[K12OSN] I need help with an idea

[Les Mikesell]

On Wed, 2005-03-30 at 13:17, David Trask wrote:
> "Support list for opensource software in schools." <k12osn at redhat.com> on
> Wednesday, March 30, 2005 at 1:56 PM +0000 wrote:
> >
> >I think the idea is that the root filesystem NFS mounted by the client
> >will contain an essentially complete distribution for the client
> >architecture instead of a special mini-version that has to be
> >maintained separately.  That means anything you want to execute
> >locally would be available or at least installable via apt/yum.
> >You still have to deal with the issues of authentication and
> >getting the user's home directory mounted.
> 
> Would it be able to utilize the terminal's resources?  Processor,
> ram...etc.?   Is this sorta' like stateless linux?

It's more like ltsp than stateless in that the normal X startup
would probably still be 'X -query server' so the login and
desktop runs from the server.  The only difference from now
would be that all the apps are available locally.  If you
choose to run them locally you still have to work out the
details of starting them from the remote desktop and making
the window open in the right place.  If network authentication
works, you can ssh back to the terminal as the right user and
it would work to let ssh forwarding haul back the xwindow, but
it doesn't make much sense to have that overhead when the X display
and program are running on the same box - so there are some
details to work out.

For faster clients you would have the option to run like a
stateless linux diskless client in terms of starting the
window manager/desktop locally, but that reverses the problem.
Now you need to make program launchers for every application
that you want to run on the server instead of locally.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
    les at futuresource.com