Important links:

• http://www.ltsp.org/ – Linux Terminal Server Project. Has a good mailing list.

Interesting articles/stories

• http://www.playingwithwire.com/2007/08/building-a-modern-it-infrastructure-for-a-small-company-10-clients-with-a-sub-3000-budget/ – Article which examines a theoretical modern LTS architecture for a small business. Much more expensive than what we’d likely be able to do, but interesting. This article is very clear and concise and offers very nice spreadsheets detailing costs.
• http://www.playingwithwire.com/2007/09/deploying-the-sub-3000-it-infrastructure/ – Follow up article on the actual deployment of the architecture proposed above. Amends the cost spreadsheet to be more realistic.
• http://www.linux-mag.com/id/5680 – “Thin Clients in the Holy Land” – interesting article on a potential low cost LTS architecture.
• Crider, J., et. al., Lamar County Library System’s Experience with Thin-Client Computing. Mississippi Libraries v. 71 no. 1 (Spring 2007) p. 20-3
  Lamar County Library decided to install thin clients.  They had many issues, including lack of external drives, need for (expensive) client access liscense, inability to download programs onto each individual computer, and bandwidth issues.   We will have to do some planning about what programs are necessary for the computer system.
• Sand, Robert.  Are Thin Clients Right for Your Library? Library Hi Tech News v. 23 no 3 (2006) p. 14-15.
  http://www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/07419050610668133
  Important points:
  • hardware needs to be scaled to the number of clients that the server will serve at any given moment
  • need a sufficient connection
  • still need to upgrade and maintain the system.

Distributions to possibly test

• http://edubuntu.org/ – Edubuntu has built in LTS support.
• http://en.opensuse.org/LTSP – OpenSuse LTS wiki
• https://fedorahosted.org/k12linux/ – Same, for Fedora. Educational focus.
• http://wiki.debian.org/LTSP – Debian LTSP wiki.

Instructions

• http://ubuntulite.tuxfamily.org/?q=node/2#cd – Ubuntulite installation notes
• http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2006/12/18/alternate-desktop-managers-kde-xfce-enlightenment-fluxbox-ubuntu-6061-610/ -how to get different desktop managers and switch between them – super easy!

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/LTSPBootingClientsWithoutPxe – Booting machines without PXE support; might need this if our machines can’t boot off the network by default

• http://linux4dummies.wordpress.com/2007/06/29/ubuntu-ltsp-server/ – building LTSP on Ubuntu; should work for Mint as well

• http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=350 – Installing MintNanny, a program designed to limit kids browsing. May need this.

Alternatives

During this project, it was necessary for us to consider the possibility that our site require a LTS deployment and find alternatives that would meet their needs better.

Alternate Distributions:

• http://ubuntulite.tuxfamily.org/?q=node/2 – Install for ubuntulite with LXDE
• http://ubuntulite.tuxfamily.org/?q=node/125 – Ubuntulite/LXDE requirements. These are very low; recommended configuration is >= Pentium 2, >= 96MB RAM, 4GB HD.
• http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_elyssa_fluxbox.php – Fluxbox Mint candidate; still only a release candidate- requires much more RAM than LXDE based systems.
• http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_elyssa_xfce.php – see above, XFCE version.

Distributions and Window Managers Tested:

• Mint 5:
  • Fluxbox
  • Gnome
  • XFCE
• Ubuntulite LXDE
• gOS