[K12OSN] K12LTSP 4.2.4EL planning... how stable?

Robert Arkiletian robark at gmail.com
Fri Sep 1 18:03:15 UTC 2006


On 9/1/06, Petre Scheie <petre at maltzen.net> wrote:
>
> I'm not running K12LTSP 4.2EL, but I vote to leave it at LTSP 4.1.  Stability
> is its
> primary feature, and moving to LTSP 4.2, nifty as it might be, will
> inevitably introduce
> some problems for some people, and I see that as counter to its role.  If
> you want/need
> LDA, get version 5.  Eventually, LDA can/will be added to the CentOS base,
> but
> considering that two updates to LTSP 4.2 were added in just August, I
> would argue that
> it's too soon to be bolting it onto the 'stable' release for K12LTSP.
>
> And as cool as LDA is, adding fl_teachertool, which is also really cool,
> will prove more
> useful to most teachers; the kids might argue otherwise, but that just
> reinforces my
> opinion. ;-)


I agree completely Petre. Upgrading these packages

blender       2.37-2.k12ltsp.4.2.2EL    2.42-6.fc5
celestia      1.3.2-3.k12ltsp.4.2.2EL   1.4.1-5.fc5
childsplay    0.81.1-2.k12ltsp.4.2.2EL  0.83-1.fc5
DansGuardian  2.7.6-7.k12ltsp.0.4.0     2.9.7.1-0.k12ltsp.0.5.0.0
gcompris      7.1.1-4.k12ltsp.4.2.2EL   7.4-13.fc5
inkscape      0.43-1.k12ltsp.4.2.2EL    0.44-4.fc5
tuxmath       0.2001.9.7-0103           0.2005.10.11-0

is fine since even if they do pose a problem they can easily be removed and
replaced with the older rpm manually from 4.2.2.

I am probably biased towards Fl_TeacherTool but I think having the latest
version with the added vnc X extension would be fine. The only thing which
it would change in the LBE would be the added vnc module for the
Control/Monitor feature. That module does not get loaded unless people edit
lts.conf. People who are using Control/Monitor now in EL are using a
hackish/experimental method anyway. So I think that's a good idea. In any
case it can easily be disabled in lts.conf.

However, as enticing as LDA is I have read some posts with people having
issues with the new LTSP, like dropping older XFree86 3.3.6 and new power
management issues with 2.6 kernel. I think LDA and ltspfs are fantastic but
K12LTSP 5.0 is the first distro to include it and 5.0 has not been out for
very long. If people REALLY want LDA they have K12LTSP 5.0 as an option.

My thought is that RHEL 5 is supposed to come out around the end of the
year. Centos will probably be out by Jan/Feb 07 so a beta K12LTSP 5EL could
be available (providing Eric does his magic) by about March/April 07. IMO
this should be the stable version which should incorporate LTSP 4.2 and LDA.




My two cents.
>
> Petre
>
> Eric Harrison wrote:
> > I should also mention that I'm going to add fl_teachertool to 4.2.4EL...
> >
> > -Eric
> >
> > Eric Harrison wrote:
> >> CentOS 4.4 has been released & I've started work on K12LTSP 4.2.4EL.
> >>
> >> The question is how stable should the stable branch be?
> >>
> >>
> >> There are a half-dozen end-user applications that can be updated. These
> >> would be essentially back-ports from FC5 (K12LTSP 5.0). Does anyone
> >> using K12LTSP 4.2EL have concerns about bumping up to the
> >> latest-and-greatest of any of these packages?
> >>
> >>
> >> Package Name   K12LTSP 4.2.3EL version  Latest version
> >> ------------  ------------------------  ---------------------------
> >> blender       2.37-2.k12ltsp.4.2.2EL    2.42-6.fc5
> >> celestia      1.3.2-3.k12ltsp.4.2.2EL   1.4.1-5.fc5
> >> childsplay    0.81.1-2.k12ltsp.4.2.2EL  0.83-1.fc5
> >> DansGuardian  2.7.6-7.k12ltsp.0.4.0     2.9.7.1-0.k12ltsp.0.5.0.0
> >> gcompris      7.1.1-4.k12ltsp.4.2.2EL   7.4-13.fc5
> >> inkscape      0.43-1.k12ltsp.4.2.2EL    0.44-4.fc5
> >> tuxmath       0.2001.9.7-0103           0.2005.10.11-0
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> The real big question is whether or not to switch from LTSP 4.1 to LTSP
> >> 4.2? This is not an insignificant change, considering that the kernel
> >> for the terminals is changed from a 2.4 kernel to a 2.6 kernel.
> >>
> >> Considering that a "stable" branch should favor stability over shiny
> new
> >> features, I am currently leaning towards leaving K12LTSP 4.2.4EL with
> >> the older LTSP 4.1 packages. This is largely a question with upgrades,
> >> so I'd like to hear from those of you currently running K12LTSP 4.2.3EL
> .
> >> Are the new features in LTSP 4.2 (largely improved USB/CD/floppy
> >> support) worth the risk of potentially breaking some of your terminals?
> >>
> >>
> >> -Eric
> >>
> >>
> >
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> >
>
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-- 
Robert Arkiletian
Eric Hamber Secondary, Vancouver, Canada
Fl_TeacherTool http://www3.telus.net/public/robark/Fl_TeacherTool/
C++ GUI tutorial http://www3.telus.net/public/robark/
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