Will Novell Adopt The LTSP Project?

SafeTinspector writes "Yesterday I attended a Novell/HP Linux seminer "Delivering & Deploying Linux Across the Enterprise" Among the boring and expected stuff, the Novell representative had several slides in his presentation claiming that Novell is going to get heavily involved with LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) to bring policy based security and administration to the LTSP similar to those found in Microsoft and Citrix terminal servers--probably through their venerable Zenworks product line. Also heavily hinted at would be an install wizard provided by Novell that would greatly simplify the installation and configuration of LTSP, which is currently quite complex. I can find no hard information about this on LTSP or Novell websites, nor any information within Google newsgroup search. Does anyone know more about this? On a side note, the laptops of both the HP rep and Novell rep were running SuSE Linux Desktop with Ximian XD2 installed and the presentation was made using OpenOffice Presentation."

Comments

Reinventing X?

[ObviousGuy]

We all like to decry all the networking cruft that X has designed into it, but this kind of participation of a first tier vendor like Novell in redeveloping the X remote terminal service really shows how necessary all that cruft really is.

It doesn't really explain why they feel the need to reinvent the wheel, but it just goes to show how far Linux has come when it can attract the likes of Novell into its growing ranks of corporate sponsors.

Re:Reinventing X?

[Anonymous Coward]

or maybe how far Novell has fallen?

Re:Reinventing X?

[afidel]

Sorry but X SUCKS compared to RDP/ICA. I can be quite productive using RDP on a 28.8 dialup line if I turn on bitmap caching and turn down the resolution/bpp. X on the otherhand is almost unusable across a slow DSL line. Multiply this times hundreds or thousands of employees and the bandwidth savings are HUGE. X was great for when it was invented but it doesn't hold a candle to RDP/ICA.

Re:Reinventing X?

[cosjef]

Are there any alternatives to X might work better with LTSP?

Re:Reinventing X?

[chupacabrito]

No one is talking about using phone lines. Do you know what LTSP is?

Re:Reinventing X?

[codepunk]

And RDP/ICA positively SUCKS when compared with NX protocol. Go do a little query on google for NX Mr Windows Troll.

Re:Reinventing X?

[ttldkns]

He's saying X forwarding uses more bandwidth than an Rdesktop connection. Can make the difference between having to use 100mbps and 1000mbps networks

Re:Reinventing X?

[afidel]

Yes, and I was talking about bandwidth, not the particular technology. An RDP session with bitmap caching running at 800*600*16bpp or 1024*768*8bpp is completely usable with the bandwidth of a 28.8 modem, whereas X is often unresponsive over a 604/128 DSL line.

Re:Reinventing X?

[b17bmbr]

no, X doesn't suck. it's based on a client/server model when all computing was networked. the computer on every desk mentality eminated in redmond. X works great across networks. in fact, instead of LTSP, i just used a singe X server and had several X clients running in my classroom last year. (i am at a new school this year.) i had a P3/933 w/512MB running 7 X clients, OO.org, moz, etc., without a hiccup. in fact, i had a knoppix boot cd that i could pop into any old box on campus and get X from anywhere. freaked some people out. X works great across networks. it doesn't suck. most of X's problems are driver related. hardly its fault. just learn how to make it work well.

Re:Reinventing X?

[gamartin]

It doesn't really explain why they feel the need to reinvent the wheel

Why do you say the LTSP is reinventing the wheel? I understand how to run applications remotely using X (for example through SSH window), but I don't understand how to do an entire managed desktop remotely, which is what I thought LTSP was doing.

I'm probably confused, so please enlighten!

Re:Reinventing X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is NX a standard part of X11? No? Will it ever be? No? Then there's no "trolling" going on, Mr. Unix Asshole.

Re:Reinventing X?

[Arker]

If X is unresponsive for you over a DSL line you're seriously doing something very wrong. X was designed to work on old networks with far less bandwidth than is typically available today. Plus we have protocol compression now.

Now granted, if you're running an overly heavy GUI and running everything on the remote system you're going to need some bandwidth for it, but unless you're on a minimal diskless workstation you'd be an idiot to do that, and those stations will be setup with the needed bandwidth to their server to begin with.

My roommate used to run several dozen remote X sessions through his 1mbit DSL line all day, and the rest of the house was running through the same connection, multiple web browsers or a couple of EverQuest clients, and a p2p program, all simultaneously, without ever having a problem.

