[K12OSN] K12Linux EL6 Preliminary Feasibility Assessment

[Brian Fristensky]

If you only have six clients, it may be easier to just find discarded 
i686's that you can get for free. Lots of people upgrade Windows 
machines after 3 - 4 years, and the discarded ones end up in the 
basement. Do you have any contacts at your local university or community 
college? Usually when they turn over computer labs, they have no place 
to get rid of the obsolete computers, and that can often mean anywhere 
from 20 to 50 machines that can no longer run a recent version of 
Windows, looking for a home. The advantage there is that usually, all 
machines will be exactly the same hardware, which simplifies things for 
LTSP.

The other thing to try is to get whoever sends out newsletters at your 
school to send out a request for donations of i686 machines. All you 
need are six parents who want to get rid of an old machine.

The important thing here is to circumvent the teacher who is whining for 
Windows by getting new donated computers for nothing - once again 
proving why the thin client/open source approach makes so much sense. A 
fait acompi will take the wind(ows) out of her sails.

Jomegat wrote:
> On 05/21/2011 01:51 AM, Burke Almquist wrote:
>> I guess my question is, who on the list is still using clients that 
>> aren't i686?
>> How many of them do you have, what are they, how long do you plan to 
>> keep using them, and are they even powerful enough for LTSP5?
>> Is lack of i586 support a deal breaker for anyone on the list, 
>> especially those who have pledged, or are considering pledging to 
>> this project?
>
> All six of my clients are 586's, and our teacher is agitating for 
> Windows.  Right now she's being told "there is no money," and I know 
> that if I open the door of getting new HW, I will lose the software 
> battle.  But EL5 has been working for me, and maybe in three years 
> things will be different.
>
>