>I have to ask, being an Ubuntu-only LTSP shop (right now, anyway) - are
>there issues regarding Firefox? OpenOffice? Crashes of any kind? Do you
>use Java web browser plugins? Flash? Light multimedia?
For the world at large, Ubuntu Hardy may be another wonderful update in the
long line of successful updates, but for me- an LTSP user- it's felt like a bit
of a disaster.
PolicyKit, introduced in Hardy, prohibits you from using the administrative
GUIs on thin clients. You can only do administrative work (with GUIs) at
console, without fiddling with it. I don't mind using the command line, but to
suddenly discover this, and have to adjust, was annoying.
Firefox 3, seems to be a regression in terms of stability. It crashes on
graphics intensive pages, it crashes with Flash. npviewer seems to get stuck
at times and uses lots of CPU, on 64-bit machines. I still get rogue java-vm
processes that persist and start gobbling all of the CPU. We've tried using the
64-bit browser with the wrapper. Then we've tried using the 32-bit browser on
64-bit machines. Neither solution is terribly robust. I haven't been bitten by
the bug where it will only launch for four or five users then start locking
up... yet- but reports of this are worrisome, indeed.
LTSP seemed to have more problems with my Geode based devices. Jetpipe which
has at times been broken, seems to have disappeared completely at least from
some versions of Hardy. We've taken to making our own LTSP packages to get
around this.
With Ubuntu, there is a certain pressure to upgrade- if you want your users to
have the latest versions of, say, OpenOffice. You need to upgrade (in my case
because of weird bugs with print drivers we need to use) because they are so
conservative with backports, but then you must endure all of the regressions.
Also, Feisty and Gutsy-packaged OpenOffice suffered from nasty crashers that
were specific to the Ubuntu packages. So you must go through hoops to install
the Sun versions, which don't integrate quite as nicely.
I can't really point to one thing in Hardy that is an unalloyed improvement
over Feisty for my LTSP users.
Hence, my search for another distro.
Actually, Intrepid pre-release has seemed less-crufty than Hardy. But I'm
almost afraid to try testing it.
--Patrick
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