[K12OSN] Preparing K12Linux F11

[Terrell Prude' Jr.]

Jeff Siddall wrote:
> 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?
>   

Fortunately, we already have an excellent LTSP4-based distro today, and 
that's K12LTSP 5EL, which will be supported until the year 2014.  I'd 
suggest that any CentOS 6-based K12Linux also include LTSP 4 as an 
optional "for legacy hardware" installatation.  The Fedora releases 
should stay bleeding edge, because that's the whole point of Fedora.

But now we're getting to a point where LTSP might no longer be a good 
business case.

The whole point of LTSP was to be able to reuse old computers as thin 
clients to save both money and the environment.  IIRC, for a time, Jim 
McQuillan himself even resold Dell OptiPlex GX1's as a thin-client 
option not so long ago.  If we're now going toward super-powerful (and 
increasingly expensive) thin client hardware, then we have a problem.  
As a buyer, I'd be better off spending the extra $20 for a full-fledged 
PC and install my choice of distro on the hard disk (Ghost, Kickstart, 
however).  Oh, and I just saved the expense of buying an LTSP server.  
Whoops....

Here's an example of what I mean.

http://www.zareason.com/shop/product.php?productid=16183&cat=249&page=1

--TP