[K12OSN] Life after LTSP

[michael howard]

> So what do we do? Personally, I think there are at least a couple solutions.
> 
> 1)
> Spice. The new remote VM technology that is in Fedora 14 and RHEL6.
...
> 2)
> DRBL. This is the route I have taken. It's similar to ltsp boot

There is also Multiseat/ultra-thin client, and similar ideas, which seem to be growing.  Even lighter systems, cabling, costs and energy than LTSP/thin clients.  The displays are sometimes local to the server via multi-monitors, so no bitmaps-over-lan bandwidth problems with video, games. etc.  It's been adopted quite a bit in Brazil, as has LTSP.   Microsoft launched a multiseat product.  

http://wiki.c3sl.ufpr.br/multiseat/index.php/Mdm ( <- debian-ubuntu compatible open source )

http://www.microsoft.com/multipoint/

http://www.userful.com/products/userful-multiseat-linux

http://www.ndiyo.org/news

http://www.thinnetworks.com.br/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=29&Itemid=103

But thin clients in general seem to be doing fine, similar technologies to LTSP are continuing to do well, all with 
the same local-media-and-devices problems - motion video, audio in/out, 
games-animation-3d, multiple USB local devices, local removable media.  But Linux/Unix has a huge advantage in the shared-memory, X.org, native multiuser, source access, etc. 

Big-fat clients, with tons of video, storage, processing, connectivity, will of course always have advantages.  But growing clouds, distributed-processing, clusters and smartphones seem like huge confirmations that it is far from being the only model any more. 

If anything it seems that LTSP has ever more technologies and directions to choose from and grow towards. 
 		 	   		  
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