[K12OSN] Preparing K12Linux F11

[Jeff Siddall]

> I agree with Terrel!
> In my experience in this 5 years of implementation of schools with no
> resources in SUDAMERICA, we get any machine for thin client!
> For this reason and because, and we no are the exception! like us
> other geverments of entire Argentinian Territory have thousand and
> thounsands of 486 with 4MB or 8MB and Pentium1 with 16MB ram max, we
> are decide build a micro distro that runs any of theese machines from
> 4 MB to up! using a vnc-client and a mini-kernel and a mini rootfs,
> all send via tftp and nfs to the clients.
> We are use a lot of 32 bit P4 server with only 1 or 2 GB RAM!
> The 80% of schools that I implement do no have internet, and 90% of
> schools I implement have i486 machines!
> The teachers tell me that they need use some aplications that they
> receive from lots of educational capacitations and all are .exe! and
> the rest are .swf!, foir that wine and flash for us is GOOD!
> The SOLUTION of no internet conection is: WIKIPEDIA OFFLINE.
> We have install the wikipedia spanish in all servers and the childrens
> can navigate trought that! is cool!
> I think lot time that create a spin of fedora with NO OPENOFFICE, but
> yes GNOME OFFICE, a web client more light that firefox, wine, some
> apps propietary like flash adobe, we will still use wikipedia and too
> a lot of applications that the goverment ask to use in the schools for
> ARGENTINA.
> Too I think will include the microsystem that runs 486 with 4MB ram,
> but I think in use a patch kernel like the CentOs k12, and use of
> course LTSP 4.2.* because I do no like the performance of fedora 10
> with my VNC clients in compare with CentOs k12 ltsp that are a marvel
> like runs my i486 clients! they boot in near 30 seconds with centosk12
> and looks very well! sorry for fedora, I love fedora, but today for us
> centosk12 still are the solution.
> Maybe some day I will build a spin of fedora for olds clients and servers.
> Sorry for my bad english and for my personal apreciations.
>>From Argentina
> Alberto Castillo
> Thank you for read me!
> Alberto Castillo

It seems like there are two user communities here.  One has legacy
hardware (like 486 machines, with no 64 bit servers) and the other,
which is the group I belong to, has modern hardware -- exclusively 64
bit servers and generally 586+ clients.

Given that there is a decade, or perhaps more, of Moore's law separating
the two groups it's pretty tough to make both happy!

My impression as a relatively new K12Linux user is that it is perhaps
the most bleeding edge of all LTSP distros, largely due to the fact that
it is based on the latest Fedora, which is one of the most bleeding edge
distros.  As such, K12Linux really does not seem like the right place to
try to support legacy hardware.

Further, LTSP5 is perhaps the wrong version to base a legacy hardware
LTSP distro on, given it's significantly increased resource requirements
from LTSP4.

Two solutions for supporting legacy hardware come to mind.  One is for
"someone" to continue to maintain a LTSP4 based distribution on an OS
with long term support (ie: CentOS).  The other is for "someone" to
create a custom K12Linux spin that takes out a lot of the weight of
K12Linux and optimizes it for legacy hardware.  Not sure of the
viability of these, or who the magical "someone" might be.

Thoughts?

Jeff