[K12OSN] K12ltsp Qemu usage

[Barry Cisna]

Hello All,

       Just wanted to share an experience here  hoping it may help someone
else. I've been using Qemu for over a month in one computer lab on
Windows boxes that were bought new one year ago. This sounds like a
lot of extra work,but I have come to find out it was worth the
"experiment". This would be for the people that cant "give up
Windows fat clients". I installed a FC5 install via network of the
K12ltsp CD's. Then added the qemu & kmod-kqemu / accelerator rpm's.
Then installed Winder's Xp pro onto the fat clients.The nice thing
about this arrangment is Qemu has an overlay option,so if someone
kills the system files,or has "lost" icons,or whatever you simply
remove the overlay,to original windows install then re-create your
overlay and the machine is going again. Much the same as system
restore only a one click,and going again,affair! Takes all of about
2 minutes.
Really no need for anything like Deepfreeze,,either with this setup. I
tested on several pc's before diving into this. I found you should have a
minimum 0f 376mb ram,,then start emu with the -m 256 switch for the
windows guest OS. You'll never get quite the response running
emulation,,as you would "hardware" but is very acceptable. All sound cards
are the same this way,as well as video, nics, etc.
 I just made up a startup script to start Qemu at FC5 login, and made the
FC5 to auto-logon,,so bootup time ends up being about 120 seconds .versus
a normal windows bootup of about 45-50 secs.You are booting FC5 ,then
Windows on top of it afterwords. Some people may not like ths.You have
the reliablity of Linux,with Winders. riding on top of it for the Windows
users.
Sorry for long post.

Barry Cisna
westcentral school