[K12OSN] Support for a KDE-centric branch?

[Paul VanGundy]

Mike,

I personally like Gnome. I started out with KDE but now prefer Gnome. To
each his or her own as they say. However, instead of trying to make a
KDE centric LTSP distro, after you install K12LTSP just set the
DefaultSession to KDE... Second, KDE has a larger footprint then Gnome
traditionally because of the extra eye candy so it will require more
from a sysadmin's server. Users that are limited might not want to go to
KDE. If you're really stretched thin server wise use IceWM (least
favorite for me, but again to each his or her own). 

I guess I am saying this, I don't personally see the point in creating
K12LTSP (or a distro like it) that just has KDE on it when after you
install K12LTSP you can just change the DefaultSession to KDE...You know
what I mean? By no means is this meant to discourage you, it's just my
look on the idea. On your side, there is Edubuntu which is just like
K12LTSP but on the Ubuntu distro with the Gnome desktop manager. So why
not a Kedubuntu (example name) that would hold the KDE desktop manager
and serve up LTSP?

-Paul



On Sun, 2006-03-19 at 10:49 -0800, Mike Ely wrote:
> Hello list,
> 
> A lot of the questions I see in here have to do with issues of
> customizing or locking down various aspects of the desktop, login
> manager, etc.  The sad fact is that Gnome is *terrible* where this is
> concerned - the basic Gnome philosophy seems to be  that reduction of
> complexity is always a positive outcome.  While this may or may not be
> true for Grandma, it is far from what an LTSP administrator is going to
> need - one of the great benefits of an LTSP system is that you can make
> very specific changes on one server and have that change propagate to N
> number of desktops.
> 
> My experience over the years is that KDE is a much better fit for
> deploying LTSP systems in almost any environment, but particularly in
> K12 labs.  With KDE, you get the advantages that the desktop environment
> provides, while still being able to access GTK based applications, and
> you'll also have a better file browser and browse dialog and more mature
> desktop lockdown tools.
> 
> I'm sure that there are other people in here who feel this way.  I'm
> willing to put in work to create a base distribution for K12 people
> wishing to deploy LTSP in an easy fashion, a K12LTSP (KDE Edition) if
> you will, with all the educational software and ease-of-setup gained
> through the very hard work put in by K12LTSP, and all the advantages of
> the KDE environment.
> 
> My idea right now is to use OpenSuSE as the base distribution, as it's
> currently my hands-down favorite where KDE distros are concerned,
> although I'd be very willing to do this on Kubuntu, provided a timeline
> exists to work out some of the quirks in the Ubuntu method of doing
> LTSP.  I'd also want to see what sort of management tools are coming
> forward - YaST is in the end a very effective and easy tool to learn to
> use, and so far I haven't seen anything like it out there.
> 
> The point here is not to copy K12LTSP feature-for-feature, but rather to
> create a fully-integrated KDE-centric learning environment for LTSP
> systems that is easy to install, maintain, and use.  Where intersections
> exist in the versions, so much the better, but that's not necessarily
> the goal of this project.
> 
> Anyway, how about it?  Anyone willing to pitch in with me to help out
> with packaging and installer?  If the distro is to be OpenSuSE, I'm
> pretty sure the autoinstaller feature in YaST can be used to build
> ourselves a distro in short order.  The tricky bits would be integration
> of LTSP into the base install, which would involve creation of a YaST
> module and making sure that gets launched during the install process.
> Neither of those tasks are terribly difficult.  Other important
> discussion would involve selection of packages, defaults, etc.
> 
> If this discussion gains any traction, I'll create some web space and
> various tools (svn, etc) for us to get started on.  Let me know.
> 
> Cheers,
> Mike Ely
> 
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