[K12OSN] Crazy OSX thought

Jim McQuillan jam at mcquil.com
Sat Jan 29 05:21:09 UTC 2005



On Fri, 28 Jan 2005, Jim Kronebusch wrote:

> Is the concept feasable to make and /opt/ltsp/osx that contains the
> necessary items to boot OSX over LTSP on true thin terminals?

That would be OSX for PPC thin clients.  Unless you are talking about
porting OSX to the x86 platform.  Probably not an easy thing to do.

>
> Is it as simple as packaging a running OSX directory structure and placing
> it there, then calling on the proper kernels with something along the lines
> of yaboot?  What is the basic process that goes into making the opt/ltsp
> directories?

That would be sort of like loading an entire redhat distribution into a
subdirectory, maybe /opt/ltsp/redhat.  and netbooting a thin client to
mount that directory.

The problem is, it ends up running a whole boat load of stuff that isn't
needed in a thin client environment.  The whole init process is way too
bloated for a thin client.  No reason to run sendmail or cron or any of
the other services that a typical Unix/Linux box runs at startup.

Sure you could cut it down to the bare minimum, but when you are
finished, does it really end up looking like OSX?


And, if you want to see the basic process that goes into making the
/opt/ltsp directories, download the LBE from cvs, and build it.  That
generates the entire ltsp tree.


>
> I just ask becuase it would add another dimension to LTSP's capabilities and
> further help "sell" the idea.  I know you can netboot OSX but that seems so
> old hat :-)

It wouldn't be LTSP anymore.  It would be OTSP or something else.

>
> It would be very cool to run multiple sessions on a booted thin
> simultaneously and be able to hot key between OSX, Fedora, and Terminal
> Services.  Then I could still maintain a completely thin LTSP computing
> environment yet still have operating system diversity at your fingertips.

You want to run multiple operating systems on a single thin client
simultaneously?  If you could pull it off, you might get the best of all
worlds, but keep in mind, you'd also be getting the worst of all worlds.

The whole idea of LTSP and thin clients is to keep it all simple.
Simple to manage, simple to install, simple to use.

Sorry, I don't mean to knock your idea.  If it's something you are
interested in, go for it.  that's the cool thing about this free
software stuff.  There is NO barrier to entry.  Anybody who's got an
idea can just jump in, and run with it.  AND, they don't have to start
at zero.  They can start with something that already works, and build on
top of it.

Jim McQuillan
jam at Ltsp.org



>
> Jim Kronebusch
> Cotter Tech Department
> 507-453-5188
>
>
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