Re: have thin clients had their day?
Hello Nigel,
I do see a bright future of thin clients. Ok - I'm a developer of a
open thin client environment (x2go), so I'm not neutral in my opinion,
but I really think there are some big advantages of server based
computing. In my case I'm really working every day on my central
server - sometimes with a thin client as we know it (diskless), some
times even on a cellphone connection and this is the big advantage
(and I can reconnect to the same session and resume it).
Today it may be ok to set the borders of a classroom to the room in a
building, but in future I really think, that students and teachers
should be able to access their desktop environments from where ever
they are - because companies will do it this way too.
A lot of people - including us - are working on the "multimedia
problem" with the most recent version of our project you even can use
skype installed on a server.
Red Hat has spend a lot of money on SPICE and there are some other OSS
solutions which in future could be combined with LTSP too. Regarding
your experience with LTSP I would like to point out, that we've
noticed that KDE4 is running very smoothly on terminal servers.
I hope the apperance of our project name is ok (as our project is part
of the "rheinland pfalz musterlösung" which is [based on] skolelinux).
Best Regards,
Heinz
2009/12/7 Nigel Barker <tech@hiroshima-is.ac.jp>:
> 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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