[K12OSN] icewm vs gnome

[Brian Beck]

Nathan Sinton wrote:
> I am getting ready to roll out a terminal server at my school.  It
> will be a dual 2.2 Ghz Xeon server with 2 GB of ram and will run
> k12ltsp 4.2.0.  I'm using the IBM Linux client migration cookbook
> (http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg246380.pdf) for my
> cross-platform authentication. (detailed in chapter 7)  each student
> will have their own account with a home directory on a windows 2000
> server.  I'm using IBM's solution for mounting home directories so
> they will be mounted over samba.  since symbolic links are not
> supported over samba it looks like I can't use KDE.  I would like to
> know what window manager you would recommend and why, or if anyone has
> a solution to get KDE running with a samba mounted home directory. 
> IBM's suggestion of mounting the samba share in a subdirectory of the
> user's home directory will be my LAST resort if nothing else works.
> 
> Thanks,
> -Nathan
> 
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I run a similar server - Dual Opteron 240s, 2GB of RAM, and currently 
K12LTSP 4.1.1 while I'm configuring an LTSP server on a Gentoo install. 
  It depends on how many terminals you expect.  The server I run is in a 
lab with 32 terminals; often all are in use simultaneously.  Gnome and 
KDE are huge resource hogs; I find that IceWM looks very nice (very 
familiar to the students, who are used to a Win9X interface), is quick, 
and has a tiny memory footprint compared to Gnome and KDE.  In an LTSP 
environment, it's probably the best Window Manager available for a mix 
of usability and low resources.