On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 10:50:35AM +0300, Jari Turkia wrote: > Andrew Ziem wrote: > >> Official support for LTSP 4.2 is pretty much gone. > >> > > Any interest in compiling the latest X.org for LTSP 4.2? Probably not, > > but I had to ask. :) > > > > > I can relate to what you're experiencing with your Dells. I'm running a > few HP:s and they have similar symptoms on various issues. > > This is IMHO / two cents worth / you-can-ignore-my-mad-blabbering: > 4.2 to 5.0 is way too big jump. 5.0 requires some level of support in > the distro itself. The support may come from distro vendor or from a 3rd > party. Ok, Ubuntu/Debian is the most popular distro there is, but what > about rest 70% of us? The guys at LTSP are doing a great job, but this > current development of "must-have-Ubuntu" makes me wanna spit! > End-of-mad-blabbering.
You don't have to have ubuntu: we provide tarballs up on the website that have an LTSP 5 chroot. Download and install on any distro. And more to the point: LTSP is becoming "plumbing", i.e., it should be provided by your distro. It was getting way, WAY to difficult for the small amount of developers (less than 5 regular contributors) to maintain an entire distro on their own: because that's exactly what LTSP is: a mini distribution. We published the MueKow spec, and Ubuntu stepped right up to the plate, and said "We like that, lets do it", with Debian following closely behind. This model requires distro's to get involved, as it needs to be built using the distro's own packages. Ubuntu and Debian see the value, and have stepped up to the plate. Fedora's doing some work, and we've seen some intrest from Gentoo and Slackware. The LTSP team is interested in helping ANY and ALL distros get LTSP5 support included, but we need help from the distros themselves. > The only reasonable thing to do is to extend support for 4.2 somehow. > Project's resources are tied up into 5.0 so, the only viable thing would > be to create a spin-off project. This, however, is likely to fail due to > lack of developer interest. A working community is required and building > one is not that easy. > > In my imagination a spin-off LTSP 4.3 could be done if at least five > able and willing developers could be found to collaborate. That would mean: > - improving already abandoned LBE (the LTSP build environment / > cross-compiler) > - making LBE to run on GCC 4.x > - upgrading LBE parts, glibc, binutils > - making LBE run properly on various distros Ubuntu / RHEL / Fedora / > SuSE / Gentoo / etc. > - upgrading LTSP software > - latest X, latest kernel, latest Perl, latest Samba, latest <name > your favorite part> For the amount of work this would entail, for all the different distros, you'd be much better off doing what I'll outline below. > I¨m not calling a mutiny here. Sure you are. :) Please, don't try to make it other than it is: You're advocating maintaining the OLD way of doing things. This OLD way of doing things had the following disadvantages: 1) A very small number of developers has to maintain an entire GNU/Linux distribution, which has to compile/install on a huge number of hosts. 2) Continue to have problems attracting a developer pool. (in seven years, we managed to attract 3 steady developers. Since moving to LTSP5, on ONE or TWO distros, we doubled or tripled that) 3) Continue forever to be an "addon" package, that won't ever be included in any distribution by default. Every distro does their own Q and A on their distro bits they ship (like glibc, kernel, etc), and they're not going to ship binaries that they're not in control of: hence the need to build LTSP from the distro's packages 4) Because of the small developer pool, we go back to the way it was security wise: no real emphasis on keeping up to date with kernel bugs, glibc bugs, etc. > This does not mean any disrespect to > project or developers and their decisions. All I'm saying is that I > cannot go to the direction they're pointing to and there is pretty much > nothing I can do about it. There's PLENTY you can do about it: 1) Read the LTSP5 spec, and understand it. 2) Advocate with your distro: "Hey, Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora are working on/have implemented LTSP5 in the distro!! Why aren't we, especially when the LTSP developers have said thay're HAPPY to work with distro people to get it integrated!" 3) Begin an integration process. It's not as hard as you think: base integration's pretty easy. Localdev and sound complicate things a bit, but to get to the point where you've got a login screen, and get your X running's not that bad. Especially NOW since you've got a working example to deal with: the ltsp5 plugin architechture was DESIGNED to allow other distros to plop in the bits they need for their specific distro. 4) Find/coerce/pay some developers to START an integration process for you. This isn't going to entail ANY LESS WORK than your other option (keeping LBE going), and, whats better, if you do it this way, you'll be able to say: emerge ltsp-server, or pkginst ltsp-server, or yum install ltsp-server, or whatever. It will use your distro's tools, your distro's update mechanism, etc etc. And if your distro isn't as forward thinking as some others, well, we'll always provide some tarballs for people. However, if your distro ISN'T that forward thinking, perhaps thats some food for thought. Thin client's coming. Everywhere. And just like a distro should supply a graphical desktop, and a browser, and a mail tool, it should provide a thin client solution. We're here to help the distros get LTSP integrated. Help US to help THEM. Scott -- Scott L. Balneaves | "Eternity is a very long time, Systems Department | especially towards the end." Legal Aid Manitoba | -- Woody Allen ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. 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