Re: [school-discuss] Project developing free school server solution

[ian <ian.lynch2@ntlworld.com>]

On Sat, 2003-10-18 at 11:46, Bjoern Scheuermann wrote:
> Am Samstag, 18. Oktober 2003 02:39 schrieb ian:
> > On Fri, 2003-10-17 at 22:39, Bjoern Scheuermann wrote:
> > > In fact, we're discussing skolelinux as a basis for our system.
> >
> > What are you proposing for thin client support? Also print management is
> > an issue in schools from thin client. Thin client for schools provides a
> > good transition from Windows to Linux. You can use the local clients
> > running Windows with applications that are education specific but only
> > run on Windows and thin client for productivity such as OO.o, Mozilla,
> > E-mail etc. This breaks out of the MS upgrade cycle but maintains
> > compatibility. We have a number of networks based on Mandrake running in
> > schools here in the UK using this model.
> 
> In our earlier versions we have support for a remote-boot linux, but not yet 
> any thin client support. This also provides the ability to use Linux and 
> Windows on all clients in parallel without having to maintain local Linux 
> installations (and it requires much less resources on the server).
> 
> But on our to-do-list for the new version thin client support / terminal 
> server is a point, especially to be able to use old (486+) client hardware 
> with modern software. 

We have implemented a number of large networks in schools here in
England and we have found that really its not viable to use 486s. These
machines are often lacking in video RAM and in a mixed environment we
don't want users comparing their Linux thin client screens unfavourably
with Windows. We insist on clients having at least 2 meg of display
memory for 1024 x 768 in 16 bit colour. Also the hardware of really old
machines starts to become unreliable. There are plenty of P100s up at
very low or no cost so messing about with 486s is not really
cost-effective.


> We have not worked on this yet, but we're going to 
> evaluate the skolelinux terminal server as well as K12LTSP and then decide 
> how this can and will be realized.

We use Nymph thin clients as adopted by Mandrake and I believe Suse. We
tried K12LTSP but found that although better known and probably better
documented it was not as technically advanced.


-- 
ian <ian.lynch2@ntlworld.com>