[K12OSN] Where is K12LTSP at?

[Warren Togami]

Rob Owens wrote:
> If you're looking for something longer life than Fedora / LTSP 5, you
> could try Debian Lenny or Ubuntu Hardy, both with LTSP 5.  Or you
> could stick with CentOS / LTSP 4.2.  I know there's also an OpenSuse
> implementation of LTSP 5, but I don't know much about that
> distribution or its life cycle.

http://k12ltsp.org/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page
"K12LTSP is considered to be LEGACY software that is usable with old 
hardware until CentOS5 support ends in the year 2014. If you need modern 
LTSP 5.x features or modern client hardware, then you will want to use 
K12Linux.org."

K12LTSP EL5 uses the ancient LTSP-4.2.  This is beneficial in that you 
get security updates for the server and desktop applications on the 
server until the year 2014.  Ubuntu and Debian releases do not last 
nearly *that* long.

The other benefit of K12LTSP EL5 is it works with more ancient client 
hardware due its ancient version of X and kernel.  This is also a 
detriment though... because lots of modern client hardware will not work 
at all.

K12Linux F10 has the benefit of modern LTSP5 features like sound, local 
storage devices, local apps support, and modern X allows modern client 
hardware to work.  The drawbacks however are:

* Modern X broke some older client hardware.  These are upstream x.org 
bugs.  They will only be fixed if people take the time to file the bugs 
upstream instead of just complain about them.  I personally don't have 
time nor hardware to work on this.  I have a dozen different modern thin 
clients of AMD Geode, VIA, Intel and Radeon chipsets and they all work 
great with K12Linux.
* It needs more RAM on the client, at least 128MB to be safe.
* Support ends early 2010.

The support problem isn't too bad.  Just use K12Linux F10 until K12Linux 
EL6 (RHEL6 + EPEL6) is out.  Then upgrade once into that version which 
will be supported for many years thereafter.

Warren Togami
wtogami at redhat.com

> 
> Somewhere on the LTSP wiki I think there are instructions for how to
> use an Ubuntu-based chroot environment on any other distro.  There's
> a guy on the ltsp-discuss list who uses LTSP 5 on CentOS in this way.