Re: Stability of Skole
On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 07:48:25AM -1000, R. Scott Belford wrote:
> For NGOs like the one I run in Hawaii, using older computers as thin-clients
> has been a life changer. With the introduction of LTSP 5, support for older
> clients suffered in Edubuntu. The K12LTSP is only supported in its CentOS
> flavor, though Warren is working hard to get Fedora up to speed with LTSP5.
indeed, ltsp5 has taken some performance hits from ltsp4, as it is based
on the host distribution rather than a finely-tuned distribution
designed specifically for thin-clients.
we've done a lot of work to improve the situation, but there still are
some resource limitations on getting ltsp5 running as fast as ltsp4. so
ltsp5 typically requires a little more ram and a little faster
processor.
on the other hand, there is much greater flexibility and more features
for ltsp5 out of the box, and all software for the host distro is
available to the thin-client (including security updates).
> It is my understanding that Skolelinux is less secure because you still use
> LTSP 4. It is my understanding that by not integrating LTSP 5 you are working
> with older, less stable code. It is my understanding that the features offered
> by LTSP 5 make it an obvious choice.
debian-edu (a.k.a. skolelinux) was actually the first linux distribution
to release with an ltsp5 style implementation (we called it MueKow back
then), although it was arguably not very good at the time, and some
people opted to use ltsp 4 with it still- i'm not sure of the numbers of
people still using ltsp4 with skolelinux.
i've personally been working hard on making the LTSP with the soon-to-be
released debian lenny (and thus debian-edu's lenny-based distribution) a
solid, flexible infrastructure for thin-clients, and debian-edu has done
a great job of integrating LTSP.
hope that information is useful, and good luck!
live well,
vagrant
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