Am Montag, den 19.02.2007, 12:46 +0100 schrieb Gudmund Areskoug: > One thing I believe needs to be emphasized on the plus side, is that > while sticking with the "easiness" of dealing with familiar fat Windows > boxes *seems* cheaper, it is IMNSHO just a case of self-deception, since > the real cost is then spread out over an organization, landing elsewhere > than on the IT account, with users flailing about when they get virus > hits, random updates wreaking havoc on existing app's etc. etc. And in > the end, "Someone" has to clean up the mess. > > We all know that guy Someone, don't we? ;) In some cases, it's the > dedicated IT guy, and in some cases, it's the almighty Janitor, who may > or may not be a computer wizard, but in any case mostly doesn't have "IT > support" in the work description or the paycheck spec's. > > Which might add up to "Controllable and transparent cost of ownership" > as a plus point for LTSP.
Just to give some numbers for a school I do the odd LTSP maintenance/improvement as well as Windows support when the teachers do not find out how to fix the box. They have absolutely noone doing any Linux setup themselves, I am the only one to do Linux support there. During the last six months (no new Linux terminals setup), I spent 15 hours total there for Linux administration. This came down to application installation (Win apps with wine, mostly) and a few software updates, as well as some changes to user groups (they can do user management themselves, but group permission questions are not their strong side, understandably - they are teachers, not IT pros). I had to go there twice (for a few minutes work each, actually) to restart the system (one serverwhich does the LDAP) after a power failure (and they were to *censored* to push the button of that server, which is a big blue button, you cannot not see it...) and once changing a RAM that went bad, crashing one of the servers. They run about 55 terminals, about half LTSP, half Sunray. The LTSP terminals are dual-boot to Windows 3.11 (yeah, running that for 12 years on that boxes! Different LTSP versions for 4 or 5 years or so) for some very special computer science programs that refuse to run on wine, let alone Windows 9x, 2000, XP, or 2003. I spent 3 hours getting DOS / Windows troubles solved (and there is a teacher who usually does that). Then there are 7 or 8 standalone windows PCs. I spent 8 hours in these months with problems on those boxes, and will have to reinstall one of those till the end of this week (which they are unable to because of those SATA drivers, and some more special geography software that is tricky to setup, and the proper dual-screen-setup). In working hours, the ratio is clearly for terminal services, in maintenance. The one-time setup hour count will be different, of course, although one server and 50 clients will expectedly not be much worse than 50 client full windows PCs, even with cloning (can you clone XP PCs, with all that activation hassle? Are you allowed to? Never cared...) Another nice thing is that I can do lots of tasks from remote with the Linux servers (and Windows server, in a certain grade, also). This makes "hmm, we have a certain problem" calls easy to diagnose. It often enough is a PEBKAC, but I can go sure, login to the server and see what happens. Like users shooting the quota, and the login failing because it wants to put a log entry which is refused.... changed that script, afterwards, always ready to learn :-) I prefer working locally though because my regular net uplink is fine for SSH but a pain for X. Should have a look into NX, never got around to that. Even compressed X sucks to much, I rather mount the motorcycle and take that 10 minute ride (and don't tell the police about me driving those 9km in 10 minutes, city center ;-) For Windows standalone boxes, remote admin is IMO a pain, beginning with the fact that the most occuring problems seems to be network connectivity related or the box not booting properly. I very much like that terminal setup. Looking forward to going up to 80 clients in April. Admittedly, I could spend more time for regular security updates on the Linux servers. I hate apt-get updating without me looking into it, so I only do that manually when I go there anyway, or at least once a month from remote. Good enough yet (and windows updates are not more frequent than that), and a few minutes each time "well spent". BR Anselm ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _____________________________________________________________________ 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
