On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 12:52:39PM -0800, john wrote: > Hi all, > > One of the reasons I originally found LTSP compelling was the modest > specs required of the thin clients. Lately I've been feeling like my > flavor of Linux/LTSP (ubuntu) has entered the same kind of systems > requirement arms-race that I thought I left behind when we moved away > from workstations running XP. > I used to be able to run PII's with 128 mb ram no problem. These days > 256 Mb on the client seems to be the minimum and 512 > is preferred. I still have lots of PII's lying around, and I suspect > vast portions of LTSP's potential user base may be working with older > technology as well. If the future of LTSP means you have to buy new > hardware to use it seems like a much less compelling solution. > > Perhaps my complaints are not really LTSP related (I have minimal > experience with other Distros with LTSP packages), and perhaps the > "fat client" approach is an attempt to get around this issue to some > degree. I am sure someone will set me straight if I > am conflating two different issues. :-) > > So is LTSP 4.2 the answer for older clients, or is there something > else to consider here?
Well, there's several things at play here. Although the LTSP written portions of LTSP continue to remain nice and small (i.e. ltspfs, ldm, jetpipe, etc)... 1) Base system requirements have gone up. Most distros are using their "default" kernel for a thin client. The default kernel has a LOT of support built in for things that aren't (usually) found on a thin client (RAID cards, ISDN adapters, etc). This adds to bloat. 2) With the move of the kernel to purge itself of absolutely *everything* that can be handled in userspace, and push it out to udev/hal/whathaveyou, you've now got more daemons running that you used to before. 3) The stock udev that is used by most distros contain all the rules necessary for all the drivers included in point 1, making udev function "slower". If you look at the boot up of a thin client these days, it's spending the bulk of it's time looking for devices in the thin client. Once it's done that, the rest of the boot is lightning quick. 4) Xorg has gotten bigger, with more devices, and more fancy bling. 5) "The World" has gotten more complicated. On LTSP 3.x, I had old Netscape, WordPerfect 8, and an IceWM window manager, Now everyone (at a minimum) expects: a) Local devices b) Local sound c) Flash d) Anti-aliased TTF fonts e) 1280x1024 minumum. And people WANT: f) Full desktop, with lots of animation g) "Oh, yeah, and I want compiz too!" In the "old" days, you had an 8 meg video card, and it was fine, because "old" netscape didn't try to cache things in the local X pixmap cache, and besides, no one had high-speed internet, so everyone kept images to less than 50k anyway. Now, people just post their 8M tiff's direct on the web page. Yikes. All of this conspires to drive up cpu somewhat, but ram more. I'm not sure what a solution is. Part of it may be solved by distros offering, or users posting instructions how to make, scaled down "light" versions of the kernel, and udev rules, which will eliminate some of the bloat. People keep trying to turn back to 4.2, thinking that somehow, it's a panacea. Like all nostalgia, it's a pleasant thought. A couple of days later, they're wondering how to recompile the kernel because their ethernet adapter isn't supported by 4.2, and oh, can I compile a newer version of X for 4.2 since it's only x.org 6.9 in there, and my new videocard isn't there, and hey, why do I have to do all this fiddling to get localdevs to work, it just works out of the box on LTSP5, and how to I get sound in Flash again 'cuz I *NEED* that...etc etc etc. As minimum specs for a Linux box rise (as they inevitably do) although a thin clients will be substantially LESS, they're not going to stay the same forever. That's my view, anyway. Scott -- Scott L. Balneaves | I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me Systems Department | as much as a week sometimes to make it up. Legal Aid Manitoba | -- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H _____________________________________________________________________ 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