Re:Reinventing X?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) configure XDM, GDM, or KDM to allow remote logins on the server.

2) "X -broadcast" on the terminals.

(all of this assumes a trusted LAN)

Re:Reinventing X?

[Anonymous Coward]

LoadModule "lbx"

Re:Reinventing X?

[JWW]

No, X works fine on 100mbps networks. 1000mbps is not needed. Now 100 is definately and noticibly better at running X then 10 is.

Also, dialup ICA and RDP while functional over dialup are painful and frustrating to use over dialup. I only use ICA over dialup if its an emergency.

Re:Reinventing X?

[T-Ranger]

Its a question of latency, rather then bandwidth.

On your old networks, the client/server were likely in the same building, or at least on the same campus. Either way, connected via ethernet, with only hubs and bridges between them... Network layer devices or below.

These days, even going accross campus, your going to hit a bunch of routers which add latency. Going physcially long distances... light can only travel so fast.

Re:Reinventing X?

[Arker]

Light can travel all the way around the world before you or I could blink an eye.

However, certainly poor network design can cause latency problems. That's going to hit any such protocol, however, not just X. And the complainer above was specifically talking about bandwidth... which makes sense in context, while latency doesn't. Latency affects X and RPC equally, while RPC can do certain things with much less bandwidth than X. However, they're things that you don't actually need to do, if you understand how to use network transparency.

Re:Reinventing X?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am posting this from an LTSP client. My bandwidth usage is averaging around 10kps in, 25kps out with one client attached to the server.

Re:Reinventing X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here at uni we have exceed servers on the windows boxes. Running Linux applications from my laptop sitting in the basement is unusably slow: this is on a 10baseT network, I think. Just my 2c.

Re:Reinventing X?

[afidel]

Seven clients, whoopee. We run between 30 and 50 clients per server. These are typically Dual Xeon's with 2GB of ram, decent but not terribly expensive servers. The problem with X is that it sends the entire bitmap across every time there is an update, whereas RDP/ICA caches the bitmap and will reuse it, even across sessions. This makes for some heavy network traffic. Add to RDP the advantage of not losing the session because of network or client problems and it's a clear winner. I loved X when I first used it but since starting with my current employer where most of our clients run Citrix I have become a real convert, and not because of techno-religion but because the stuff is just downright better.

Re:Reinventing X?

[Citizen of Earth]

We all like to decry all the networking cruft that X has designed into it, but this kind of participation of a first tier vendor like Novell in redeveloping the X remote terminal service really shows how necessary all that cruft really is.

The cruft isn't necessary when your processor and graphics card are only separated by some traces on a motherboard. The network abstraction should have been added on top of X. They could have called it "X Net" or something.

Re:Reinventing X?

[T-Ranger]

Well, light doesnt travel at full speed through fiber.. And electrons even slower through copper. And lines are not straight. Add in a bunch of router hops, and you do get latency. At least more then on campus.

He was talking about bandwidth, but he meant bandwidth+latency.

Re:Reinventing X?

[b17bmbr]

seven clients doesn't sound like much, but that was over a 10MB hub (cheap one at that). and i know i could hook up several more. the point was that a lowly P3 could serve 7 clients simultaneously and not hiccup. i understand (and i could be wrong) that windows term services use tons more hardware resources per client, which can be a factor. part of the problem is that X i don't think was ever intended to be a remote desktop, but rather a network desktop. i haven't used a pure networked client, but what i did was do a base install on the P120/32MB clients, install X, then configure rc.local to go right to X remotely:

/usr/bin/X11/X -query 192.168.0.1

or whatever IP. remove the CD and floppy (pull the cables!!), and there's no access to the hard drive. and it fires up right into GDM logon screen. X might not be great across a phone line, but it is pretty cool across a network. at least in my experience.

Re:Reinventing X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is exactly the situations in which almost every X implementation doesn't use the networking code, but uses shared memory instead.

Re:Reinventing X?

[cscx]

I've run single applications (tunneled through SSH) via Exceed on 10/100 ethernet, and it is PAINFULLY slow. I.e, you click on a menu in xemacs, and it doesn't respond for a few seconds.

Re:Reinventing X?

[cscx]

Yeah that is where RDP has the advantage.. you have the option of encrypting just the login at 128 bit or the entire session. XDMCP is as secure as Telnet.

