On Fri, Jan 08, 2010 at 08:24:34PM -0800, Nicholas Metsovon wrote: > I'm not a big fan of RedHat, but they seem to have far greater resources than > most Linux projects. I'm kind of curious if LTSP can benefit from any of > this, and how it will affect LTSP in the long term.
Myself, personally (and I fully realize I'm in no way a spokesman for LTSP), I would prefer us NOT to "benefit from" this project, if by "benefit from" we mean "subsume even more technology under LTSP's banner". Here's why: There's a couple of things that have been worrying me for the last several years. I'm not sure I can precisely define what I want to say, but bear with me. The first thing is the ever widening umbrella of "things" in which LTSP developers are having to become proficient in to be able to support LTSP. LTSP started out as a nice, simple way to connect to a remote X server. Think old style X terminals. It worked *really* nicely, because it was simple: it did one thing, and did it well. We've moved on from there. Now we have our own display manager, we support local devices, by writing our own network file systems. We've crafted a lightweight IPC using Xatoms for localapps. Now we're going to have to talk DBUS and PolKit in order to get things done. We're in the process of writing PAM modules to better clean up the code and support even MORE things people want (smart card auth, etc.) Throughout all of this, the range of questions we're having to answer is getting wider and wider and wider. Anything that even remotely TOUCHES LTSP now seems fair game for people to stop by the channel and ask questions. Classic case in point, today we're in there helping someone with shell scripts for setting up desktop links on all the users desktop. This is OBVIOUSLY in no way connected with LTSP, and I'm certainly glad we were able to help this person, but #ltsp is rapidly becoming (IMHO) a "black hole time sink" for LTSP developers and regulars. Not getting an answer in #ubuntu or #debian or #fedora? No problem, just wander over to #ltsp, they seem to have a lot of smart people over there who always answer questions. I don't know about the rest of you, but it's becoming... worrying. And the more we widen the umbrella, the more questions we potentially have to answer. The second issue is one of (for lack of a better term) "Project Lifetime". LTSP is what LTSP is. If RedHat's come up with a better mousetrap, something that beats LTSP at it's own game, I'd be happy to let them beat us. Or, they have their product, and we have ours, and we co-exist happily. But somehow, if they've truly invented something better, I'm happy to let them be better. This isn't a zero-sum game, and LTSP doesn't have to "win". I'm sure the day will come when someone comes up with a revolutionary idea that supercedes everything we've done. I guess what I'm saying is, the old adage of "If I can see farther, it's because I've stood on the shoulders of giants", when the time comes, I'll be happy to be the shoulders, and let someone else see farther. Just my own, personal, 2 cents. In the meantime, back to writing pam modules. Scott -- Scott L. Balneaves | Nature uses as little as possible of anything. Systems Department | -- Johannes Keppler Legal Aid Manitoba | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Verizon Developer Community Take advantage of Verizon's best-in-class app development support A streamlined, 14 day to market process makes app distribution fast and easy Join now and get one step closer to millions of Verizon customers http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-dev2dev _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net
