have thin clients had their day?
Dear All,
There was a thread on edubuntu a while ago suggesting that today's
demands (flash everywhere, streaming this and that) are too much for
thin clients and that we once again have to join the "hardware arms
race".
I just wanted to make some observations from my experience with lenny
ltspservers over the last few months.
1. Tux paint takes minutes to launch on thin clients after the first
three or four have started it.
2. Tux math brings my new quad core server with the good 4xpcie NIC
and Gbps switch to its knees, even though it has only 10 thin clients.
In fact I uninstalled tux math last week, I was so sick of it.
surely the above apps are staples of ltsp in schools? Googling shows
some bugs reported in ubuntu about a year ago, and some suggestion
that sound is to blame. Sound is disabled on my servers.
3. I gave an excercise using the excel spreadsheet available on
top500.org. Both servers had trouble keeping up. I thought it was
because of the size of the spreadsheet, but when given a similar
exercise using a very modest spreadsheet, the same thing happened.
Each student had OOcalc, kpdf and iceweasel open. Clients start to
slow down, then they stop responding, then I reboot the server.
4. I feel pressure to look into teaching podcasting and video, which
are ubiquitous today. I couldn't imagine even attempting either with
ltsp.
I hope that diskless workstations will become an easy option. I know
you are currently working on it, and thank you for that!
I also hope for a speedier ltsp that allows us to keep up with the
modern web. What will happen when we move to KDE 4? Could it be
possible to have a choice of a lighter wm?
If anyone has a way to solve the Tux-x problems, I hope you will share with me!
Thanks for all your work. everyone!
nigel
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