Re:Reinventing X?

[hummer357]

not to forget...

Sun is planning to release it's SunRay software for Linux later this year. (version 3, with - promised - reduced bandwith usage)

That includes client management, smartcard authentication and server grouping/failover. Both of these which standard XFree or X.org can't do easily.

h357

Re:Reinventing X?

[Matthew Weigel]

LTSP is not reinventing the wheel. It deals with all the stuff around X... what it takes to put together a lightweight graphical terminal (booting off the network, booting from ROM, etc), handle users and authentication, etc.

Re:Reinventing X?

[Anonymous Coward]

was designed to work on old networks with far less bandwidth than is typically available today

X was designed to run XTerm and XClock over 10mbps ethernet. That's a more bandwidth than a DSL line.

Re:Reinventing X?

[phoenix_rizzen]

Have a look at NX from NoMachine. Haven't had a chance to use it yet, but reading through the available docs, it works better than VNC/RDP/ICA, using the standard X protocol. It just compresses things, combines commands, and caches a lot of regularly-used info/commands on the client computer. It can also be used with VNC/RDP to make them run even faster.

Their goal, and supposedly they've achieved it, it to be able to use standard X apps across a 9600 bps modem.

They've also got a tesdrive server you can connect to to try things out.

Re:Reinventing X?

[Arker]

Then you, or someone else, did something exceedingly silly in setting it up, or there's something important you're not telling us (10mbps ethernet through 4 dozen slow routers to an exceptionally slow and ancient server, running your entire session and 50 others, using Enlightenment perhaps?)

Re:Reinventing X?

[cscx]

Maybe you missed the part where I said "Single Applications" ... i.e. no Window Manager (Exceed handles that for you). It passes through two routers: 10 mbps to the first hop, gigabit ethernet to the second, and 100 mbps ethernet to the box. The machine runs RedHat 9 with a gig or RAM, running on ly this session.

X may have been designed with "networking in mind" but certainly NOT speed. I've X'd to this very machine from a Sparcstation located in the next room and experienced dead-slow performance. Try running a web browser through X --- it's nearly impossible to achieve bearable performance.

Re:Reinventing X?

[bluGill]

I've used X across a 28.8 dial-up and it worked just fine. I just tried VNC across a 640 DSL line and it sucked.

Different apps, different protocols. Its what you do. As the others have said, don't try to run KDE remote, it doesn't work well. Run KDE locally, and you can use that one office app that can't run on your local machine just fine.

I've run plenty of graphical X apps remotely. It isn't fast, but it is fast enough to work. (Unlike VNC, which I gave up on) X across the ocean over a dial-up isn't a big deal, in my experience. Sure you have to be a little careful about what you run, and a few apps are hopeless. You can choose other apps though if you must.

Re:Reinventing X?

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of Greenland do you live in, by the way? Maybe you should get a satellite connection to the net?

Re:Reinventing X?

[loufeliz]

I think Novell jumping in eyes wide open into Linux os outstanding. I run Novell and Linux in my shop and am looking forward to the day Windoze is an optional OS. I have will soon have my IT staff running linux via VMWARE on their workstations. LTSP will be really cool to .. I am developing with Delphi and Kylix apps via LTSP would be an outstanding thing for me.

Re:Reinventing X?

[Anonymous Coward]

> That's going to hit any such protocol,

No. Latency only affects RPC protocols if they are not used correctly.

Let us compare the VNC with the X11/GTK aproach

VNC:
Let us assume you want to create a widget tree on 10000 widgets, the VNC approach builds the tree and sends compressed delta images. A 1024*768*24 desktop (=12MB) can be send via a 10Mbit ethernet within 9.6 seconds.

X11/GTK:
Let us assume that the network has a high latency of 100ms. Let us further assume that each node of the widget tree has 5 sub-nodes avg. and the GTK creates a round-trip for each parent node (because it waits for the server-ID). This means that the tree is created after 10000/5/100=20 seconds.

Now lets look at X11/Cairo:
We can assume that a Cairo vector-picture has at least 1/10 the size of a compressed VNC image. So the X11/Cairo approach needs only 1 second to create the application on your screen.

