[K12OSN] Preparing K12Linux F11

[Les Mikesell]

Terrell Prude' Jr. wrote:
>  
> 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....

Maybe, but don't forget the time it takes to load that local hard disk 
and keep it working in a hostile environment like a classroom.

> Here's an example of what I mean.
> 
> http://www.zareason.com/shop/product.php?productid=16183&cat=249&page=1

It's hard to argue with using local resources, but perhaps a drbl boot 
server booting fat clients with NFS roots is the next step - and being 
able to mix/match that with identical application access from thin 
clients and mostly-standalone systems.

Regardless, there is another piece to this puzzle that everyone is 
dancing around so far.  That is the inclusion of some easy way to load 
the stuff that Fedora is never going to include.  Eric was absolutely 
wonderful in providing those 'get-xxxx' scripts for the parts that make 
the system useful and in some cases also the yum repo to distribute 
them.   I don't see any reason to expect a distro that doesn't include 
those things to add them now.   Is there some other way this can be 
handled to bypass the issue? Perhaps an rpm that can be installed by 
clicking on a web link that adds the needed yum repositories and the 
get-xxx scripts.

-- 
    Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com