[K12OSN] K12LSTP 7

["Terrell Prudé Jr."]

Mel Wade wrote:
> Thanks Eric,
>
> I appreciate all the work that you and others do on this project.  It
> has been a big help here at our school.  We are currently in the
> planning stages of rolling out 200 thin clients for next school year. 
> This will involve 3 servers - 2 K12LTSP and one
> File/Print/E-mail/Authentication server in addition to the existing
> K12LSTP server..  So I'm just doing some thinking about the time
> schedule for the roll out and when I will build the servers.  I'd like
> the servers built and ready by the end of this school year so that I
> can concentrate on the thin clients during the summer, but I'm
> weighing that against using K12LSTP 7.
>

I agree; Eric deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for what he has been doing
for education.

Mel, if I were you, I'd hold out for the K12LTSP 5.0EL version.  The
reason for that is logistical.  Remember that Fedora Legacy is no more,
so if you want security fixes, you *have* to reinstall your OS every
year.  By contrast, I've been running K12LTSP 4.2EL for two years and
have not had to reinstall my operating system.  All I have to do is "yum
update", and I'm done.  This is trivially scriptable if you've got
multiple servers.  With the exception of sound on the new Flash 9, the
server has been trouble-free.  Additionally, it keeps a consistent user
interface for your users.  The kids aren't going to care much, but the
*adults*, i. e. the ones who actually have the authority to stop you,
tend to freak out at changes.

I've used Fedora-based K12LTSP for demos, and it's great for that.  But
my guys and I also have experienced some stability issues with Fedora on
our desktops (we now run CentOS, Ubuntu Dapper Drake, or Slackware for
that reason).  Fedora is, by its nature, bleeding edge, and I prefer not
to present my users with a perpetual-beta system that I've seen act
flaky at times (FC2, FC5, and FC6 in particular).  Others, obviously,
differ on this point, some of them greatly.

--TP