[K12OSN] K12LTSP 5.0.0 Released!

[Eric Harrison]

Come one, come all! Come get your shiny new bits and bytes!

K12LTSP version 5.0 is now available for your downloading pleasure.


Pentium/Xeon/Athlon/etc 32bit version:

     http://sunsite.utk.edu/ftp/pub/linux/k12ltsp/5.0.0-32bit/iso/
     ftp://k12linux.mesd.k12.or.us/pub/K12LTSP/5.0.0-32bit/iso/
     rsync -Pav k12linux.mesd.k12.or.us::K12LTSP-5.0.0-32bit/ .


Opteron/EM64T/etc 64bit version:

    http://sunsite.utk.edu/ftp/pub/linux/k12ltsp/5.0.0-64bit/iso/
    ftp://k12linux.mesd.k12.or.us/pub/K12LTSP/5.0.0-64bit/iso/
    rsync -Pav k12linux.mesd.k12.or.us::K12LTSP-5.0.0-64bit/ .



K12LTSP 5.0 is based on Fedora Core 5, which includes all sorts of
new stuff. Of primary interest to K12LTSP users:

     * This release of Fedora includes Mono support for the first time,
       and Mono applications such as Beagle, a desktop search interface;
       F-Spot, a photo management utility; and Tomboy, a note-taking
       application.

     * There is dramatically improved internationalization support with
       SCIM in Fedora Core 5. The SCIM language input framework provides
       an easy to use interface for inputting many different non-English
       languages.

     * For all of the dirty-details, see the full release notes at:
       http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/fc5/release-notes-ISO/

K12LTSP includes LTSP version 4.2. LTSP-4.2 offers lots of great 
improvements, including:

     * Redesigned local device support based on ltspfs and lbus. Currently,
       USB Memory sticks, USB CDRom, IDE CDrom and floppy drives are
       supported. With local devices enabled, when you insert a memory
       stick or a CDRom, an Icon appears on the desktop that is browseable.
       Remove the memory stick or CDrom, and the icon disappears.

     * We've reduced the amount of memory needed on a thin client by
       about 7mb. This is really significant for low-memory machines.

     * Updated to the 2.6.16.1 kernel.

     * Swap over NBD. We've used NFS-Swap in the past, but that's not
       available in the 2.6.x series kernels. We wrote a new ltspswapd
       daemon that runs on the server, to provide NBD swapfile management.

     * udev has completely replaced devfs. This causes a significant
       speedup in the boot time, and better hotplug capabilities for
       local devices.

     * SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) is now included in LTSP, so you
       can plug scanners into the thin clients, and access them from
       anywhere on the network.

     * Multi-head X - The ability to have multiple video cards and
       multiple monitors connected to a single thin client. Very handy
       for extreme programming, where you just need more space to open
       up more windows.

     * Faster client booting. We've really made some great progress here.
       By switching from devfs to udev, and by making lots of improvements
       to the startup scripts, we've decreased the boot time dramatically.
       On our test workstations (LTSP T-170's from DisklessWorkstations.com),
       we've gotten the boot time down to 22 seconds! That's 22 seconds from
       pressing the power button, to having a graphical login screen.
       THAT is fast.

     * VNC module that can be used by Fl_Teachertool to Monitor or
       Control a thin client. Note that is disabled by default. To enable
       this feature, you must do the following:


       1) Edit the file /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/lts.conf and uncomment
          (remove the "#") from the following line:

                  X4_MODULE_02 = vnc

       2) Now you'll have to make a password for the vnc-session. Run this
          command as root:

                 /usr/bin/vncpasswd

       3) Copy the password file into the ltsp-tree

                cp -R -p /root/.vnc /opt/ltsp/i386/root/