[Author Prev][Author Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Author Index][Thread Index]

Re: [school-discuss] LTSP First Time



On Tue, 2004-04-13 at 15:34, daniel.hunt@iibbank.ie wrote:
> One thing that I am concerned about is that the computers teacher doesnt
> mind the pupils playing network
> games (such as AvP (Aliens versus Predator) or Quake etc ...) - I know in
> linux you can still play some FPS
> games, but with LTSP I can see this being a problem! :) Has anyone got any
> comments on this?

Hello Daniel,

What lucky pupils!

Unfortunately, you're not going to have an easy time getting 3D apps to
work well using LTSP, especially not those which are dependent on a
really fast response, such as games.

First thing you'd have to do is compile a kernel that your LTSP server
is going to serve out which will support the 3D features of the graphics
cards on your client machines.

I've been meaning to test this for a while now, but have yet to get
around to it. The bottleneck in terms of speed is going to be the
network connection. The way LTSP works is that the client processes
(such as, for example TuxRacer) that run on your central machine send
instructions on what to draw down the network cable so that the X server
process on your terminal can display the images for the user. This, as
you can imagine, is a lot slower than transfer across an internal AGP
bus to an onboard graphics card.

It would be interesting to try this out, but I believe that the results
are likely to be less than entirely satisfactory. LTSP really excels at
providing a windowed desktop for standard applications; the idea is that
you use a low power cpu/graphics setup at the client station and leave
gaming for other machines.

A possibility would be to have the machines dual booting; either from
their internal hard disk to run a gaming environment (whether that be
windows or Linux) or from the network to access the LTSP server Linux
desktop environment. This is probably the best way to get LTSP along
with gaming, but then of course, you still have 20 odd computers which
need individual attention.

Good luck.

Seb James.
-- 
Managing Director,   Educational Systems,  Hypercube Systems Ltd
         Providing Open Source ICT solutions for schools.
Tel: 0845 458 0277                Web: www.hypercubesystems.co.uk
Mob: 07900 958964               Email: seb@hypercubesystems.co.uk