the
> district and the next refresh at the high school (about a year away)? A
> couple of reasons. Thin clients represent a single point of failure: if the
> server goes down or loses connectivity, entire labs go down. Streaming video
> and audio can also be problematic, since the server generally have only one
> or two connections to the Internet and internal network; 20 student pulling
> multimedia content on what amounts to a single computer from the web can
> strain bandwidth pretty quickly.
>
> They also don't allow for the sort of collaboration that I'd like to see
> among students. Although thin client laptops exist, they are quite
> expensive, meaning that students are confined to a lab setting when using
> thin clients. They sit next to each other, usually in rows so that they can
> all see the instructor and will occasionally pull chairs closer together to
> look at the same screen for small group work.
>
> Regular readers will know that I'm on quite a netbook kick lately. While I'm
> not suggesting that they represent a solution to every IT problem faced by
> schools, I have to wonder if a deployment of netbooks might not make more
> sense than a full thin client solution. They certainly address the single
> point of failure and collaboration issues. As we move students further into
> the cloud, as well, the need to access standard Office productivity suites
> diminishes.
>
> Management obviously becomes more time consuming, although well-configured
> Linux distributions should be relatively robust. In fact, netbooks could
> lend themselves to a hybrid approach: use the netbooks for daily computing
> and a less expensive terminal server (accessed from the netbooks) for a
> select group of applications to be managed centrally (Geometer's Sketchpad,
> for example).
>
> I'm certainly nowhere close to making a decision on this; I have plenty of
> time. However, netbooks seem to represent a nice alternative to expensive
> mobile thin clients and seem to address some of the deficiencies in the thin
> client computing model. They definitely warrant consideration, particularly
> as their prices continue to fall.
>
> --
> Yosif Roque Santos Morales
> ====================
> School Administrator
> Asian Academy of Business and Computers
> Professor, Sociology, Strategic Studies and Islamology
> Ubuntulinux user
> Linux machine # 365046.
> http://lamundofloss.blogspot.com/
> http://mafatihulhikmah.blogspot.com/
> http://strategicresearchinstitute.blogspot.com/
> Mobile number +639275642816
>
>
>
> --
> Yosif Roque Santos Morales
> ====================
> School Administrator
> Asian Academy of Business and Computers
> Professor, Sociology, Strategic Studies and Islamology
> Ubuntulinux user
> Linux machine # 365046.
> http://lamundofloss.blogspot.com/
> http://mafatihulhikmah.blogspot.com/
> http://strategicresearchinstitute.blogspot.com/
> Mobile number +639275642816
>
> --
> ubuntu-ph mailing list
> ubuntu-ph at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-ph
>
>



--
Jerome G.

Blog: http://gotangco.blogspot.com



-- 
Jerome G.

Blog: http://gotangco.blogspot.com