I think the discussion above shows that:

a) maintaining state on the X11 server is a bad idea; although there are tricks to reduce the round-trips, badly written toolkits always find a way to introduce unwanted latency. This is what we've learned from the X11 mistake.

b) the X11 protocol is open enough to correct the problems that we currently have with X11. But future versions will correct this.

So saying that "X11 sucks" and "RDP" is much better is not correct. There are small problems with the X11 protocol, but these could be corrected, and they are currently corrected.

Re:Reinventing X?

[Anonymous Coward]

> but he meant bandwidth+latency.

Bandwidth doesn't matter for a widget-level protocol that X11 essentially is. What matters is the latency. If you reduce the latency be introducing a client-side cache, then you can run X11 over a high latency network, for example a 9600baud telephone link. See nomachine.com's NX.

Re:Reinventing X?

[Anonymous Coward]

> (tunneled through SSH
>PAINFULLY slow. I.e, you click on a menu in xemacs, > and it doesn't respond for a few seconds.

Switch off compression to reduce the latency or use NX instead of ssh or use no tunneling at all.

The latency problem will go away in the future when cairo is used instead of a widget-level protocol.

Re:Reinventing X?

[Anonymous Coward]

> with X is that it sends the entire bitmap across every time

Nonsense. X doesn't send bitmaps. X11 sends drawing commands and widget-level commands.

However, if you use Swing, than this is true, swing renders the whole application on the client and sends the surface as a bitmap every second. Don't use Swing, never ever! Use IBM's SWT instead.

Sorry, but you cant blame a technology when it is abused by a broken technology such as Java/Swing.

Re:Reinventing X?

[phoenix_rizzen]

We run a modified version of LTSP 2.x on dual-proc P3 1 GHz systems with 3 or 4 GB RAM. We have no problem running 30 clients with OpenOffice, Mozilla, QCad, and Cycas running. However, we also don't run pure-thin client setups.

Instead, we have our client stations (P 166 through P3 450) configured to run as diskless stations (mount everything via NFS) and run as many applications as possible using the local CPU/RAM. If the client can't handle a certain piece of software, then only that piece of software is run on the server as a remote X app.

So far, this setup has allowed us to run labs of 30 without problems (low load and RAM/CPU usage on server) and two schools are running 60 clients without taxing the server too much. All using bog-standard X11R6 protocol. We also run TightVNC for remote administration of the clients, as it's a little faster than pure-X over switched-56K and ADSL connections.

Codenamed:Project Sundance

[Krondor]

I attended this same conference, and I was asking a question about LTSP and EDirectory authentication. The presenter took my information and said this is called Project Sundance and he would email me with additional information the closed beta is supposed to start in the next 6 months.

Re:Codenamed:Project Sundance

[Short Circuit]

closed beta

What license is LTSP under, anyway? I didn't see it in their "About Us" or their FAQ.

Re:Codenamed:Project Sundance

[Krondor]

http://www.ltsp.org/license.txt

It is GPL'd the beta is closed for internal novell testing, I'd hope that any updates to LTSP are open, but i could see some calls to zenworks and such being closed.

Oh and where were you sitting in the room, I have a feeling I know who you are :)

Re:Codenamed:Project Sundance

[Short Circuit]

Actually, I didn't attend. I'm just a 20 year old student who works enough to pay for classes at Grand Rapids Community College.

If it's GPL, how will they be able to make their own improvements on it without releasing them under the GPL? With an LGPL sandwich layer?

Not that releasing their changes under the GPL is a problem. I suspect few companies have the specialization and the money to take what they learn from reading the LTSP code and clean-rooming it for their own product line. That means Novell can release code under the GPL, and not really worry about a competitor using in competition.

Re:Codenamed:Project Sundance

[Sc00ter]

During the closed beta they wouldn't have to release any changes to LTSP code. Once they release it they will however.

But, the code for their super easy to use configurator, that they could keep closed, and basically that's what you would be paying for.

Kind of like YAST before that was opened up.

Re:Codenamed:Project Sundance

[ryanvm]

Oh and where were you sitting in the room, I have a feeling I know who you are.

Stand up and yell, "I'm right here, Rick". I think we work in the same office.

Re:Codenamed:Project Sundance

[Ewan]

Since it was Novell that opened up Yast after Suse had kept it closed, i'd be surprised if they made this anything except a module for yast.

But then again, it is Novell, they could make the configuration tool Windows only..

