[K12OSN] k12ltsp distribution thoughts...

[rmiller at seminole.k12.ga.us]

Luis wrote:
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Forgive me if this has been asked before, but why is k12ltsp an entire distro and not just a yum repository?

I understand that k12ltsp makes it easy to do LTSP installs at the time of installing the operating system, especially for new users. I aslo understand that people may wish to install an LTSP server that may not have internet access readily available, but there are ways around those issues.
We could do local installs with an iso or tarball of all the k12ltsp rpms for a specific spin of fedora, say Fedora7's launch release. Also, the latest fedora installer lets you specify additional yum repositories for cases when an internet connection is readily available at the time of install.

I very much appreciate the work Eric Harrison does on this project, and if lifting the burden of full CD/DVDs and non-ltsp updates from him would help out, I'm all for it.

Luis
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I can't speak for Eric, but I believe his intention is to make it easier and more readily accessible to schools and school personnel who either don't have the budgets to keep funding Micro$oft or to continuously replace aging hardware everytime a new version of Winwhatever comes or who don't have the expertise or manpower to implement Linux and add-on other bells and whistles like LTSP. It's kind of a "one-stop-shop" for those who want to jump into the FOSS world.

I'm fairly good with Netware (3, 5, & 6) and have some Windows experience, but K12LTSP is my first real experience into Linux. I learn something new every day. Linux (and K12LTSP) is not a "be all, fix all", but it's getting there. Sure, it'll never be too simple to install, but for universal acceptance, it's got to get more user friendly.

Sure, you can install it your way. Anyone fairly competent in Linux could do it. K12LTSP is for the rest of us. I like having one place to go. Even with this, there's a lot of tweaking that has to be done. I'm not even using version 6 anymore and not going to try 7. Why? 5.0EL. It totally rocks, I've set up 2 different computer labs at our elementary school to use as test beds and so far so good. I had to do a lot of tweaking to get sound to work in Flash, but other than that, it's pretty solid. I do have problems with the server slowing up occasionally. It's a 2.4Ghz Xeon with 4 GB ram, 2 GB nic's, and dual 30GB SCSI's. Actually, both servers are configured the same.

I'm excited about the potential for this technology, if my test labs are successful and I continue to learn more about Linux and how to make it sing, we'll probably begin moving everything (as much as feasible) over to this platform.

Pardon my lengthiness, but please consider us newbies. We're trying - we just need a few crutches. One more comment, as for the user friendliness, if it's going to stay as stable as it is, it'll never be too user friendly. Remember the old saying, "make a system that's completely idiotproof and only an idiot will want to use it.

Keep up the good work, Eric!

Ronnie