[K12OSN] K12LTSP status

[Robert Arkiletian]

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:53 AM, Luis Montes <monteslu at cox.net> wrote:
> Les Mikesell wrote:
>>
>> On 7/12/2010 10:26 AM, Gavin Spurgeon wrote:
>>>
>>>> Does anyone know what the likelihood is of CentOS 6 and LTSP 5 being
>>>> packaged?
>>>
>>> I have already said that I am willing to take over the packaging of the
>>> .rpms for Fedora/RHEL but I am in the process of trying to take over the
>>> packages on the Fedora Packages System but this is a slow process and we
>>> are still trying to contact the current owner and sort things out. Once
>>> this gets done the 1st thing on the TODO list is to package teh latest
>>> version of LTSP for F13 and of course get things ready for upcoming
>>> versions of RHEL.
>>>
>>> Hope this helps...
>>
>> I think the nature of the usage is such that if it doesn't have a solid
>> release by early/mid August, most of the potential US users will have to
>> stick with K12LTSP EL5 another year - at least if ltsp4 works on their
>> clients.
>>
> This would be extremely unfortunate.  One thing that I haven't been able to
> run on Centos5 is Google's Chrome.  As more and more sites ditch flash in
> favor of javascript+HTML5, this is becoming really important.  Firefox is
> good, but  Chrome is much faster.
>
> Chrome running an LTSP5  local app would be even better.
>

RHEL6 most likely won't be out before Halloween which means CentOS6
will probably come in early 2011. Then somebody like Gavin will have
to make packages of K12Linux for it. So I would plan for a K12Linux
based on CentOS6 for next school year (Sept 2011). Unless you are
brave enough to switch mid year (I'm not).

But if a newer distro is that important (for Chrome and the like) then
why not just use Fedora 12 now. It's ready and stable. Plus RHEL6 is
mostly based on F12 anyway. Yes F12 is going to stop getting updates
in Nov but if you're not running services on it that are publicly
accessible, all you really need to make sure is your browser+plugins
are up to date.

BTW if all your clients are strong enough to run the most demanding
and resource hungry app (Chrome) locally, then DRBL may be an option
for you.

Just a side note: I never really feel comfortable with Fedora in a
production environment like ltsp or drbl until it's been out for at
least 2-3 months.

-- 
Robert Arkiletian
Eric Hamber Secondary, Vancouver, Canada