Re:Codenamed:Project Sundance

[Anonymous Coward]

As usual, the crappy Open Source developers need the established experts to come in and make their application ready for prime time. If it werent for IBM or, now, Novell, linux would continue to be a niche product which could be ignored by major corporations.

Maybe some day soon Linux will be ready for the big leagues. For now, stick with Unix or BSD.

Re:Codenamed:Project Sundance

[Anonymous Coward]

You go first.

Re:Codenamed:Project Sundance

[Anonymous Coward]

mod this homosexual shit down, sc00ter is a fucking moron

Why all linux

[masternerd]

All of the articles I see here today are about linux. Is today a linux day or something ?

Re:Why all linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Cinco De Mayo is now linux day. which is rather approprate, since it was the first infuluntial battle that Mexico won. So that would be a good day to get some good shots off against MicroSoft

Re:Why all linux

[doublem]

All of the articles I see here today are about linux. Is today a linux day or something ?

On Slashdot, every day is Linux day!

Of course, I like that about /. so this is not a complaint

Re:Why all linux

[ItMustBeEsoteric]

This is SLASHDOT and you're asking why a lot of the articles are about Linux?

*blinks*

That's like asking why so many of the "articles" on boobdex are porn.

Re:Why all linux

[0xC0FFEE]

Yeah, that's the new slashdot, only linux. Its been downhill since the SCO's debacle...

Re:Why all linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike yesterday, which was Star Wars day! May the Fourth Be With You!

Re:Why all linux

[kelzer]

At the risk of getting modded down myself:

Hey moderators - please read the moderator guidelines, which state "Concentrate more on promoting than on demoting" and "Average Comments might be slightly offtopic, but still might be worth reading. They might be redundant. They might be a 'Me Too' article. They might say something painfully obvious. They don't detract from the discussion, but they don't necessarily significantly add to it." The parent post fits into this category, and as such probably already had an appropriate score of 1.

If your gut reaction is to mod something down, maybe take a look at the poster's history. This guy is new to Slashdot, he's already posted some worthwhile things. His only other negatively modded post was flagged redundant (another overused moderation). I don't think he meant anything by this post. Yes, it's off-topic, but did it really deserve to get slammed down to -1, the same score as this post?

Please use your mod points more constructively. There are some good posts out there that deserved to be modded up more than the parent post deserved to be modded down.

Thanks.

Re:Why all linux

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know he's new to Linux? Just because his account is new doesn't mean *he* is new. Maybe he just got sick of trolling as an AC.

LTSP .... Complex installation?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. "Also heavily hinted at would be an install wizard provided by Novell that would greatly simplify the installation and configuration of LTSP, which is currently quite complex"

2. Also config files are very very hard to edit and may inflict brain damage to anyone not using a nice "central" GUI.

3. Uh? Have they even installed LTSP before?! This might be the simplest installer ever of a Linux based "product". Also, it comes with idiotawakening documentation.

4. ....

5. "Beam me up scotty!..."

Re:LTSP .... Complex installation?

[sellers]

LTSP can be complex - it's grown a lot since it's inception way back (read award winning story on website) but it's a real great concept. I applaud Jim and his early and current team on the sweat and hard work. I'm interested to see what Novell is interested in and how it will impact LTSP.

Good luck Jim!! :)

Project Project?

[jwitch]

LTSP stands for "Linux Terminal Server Project"

So why does the title read "...LTSP Project"?

That reads Linux Terminal Server Project Project

Re:Project Project?

[mls]

Is that something like:

Windows 2000, built on NT Technology.

Where the T in NT stands for "Technology"

Re:Project Project?

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU Unix. VMS System. GNOME Environment. KDE Environment. BSD Development. feardotcom.com.

Re:Project Project?

[Aliencow]

I heard it's based on NT Technology !

Re:Project Project?

[Anonymous Coward]

So why does the title read "...LTSP Project"?

Yeah, it could be easily shortened into another acronym.

It's like 'PIN number' - just call it a 'PINN', people!

Re:Project Project?

[tntguy]

Read about it in PC Computing!

Re:Project Project?

[xinot]

Not to mention DNS servers!

Re:Project Project?

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'S' in DNS stands for system, not server.

"DNS server" is correct, and not redundant.

Re:Project Project?

[schon]

Me too! They say it's being used in ATM machines!

Re:Project Project?

[aardwolf204]

Is that something like:

Windows 2000, built on NT Technology.

