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Re: [school-discuss] Major Linux school deployments



Many thanks for this useful synopsis.

David

----- Message from dmonty@xxxxxxxxxx ---------
    Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:42:09 -0700 (PDT)
    From: Dean Montgomery <dmonty@xxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: schoolforge-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 Subject: Re: [school-discuss] Major Linux school deployments
      To: schoolforge-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


----- "David M. Bucknell" <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This sounds fantastic.  Looking for client hardware.  Want to do
something similar, but am finding it hard to find decent thin client
hardware.  Too slow or limited.  Would love to hear how wrong I am.

Our diskless clients are ~$200 each - price goes up and down with the economy.

* MOBO: MCP6P M2+
* RAM: 1G
* CPU: AMD Sempron(tm) Processor LE-1250
* Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 6150 GPU
* http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/content.php?S_ID=370

===
About 3-4 years ago we were re-cycling used computers as hybrid diskless-ltsp clients. But we wanted to give end-users a better experience. We now run pure diskless clients which gives us:
* good 3d accelerated graphics support.
* good sound/video create/listen/edit support.
* good usb device support (thumb-drives, ipods, cameras, external dvd-drives, etc)
* less bandwidth needed for diskless - compared to ltsp.


==============
Below is a comparison list that we put together a while back...

=== Implementing Linux in your School(s) ===

There are 3 options:
1.LTSP – Linux Terminal Server Project.
2.Diskless.  (with ability to run software on server)
3.Fat Client.


#1 LTSP Pros:
-Easy to install and configure software.
-Been around a long time.
-Lots of related software and support.
-Supports very slow hardware with very little RAM.
-Supports 30-50 workstations per server.
-Installing software is easy - appears on all workstations.
#1 LTSP Cons:
-Can bog down the server.
-Sound and 3d acceleration do not work well.
-USB/Firewire/CDROM/Floppy etc can be tricky.
-Everything runs on the server so it can get bogged down with too much activity.
-Screen flickers when scrolling or heavy graphical games.
-Re-using old hardware means old hardware maintenance.
-Does not yet work well with wireless networks.

#2 Diskless Pros:
-USB/Firewire/CDROM/Floopy are nicely integrated in the desktop environment.
-Server does not get bogged down. Users are not affected by a single user's cpu intensive programs. -3d acceleration and sound work great as long as the cipset is supported by linux. -Hardware is faster/cheaper in 2007 (not forced to use slow hardware with 32MB ram).
-Supports over 100 workstations per server.
-Uses less network bandwidth.
#2 Diskless Cons:
-Requires faster hardware and more ram on the client. 800Mhz CPU, 500MB RAM min. -Relatively new for schools so there is not as much out-of-the-box support for diskless. The technitian has to do more -configuration.
-Does not yet work well with wireless networks.

#3 Fat Client Pros:
-Relatively easy to create an initial image and ghost.
-USB/CDROM/etc hardware are nicely integrated into the desktop environment.
-Low network bandwidth.
-Wireless network works well.
-3d acceleration and sound work well.
#3 Fat Client Cons:
-Updating software requires updating all hard drives (not centralized).
-Changes and tweaks require addressing each workstation.
--
Dean Montgomery
Network Support Tech./Programmer
dmonty@xxxxxxxxxx
School District #73



----- End message from dmonty@xxxxxxxxxx -----



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