RE: [K12OSN] perhaps a radical idea

["Jim Kronebusch" <jim winonacotter org>]

I agree with both sides in this and the originating email.  On one hand
the first time I installed K12LTSP (3.1.2) I booted the machine up after
a flawless install and everything was preconfigured and
worked....Awesome!  On the other hand I am running into hurdles of
different heights when trying to build a lab of mixed breed machines.
There are a lot of Macintosh machines in schools, some older and some
newer.  Machines that are donated are usually intel based and slower,
but in time these donated machines will be 800MHZ machines not 180MHZ.
Some of the existing machines are not slouches and could be used in a
FAT client scenario.  Now if I take the packaged LTSP and put it on all
intel based machines whether thin or fat the world is a happy and easy
place.  If I want to have a fat or thing mac client the world starts to
suck.  On the older powermacs I cannot find an easy package yet for thin
and I have not successfully compiled all the apps on say a yellowdog or
mandrake for fat.  If LTSP was offered as a complete package and as an
addon package it would make my life easier.  But better yet maybe there
should be a package that suits both platforms.  I have to imagine my
scenarios are very common.  No matter what the outcome LTSP should have
a package for both platforms, both fat and thin and allow them to
intermingle.  

I know I don't ask for much.  

-----Original Message-----
From: k12osn-admin redhat com [mailto:k12osn-admin redhat com] On Behalf
Of Jim Hays
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2004 11:55 AM
To: k12osn redhat com
Subject: Re: [K12OSN] perhaps a radical idea


While I agree with some of your points about commecial distributions
(which Fedora is not not one), I disagree with the idea of turning
K12LTSP into a set of "scripts" that you can put on top of another
disctibution.

Here is a case in point:

A couple of weeks ago, several "Tech-Geeks" (http://www.tech-geeks.org)
gathered at a small grade school in a small town in SE Illinois.  We
installed K12LTSP in their media center lab to "recover" some older
hardware (and release them from the grips of a certain software
company).  The tech person at this school is not a Linux "geek".  If she
had to add scripts to the top of a distribution, she never would have
agreed to, nor convinced her sup't to agree to, trying K12LTSP.  There
are many more tech coordinators in schools that have NO Linux experience
that there are who have Linux experience.  The ones that I know with
Linux experience at all gained that experience from trying K12LTSP.

Having K12LTSP as a complete package - tied to a particular Linux
distribution with the simple install - is EXACTLY what makes it
palatible to many people.  

K12LTSP is a great project as it is.  It has legs.  It is growing.  (I
know that I convinced my Sup't to increase the number of K12LTSP clients
that we are runnign for next year.)  Changing anything now would be a
mistake.  Fedora won't die.  There are too many people running K12LTSP
to let that happen.

If you are enough of a Linux guru to add the LTSP pacakges to the top of
Debian, or Gentoo, or Mandrake, that is wonderful.  Most people who use
K12LTSP would not want to do that.

Please let me keep my simple, Fedora, install.  

I think I read this somewhere:

"It works. It's free. Duh..."





Quoting Quentin Hartman <qhartman lane k12 or us>:

> Colleagues-
> 	I've been tossing this idea around in my head for awhile now,
and it 
> seems it has become time to present it to the rest of you. With the 
> demise of RHL as we know it, the complexities of relying so heavily on

> an upstream commercial distro to tightly integrate K12LTSP into has 
> become apparent to many of us.
> 	Rather than moving to RHEL or WBEL (which in turn relies on a 
> commercial upstream distro) is it time to start exploring other 
> distros, preferably a community-oriented one? Maybe Debian? I mean, 
> we're all using apt-get on our boxes anyway, so this would provide a 
> pretty shallow learning curve for some of the most common tasks, and 
> many of the others will be fundamentally the same. I know that fedora 
> is technically community driven and would seem to provide an easier 
> transition path in the short term, but since it is a fledgling system,

> there have been a lot of unanswered questions about just how stable it

> is going to be, whereas Debian has proven to be a Rock, for many 
> years. I've seen these questions raised here and elsewhere.
> 	My personal favorite solution would be to try to divorce the
K12LTSP 
> system from any particular distro as much as possible by turning it 
> into a set of customizable scripts that could be tweaked to take into 
> account a variety of distros. I realize that this would be a pretty 
> large undertaking and there are a lot of downsides to this, the most 
> obvious one being the potential to fracture the little sub-community 
> we have built up here, but I think that's surmountable. A look through

> the archives proves that K12LTSP is not the only thing this group is
about.
>  	For example, I've been playing with making a K12LTSP ebuild for
my 
> distro of choice, Gentoo. I haven't put a whole bunch of time into it,

> but it seems doable, so once my universe settles down a bit, I am 
> going to tackle it more seriously.
> 	So I guess this post boils down to three points:
> 
> 1- Should other distros be considered now as a platform for K12LTSP?
> 2- Should K12LTSP keep going as a "distro" like it is now, or would it

> be simpler *in the long term* to divorce from any particular distro?
> 3- Any other Gentoo odd-balls out there want to help me make an Ebuild

> for K12LTSP? ;)
> 
> I realize that these may very well no be popular suggestions, but I 
> think they are things that should at least be discussed, and I 
> personally would be willing put time into seeing some of them happen.
>   
> --
> -Just food for Thought-
> 
> -Quentin Hartman-
> 
> Academic Computing and Networking Services Coordinator
> Fern Ridge School District 28J
> Elmira, OR
> Office: 541-935-2253 x429
> Cell: 541-914-2989
> qhartman lane k12 or us
> www.fernridge.k12.or.us
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> K12OSN mailing list
> K12OSN redhat com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
> For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>
> 


-----------------------------------------
Jim Hays
Technology Director
Monticello CUSD#25
Monticello, IL  61856
-----------------------------------------


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