Where the T in NT stands for "Technology"

No its more like:

Windows 2000, Built on Never Tested Technology

*Ducks!*

Re:Project Project?

[aardwolf204]

Arent we all forgetting,

ATM Machine

Best of all, you cant do this to PHP

Re:Project Project?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because it is an ETLA acroynm.

Re:Project Project?

[sampowers]

Everyone around here always says NIC Card

Re:Project Project?

[JesseL]

I'm always forgetting my personal PIN number for the ATM machine.

Re:Project Project?

[skraps]

I was going to use the LCD display on my laptop to login to my home computer over the TCP/IP protocol (using my DSL line), so I could read the PIN number out of a document (in PDF format), but I think the UPC code sticker on my sunscreen (SPF factor 15) came loose and touched the NIC card somehow. I tried to access it with the UNC naming convention, but my ISP provider says that's against their AUP policy anyway. I called tech support, but the estimated ETA to have my call answered was too long (yes, I looked at all the FAQ questions before calling).

Re:Project Project?

[tulare]

Hrm. You probably need a NIC card to use it. Oh, well.

Re:Project Project?

[sharkey]

That reads Linux Terminal Server Project Project

Welcome, new Slashdot denizen! You are entering into the mysteries of the dupe, and soon all will be repeated.

Let us meditate on this truth truth.
aaahhhmmm
aaahhhmmm

Re:Project Project?

[jocknerd]

Thats like the GPL license or the XFS file system.

Re:Project Project?

[g0at]

For the same reason your old computer had a SCSI interface, or perhaps nowadays a USB bus.

(Yeah, it makes me cringe too)

-b

what's special about today?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is today a linux day or something ?

It's Cinco de Mayo, one of Mexico's two national independence holidays (this one for beating the French at Puebla). Maybe we just are in the mood to hear 'Viva Revolucion' stories.

Re:what's special about today?

[Anonymous Coward]

Viva *la* Revolución!
(pues que viva)

Re:quit calling it LTSP Project

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, xDSL line. That one always got me.

Has thin-client computing come of age?

[genericacct]

It's been hyped since the mid-90's, but thin clients have never really caught on in the corporate environment. Why is that? Perhaps the low cost and ubiquity of [GNU/]Linux can give the adoption of thin clients a much needed boost.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[DAldredge]

Please research the term 3270 before you post on this topic again.

Thank you

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[kabocox]

It's been hyped since the mid-90's, but thin clients have never really caught on in the corporate environment. Why is that?

No, it is because tons of managers that just need IE, Outlook, and Wordpad, opps Word, and Access won't stand it. Managers have to have a scanner, digital camera, video capture cards, and dual monitors. It doesn't matter what they are managing they approve the budget. If it wasn't the manager, it would be the IT guy or the desktop publishing/web guru that needed it. The managers would generally argree that they need to lock down and micromanage all their employees. They want all that on the same platform as all their toys.

Thin clients should be on almost every business desktop. Other than call centers, I'd doubt that will ever happen. Remember if it was good enough for the manager it is good enough for his sec. or assistant.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thin Clients in the Enterprise, based on LTSP are alreadady being used a lot. One example is the city of Largo, Florida. Just google arround and you will see. K12LTSP is a linux distro that combines LTSP, Educational software, and the Fedora Core. It is being used by 100s of schools arround the world. It is true that X is real old and has a lot of problems, but it is still good enugh to take on some herculean jobs in the enterprise and academic arenas.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been hyped since the mid-90's, but thin clients have never really caught on in the corporate environment.

Then explain to me why so many companies have racks and racks of Citrix Metaframe servers.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[hal2814]

Thin clients DID catch on in a big way back when computers were VERY expensive (see 3270). Since hardware got cheap, thin client computing has fizzled out some. I remember when Sun Rays first came out and the terminal was the cost of a decent Linux box. Why go thin when you can go thick for the same price?

Thin clients still have their place, but only in a limited market right now.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[chupacabrito]

Some of the Three letter government agencies are already using ltsp. But I didn't say that.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[madman101]

Perhaps you should research what thin client computing is before posting on this topic again, if you think 3270=thin client computing.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[DAldredge]

A thin client is a client where some of the processing takes place on the client side. 3270 does this.

