Following on from my first post, I just wanted to add something that has been bothering me for a while now.
It's incredibly difficult to find any solid information about the hardware requirements for an actual LTSP network.
Through my searches, I've located Joe Hartman's, and Stephen Walder's Blog. Add to those the Edubuntu Handbook (or more specifically, the Hardware Requirements page), and you'd think I should be satisfied.
Far from it.
I like to see figures, hard data, and actual working examples of how a particular setup works for someone. Its all very well and good being told that a server requires 256 Mb of RAM, plus an additional 128 Mb per thin client (256 + (128 * users) MB) - but what about those case studies, or user-feedback, or any form of information regarding what applications a server like this would support?
For example, will an Edubuntu server with 512 Mb of RAM support 2 thin clients (as the formula above says it should) if they're both playing a flash game? Or how about if they're both running Firefox (with multiple tabs open), using Open Office for word processing while simultaneously updating a spreadsheet with new figures?
Now, that's not to say that the figures provided are entirely useless. It really is helpful to even have this slight guideline - but my issue is that it provides no insight into normal day-to-day usage!
If anyone is or has been willing enough to take the time to document their network infrastructure, please, make it publically available. You can be sure that I'm not the first, and won't be the last to be looking for it!
Daniel
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Hi Daniel, I'll try to address your question about my setup in my own post at hartmansblog but the short answer is that we lease the school buildings from the district (in the US a district is a bunch of geographically close schools from elementary to high school). We are not a part of the district though, we are a charter school, sort of a hybrid between private and public schools. All that is to say I only have control over things on my side of the wall. Any network infrastructure or server setup stuff is off limits to me as that belongs to the district. Otherwise I would have definitely looked into having a central server hooked up. Of course I don't know how that would have worked when the teachers/admins and all wanted to use windows but I'm not a network guy either. If you are interested in learning more you should definitely check out this page and sign up for the listserv.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
There are people there who are much more knowledgeable than I am in all kinds of areas. Good Luck! -joe
Post a Comment