[Rule] ltsp in light of rule

[rkwesk at hellug.gr]

Hello again

I put forward that ltsp with a "light" (but well endowed) setup on the  
server is very useful to not so well endowed organizations. Schools  
here in Greece are prime candidates because they have little helpful  
equipment and no money to address the situation.

The Epoptes tool (http://www.epoptes.org/) has been a finely tuned  
version of iTalc  
(http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/italc/index.php?title=Installation) so  
that is running with little problem on Ubuntu 10.04 and lately (so say  
the developers) has been expanded to run just as well on other  
desktops and distros.

We have focused on Redhat and Fedora for many years. I went on to run  
Debian Squeeze with a vesa driven openbox lxde on a pentium mmx with  
64 MB of ram and a neomagic card having 4 MB of vram. I learned  
through Rule what apps to use and what to avoid so I do e-mail and  
browse the web on this box. Lately, however, the delays seem longer  
and its use, frankly, has become an exercise in "because I can" rather  
than the first I grab onto.

The idea that the underlying system be (at least a subset of) an  
actively supported distro is a necessity for most (would be) users and  
Redhat and Fedora have been. My preference for Debian is personal and  
I have put forward Ubuntu for others to use. The tools are quite  
comprehensive so users don't have to hunt around for missing bits.

Before Canonical turned to unity I had already started putting forward  
Lubuntu. It has many of the apps we Ruleites were aware of and runs on  
the lxde using openbox. Most recently (for schools, etc.) I preferred  
to start with Lubuntu and remove a few of its apps and put in  
Libreoffice, having in mind that ltsp would handle it and teachers and  
students would feel more at home. It means some more work for me but I  
was very pleased with the result.

My next testbed will be an attempt to run the latest version of  
Epoptes with Lubuntu and ltsp and see if what is claimed is really  
true. I am describing all this here as an offer for a new direction of  
this project, if any of you are interested.

Richard