If all the processing takes place on the server side it would not be a thin client, it would be a dumb terminal like the old serial terminals.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[spiedrazer]

So far the barrier has been that MS's base solution was not flexible enough, and Citrix's offering costs an arm and a leg to impliment (including Bill's cut of TSCAL's). A Novell supported linux based TS platform would be a welcome relief.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[j0217995]

One of the best places for thin-client computing should be in banks where most of the information is either through a green screen, client access, connection to an AS/400 or other midrange server, or through some form of browser based product.

At the bank I work at, we use terminals throughout for processors and for tellers. For people that just need access to email and one or two applications it cuts down on the cost and need for everything else a pc provides. Plus it simplies management and administration which is a huge bonus for the small bank I work at.

We use Citrix for these terminals and they run like a dream.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[Lumpy]

It's been hyped since the mid-90's, but thin clients have never really caught on in the corporate environment.

HUH?? please explain all the NCD exploras and other thin clients flooding the used market and ebay.

They all came from somewhere... these NCD explora 701's that I got by the pallet full were certianly in use at some corperation.

Maybe not at the companies you work at (windows based) but there are GOBS of companies that use SUN and silicon graphics hardware as well as other UNIX systems that use thin clients every day and have been for a long time now.

thin clients under windows is overpriced because of the bullcrap that microsoft plays with licensing.. solaris doesn't extort a full OS license per thin cleint used like microsoft does.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[Anonymous Coward]

> ...but thin clients have never really caught on
> in the corporate environment.

X terminals are wonderful. The reason they
received lukewarm response is easy... "Power
Users". Power users just can't stand if they
can't hack around on "their" computer. Format
this, configure that, change this, install apps.
If they can't have "control" over "their"
computer they aren't interested.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[ttldkns]

Not really enterprise but my college uses LTSP with 300 or so clients mixed in with normal style boxes all connected to netware servers. They use RDesktop in X to then connect them to windows servers automatically on startup which then give you a login to the netware network. Theyre quick to boot and theyre main problem is the occaisional failure of the windows servers. I still dont see how they get true multiuser environments out of windows though (server 2003)

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[swb]

I see them all the time, but only in places where they're restricted to a very small number of applications, almost a green-screen replacement.

I think the biggest obstacles have been things like multimedia, peripheral access, software compatibility (some of it Windows' fault, some of it the software's fault), cost, and scalability. And then there's *laptops*, which breaks the whole model.

Any one of those things can be a huge showstopper, and then you factor in *politics* where some group of employees simply won't tolerate a "peecee" without a cupholder or some other doo-dad, you can see how far a complex and expensive thin client initiative can go.

I personally would like to see the whole thing re-thaught as "lean client" or something, where a stub PC running a stub OS can interact with USB/1394 peripherals as well as process multimedia streams locally. But then we'd need a real, multi-user based Windows OS and apps that didn't assume they were going to be run as Administrator and shit all over the hard disk.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[swebster]

I'm not 100% sure what you are trying to say here, but LTSP supports some of that stuff: dual monitors, scanners on clients is coming along I think... certainly printers on clients are totally fine, we do this all the time where I work.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[madman101]

A thin client is a client where some of the processing takes place on the client side. 3270 does this. This is rather like calling a little red wagon a sports car because they both have 4 wheels.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[ttldkns]

I think the biggest obstacles have been things like multimedia, peripheral access, software compatibility (some of it Windows' fault, some of it the software's fault), cost, and scalability. And then there's *laptops*, which breaks the whole model.

USB devices can be mapped to the server. Im not sure how but dedicated thin clients ive seen have had this option and it has been backed up on #ltsp. Laptops can be set to boot from network then progress to the hdd if no DHCP server sending a kernel location can be found.

where a stub PC running a stub OS can interact with USB/1394 peripherals as well as process multimedia streams locally

LTSP does this. It runs a barebones linux filesystem over NFS, as mensioned earlier USB mapping (not sure of firewire) and it can send some apps to be processed locally with NFS swap to back it up :)

But then we'd need a real, multi-user based Windows OS

somehow, i havent figured it out yet, my college has one using netware and wondows server 2003... go figure! :)

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the reason why thin clients have not been adopted as widely is because of the cost of the "thin client" hardware. I have not seen prices lately for any terminals but in the past, they were not that much lower than the price of a low end PC. So by the time you factor in the cost of back end servers, the cost becomes a wash. Usually, the cost savings are realised in the administration.

