Hello Nigel, I do see a bright future of thin clients. Ok - I'm a developer of a open thin client environment (x2go), so I'm not neutral in my opinion, but I really think there are some big advantages of server based computing. In my case I'm really working every day on my central server - sometimes with a thin client as we know it (diskless), some times even on a cellphone connection and this is the big advantage (and I can reconnect to the same session and resume it). Today it may be ok to set the borders of a classroom to the room in a building, but in future I really think, that students and teachers should be able to access their desktop environments from where ever they are - because companies will do it this way too. A lot of people - including us - are working on the "multimedia problem" with the most recent version of our project you even can use skype installed on a server. Red Hat has spend a lot of money on SPICE and there are some other OSS solutions which in future could be combined with LTSP too. Regarding your experience with LTSP I would like to point out, that we've noticed that KDE4 is running very smoothly on terminal servers. I hope the apperance of our project name is ok (as our project is part of the "rheinland pfalz musterlösung" which is [based on] skolelinux).
Best Regards, Heinz 2009/12/7 Nigel Barker <[email protected]>: > Dear All, > There was a thread on edubuntu a while ago suggesting that today's > demands (flash everywhere, streaming this and that) are too much for > thin clients and that we once again have to join the "hardware arms > race". > > I just wanted to make some observations from my experience with lenny > ltspservers over the last few months. > > 1. Tux paint takes minutes to launch on thin clients after the first > three or four have started it. > 2. Tux math brings my new quad core server with the good 4xpcie NIC > and Gbps switch to its knees, even though it has only 10 thin clients. > In fact I uninstalled tux math last week, I was so sick of it. > > surely the above apps are staples of ltsp in schools? Googling shows > some bugs reported in ubuntu about a year ago, and some suggestion > that sound is to blame. Sound is disabled on my servers. > > 3. I gave an excercise using the excel spreadsheet available on > top500.org. Both servers had trouble keeping up. I thought it was > because of the size of the spreadsheet, but when given a similar > exercise using a very modest spreadsheet, the same thing happened. > Each student had OOcalc, kpdf and iceweasel open. Clients start to > slow down, then they stop responding, then I reboot the server. > > 4. I feel pressure to look into teaching podcasting and video, which > are ubiquitous today. I couldn't imagine even attempting either with > ltsp. > > I hope that diskless workstations will become an easy option. I know > you are currently working on it, and thank you for that! > > I also hope for a speedier ltsp that allows us to keep up with the > modern web. What will happen when we move to KDE 4? Could it be > possible to have a choice of a lighter wm? > > If anyone has a way to solve the Tux-x problems, I hope you will share with > me! > > Thanks for all your work. everyone! > > nigel > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] > > -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
