August 6th, 2009
Edubuntu followup
A number of readers posed both thoughts and questions related to my Wednesday post, “The state of Edubuntu…Thoughts?” While the expected “Why the hell would you use *nix anyway?” sorts of questions were thrown in for good measure, many readers had solid recommendations based on experience while others had additional questions about my friend’s particular situation. I’d like to devote a post to summarizing the recommendations as well as answering questions.
The recommendations remained in line with my previous experiences with Edubuntu:
- RAM is your friend: 1GB for every 5 clients (whether you are using OpenSUSE, Edubuntu, or some other LTSP implementation)
- RAID for performance and reliability: as with any thin client solution, there is a single point of failure, so a relatively robust server (or even two) makes sense here.
- Remember what I said about a single point of failure above? Between Twitter, where @quaid recommended LTSP-Cluster, and readers who were mindful of the issue, it’s clear that this remains a caveat no matter which OS you use while designing a system.
- Modern thin clients can be relatively cheap (we’ve had great luck with HP’s low end models) and are assured of handling video a decent-sized monitors correctly.
- The multi-core processor(s) of your choice; RAM is more important here, but quad-core processors have gotten remarkably cheap.
- Solid networking hardware: Gigabit uplinks and high-quality switches are key. Keep in mind that 30 clients will be sharing a single connection to the backbone of your network (assuming, as in this case, a server is handling 30 clients). We bond dual Gigabit NICs on our terminal servers to increase throughput. This is a piece of cake in Windows with HP hardware/utilities, but if anyone could post a walkthrough for Linux, that would be much appreciated.
I have to say that the most important recommendation in the Talkbacks related to appropriate use cases for thin clients. As one reader pointed out,
At my school we run some fairly hefty software (MS Office, Adobe CS3, some powerful teaching multimedia stuff).
Firstly most of this won’t work on Linux even with Wine fully set up. Secondly, these apps require some beef and therefore running them from a terminal doesn’t look very sensible.
There is a reason that we have thin client labs for basic productivity and Net access, while we have a lab of standalone machines for graphics-intensive work. This leads me to answering some of the questions that were posed:
- Why bother with thin clients at all? A thin client setup saves energy, can reduce acquisition costs, and, even with modern disk imaging tools, simplifies management of client workstations. Check out these old posts for more information: “What the heck is a thin client?” and “It’s really hot…buy some thin clients.”
- Why not just use GOS (or insert Linux desktop distro of your choice here)? See above for the advantages of thin clients. Desktop operating systems, Linux, Windows, or otherwise, have their place, but here, my friend was really looking for a server OS that could serve out desktops to users at “dumb terminals.”
- Can you your friend to outline her thought processes with this suggested workload and configuration? Her IT support is extremely limited, so anything that can reduce management but increase student computing facilities is a good thing. Her budget is also extremely limited, so no licensing and the moderate cost savings represented by a server with 30 thin clients vs. 30 standalone desktops was a key consideration. Finally, since all the students really need is a window to the Web (again, with a single point of management), thin clients seemed a natural choice.
One thing worth noting: in the bullet point regarding RAM above, I mentioned other distributions that include Linux Terminal Server Project implementations. From what I have seen, heard, and experienced, Edubuntu is almost brutally easy to set up and administer. It is hardly the only choice for this, however. OpenSUSE has kiwi-ltsp, Revolution Linux has a version of K12Linux, and K12Linux, of course, has its own version running on Fedora. Point is, there is a lot of traction growing in the Linux community for thin computing solutions. This will be a very interesting space to watch in the next year or so. Thanks for all of the feedback!
Follow Chris Dawson on Twitter! Christopher Dawson is the technology director for the Athol-Royalston School District in northern Massachusetts and a member of the Internet Press Guild. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations, but always keep in mind that the opinions expressed here are his own and not those of his daytime employer, even if he talks incessantly about his day job.
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