[K12OSN] K12LTSP missing some important stuff for our school purposes

Wed Nov 1 14:14:21 UTC 2006

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 18:24:59 -0700
"Tom Wolfe" <twolfe at sawback.com> wrote:

> Hi folks,
> 
> I've been test driving K12LTSP a little, and have done some looking
> around the lists and googling to see if any resolutions to some issues
> I've notice are there... and thought I'd run things by this list.
> 
> 1. A shortcoming in general with Linux is default support for
> (proprietary) Internet multimedia formats. The typical response from
> K12LTSP supporters seems to be "We decided to not support proprietary
> formats"... but realistically, I need to provide students with *easy*
> access, for example, to CBC's website (http://cbc.ca) which has
> windows formats as its default (*very* limited .ogg support) :( Real
> Player, Shockwave and Flash are other examples. 
> 

This is not a shortcoming of Linux, but a shortcoming (or at least a
short sightedness of the manufacturers.  Mplayer, and some codecs will
take care most multimedia files out there but you mentioned some of the
ones that do not work.

Real Player -- there is Helix, but I have not tried it.  Real Player has
released a player for Linux, but if I recall it is out of date. You
would have to check.  

Shockwave -- Talk to adobe on this one :-)

Flash -- As you may have noticed, the Linux support here is a full
version behind. The Linux version has always been a little behind, but
now you may have noticed it is a full version behind.  It still works
for many sites, but some insist on you having Flash 8, so that can be a
pain. The reason it is a full version behind now is that Adobe has
decided to rewrite the code for Linux Flash.  BIG KUDOS to them for this
move, but it does put us at a disadvantage over the short run.  (see
http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews.jhtml;jsessionid=T3KZ3F51SMLPOQSNDLPSKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleId=192501179
for some details.)

> We can philosophically decide to not support proprietary formats, but
> in doing so we are also deciding to deny students access to (the bulk
> of?) internet multimedia information.
> 

It is not a philosophically issue, but a legal/tech issue.  Distros can
not ship certain players, so you have to get it yourself (just like in
the windows world).  Or there just is no player for Linux, and this is
an issue outside of the communities control.

> I believe that these need to be supported by any OS used in an
> educational setting. Like pdf files, these are just way too entrenched
> to dismiss, and they should be supported by default.

But unlike PDF, they are still CLOSED.  At least PDF is an open format.
(not as in FLOSS, but as in anyone can use it)

> 
> 2. Sound -- I have about 25 workstations I'd like to use with
> K12LTSP... but they are all pretty diverse platforms: many different
> NICs, sound cards, and video cards. Is there any easy way to do
> this...? Or is it a matter of researching each individual hardware
> setup to get things rolling? I'm thinking of sinking for a couple
> dozen $20 network cards so that at least I have that in common.
> Besides, booting workstations with floppies seems to me to be too much
> of a hassle.

I would spend the $20 on standardizing the sound card, assuming your
network cards are PCI and they are 100Mbps.  Sound is where all your
"hassle" will be, not with the network card.  As noted, get PCI cards,
and get ones that are well supported in Linux. 

An easy way to do what?  With video and audio, you can use the "auto"
option in your lts.conf and most will automatically be detected.  (after
that, I would find out exact what cards the "auto" option did find, and
then change your config file.  This will make the boot process faster,
and you don't have to do all the leg work in finding all the card info).

With the booting from floppies... guess that depends on what you are
doing.  If your clients have a hard drive, you could use this:
http://www.wizzy.org.za/article/articlestatic/14/1/2/ 
This is what I do here.  Another option would be buy NICs with bootroms,
but I am pretty sure that is more then 20 buck each.  You could also
check the BOIS of the machines, some might be able to boot from the
network to start with (if they have the NIC on board I assume).  

As for booting from Floppy (if that is the road you must use) -- But the
Universal boot floppy in the drive, then pull the drive back 1 set of
holes.  Put a cover plate over the hole(s) (or maybe some duct tape). 
Hassle gone.  Now just like haveing a Hard Drive.

> 
> 3. rdesktop -- why isn't this standard with K12LTSP installation?
> Sure, it's easy enough to yum install rdesktop, but...??
> 

Why doesn't Windows come with Quicktime standard?  Sure it's easy enough
to exe install Quicktime, but...??

Come on, is this really an issue for you?

> 4. K12LTSP on Pentium I & II / 10 Mbps networks -- slow and unusable!
> I see lots of people talking about using old hardware with K12LTSP but
> I'm only getting acceptable performance from PIII/500+ MHz 100 Mbps
> NIC, and this seems to me to be a minimum hardware requirement. Even
> then, something like Celestia crawls compared to the way it does with
> a local hard drive installation. Any tips? Am I missing something?

I have a PI client, 64 MB RAM and a 2MB RAM Sis Video card.  Not the
fastest of my clients, but for email, web, abiword, solitaire, and it
does just as well as the others. Now I am useing IceWM and ROX and not
Gnome/KDE but that is more a user decision then a hardware decision.

Another client is a 233MHz processor, 128MB RAM and a 4MB RAM video
card.  Works just as well as my fastest client.  That one is the same as
above, but has a 500MHz processor.

Your real issue here is the network speed.  You REALLY need to use
100Mbps - 10 is just TOO slow.  I've done it, and it works, but I would
not want to do it for a long time and with 20+ clients. (I did it as a
proof of concept with 1 off the shelf PC as the server, and 10 old PCs
as the clients.  Then as we got the money, we did the various upgrades
needed.  STARTING with the network backbone.)  And if you are going to
have 20 clients, you need Gig at the switch.  

Have you tried Celestria on the PII as a native app (i.e. not LTSP).  
I am pretty sure that 90% of distros out there on a PII or less will 
choke.  Believe me, I have tried.  It talks a special distro to may 
my PI work as a stand alone.

> 
> BTW, my Dell SC1425 server works fine so long as I don't use it as an
> X terminal itself... something to do with the video card, but I'm not
> worrying about it for now.
> 
> ...and if any of this has been over-discussed already my apologies,
> please ignore or refer me off list to the right place for answers.
> 
> Despite the hurdles I'm pretty interested and optimistic. It seems
> like an amazing project, though certainly NOT "easy and working, duh?"
> yet.

K12LTSP has to be one of the most "easy and working" distros I have
seen. (And I have worked with all of the big names, and many of the
little guys as well).  But you have to come at it with the right
knowledge and equipment.  Would you send an American football player
into an Australian Rules Football game?  Nope.  They are both football,
both sports, but each require a different set of knowledge and/or
special equipment. Same with the Windows World and the Linux world. 
Both are OS's, both use i386 architecture, but they require a different
set of knowledge and/or special equipment.

> 
> Regards,
> Tom Wolfe
> Morley, Alberta
> 
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