So, if the hardware costs were significantly lower in the thin client environtment plus all the benifits of centralized administration, I can see a lot more organizations moving towards thin clients.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[Tony-A]

It comes of age when no-name browsers on no-name hardware are as good and fast as you care to have them.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[4of12]

It's been hyped since the mid-90's, but thin clients have never really caught on in the corporate environment.

At MyCorp we used X terminals for a few years in the early 1990s.

They were great from the standpoint of centralized administration. That's still a big advantage to thin clients even today.

But we had implemented them with the idea of putting only as much graphics display at the end of our networks that we could get away with and then using the extra money to buy huge servers. (Consider now all the desktops sitting around doing screensavers most of their lives.)

What was interesting was that as the price of CPU power and commodity PCs came down it became obvious that the clients could become thicker for essentially no cost.

Also, it was found early on that running some clients locally such as a window manager was - doh - a good idea. You can imagine the same thing for applications like clocks.

Also, there were still issues with things like OpenGL applications and whether the server had enough extensions to deal with that. And that for some graphically-rich applications you still needed to push lots of data down the skinny pipe.

The network transparency of X is a nice idea, but division of functionality between the client and server is kind of static (the pseudo X servers used by ssh are kind of an interesting twist here).

What would be even nicer is a way for the client server interface to negotiate where to put their boundary depending on the network BW and latency, the local hardware acceleration, congestion on the server, whatever.

Having a full workstation capable of running not just the X server but any of the X clients is a cheap and flexible way to go. It still doesn't automatically guarantee people will start clients in the right place to optimize their performance.

If some client needed tons of disk I/O on the server and displayed only a few lines of grep output on an xterm that didn't burden the network, then it made sense to run on the server rather than via NFS, for example.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[Xibby]

Having worked with both Citrix and RDP, and supporting a large number of workstations on Active Directory...

The only advantages of thin clients that I've seen over PCs is that the thin clients tend to do better in dirty production enviorments (no clogged fans leading to fried processors).

The great strength of Windows thin clients, be it ICA (Citrix) or RDP (Windows 2000 and 2003 Terminal Services) is database applications that use ODBC connections. Over a remote link (modem, cable, or even T1 WAN) these type of applications just don't perform worth a damn. Stick a terminal server farm linked via GigE/Fiber/whatever to the database server(s), and the application zooms, and in the case of Citrix, is accessable from anywhere and any platform. Great for outside salse folks.

Support wise though, there really isn't anything you can do with terminal services that you can't do in Group Policy and Windows Scripting (VBS, Perl, or whatever your perfered scripting launguage is...you can easily deploy any engine you want to all PCs via group policy.)

Getting those customized ERP/MRP/whatever systems running as fast as possible with 0 downtime it what I see driving thin client soultions in the Windows world. Secondary to that, I see branch offices (Like WalMart Vision Centers) using them to keep real PCs off of the retail floor and (I'm assuming) keep servers and data out of the store and at the regional HQ.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[novakane007]

" It's been hyped since the mid-90's, but thin clients have never really caught on in the corporate environment."
Tell that to our multiple clients that run Citrix farms with over 2000 users. I've been working almost exclusivley on Citrix projects for years!

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[mt_nixnut]

The great strength of Windows thin clients, be it ICA (Citrix) or RDP (Windows 2000 and 2003 Terminal Services) is database applications that use ODBC connections.

I'm lost now. LTSP runs all of its apps on the server by default. Only display and input go through the network. It is also not really meant to be used over a modem, cable, wan. It was designed as a diskless workstation solution to be run on a LAN. I am blown away by how many people are offering opinions on this technology when they have obviously never used it or even visited the site.

LTSP.org
k12ltsp.org

I have been using this for several years now and it is great. And the k12ltsp isos include a lot of nice bells and whistles like a nice client for window terminal servers. Which is how we are running our legacy windows apps (Access stuff mostly) on our linux terminals. That way we run the windows stuff natively without extra addons like VMware or what have you. What that meant at the small organization I work with is we dump the windows machines and consolidate those functions on one (really nice) Windows terminal server. The lions share of the work is done on the linux terminal servers (for free). Also these two sites have hands down the friendliest and most helpful mailing lists I have ever used.

Re:Has thin-client computing come of age?

[PGillingwater]

Well, my company has developed a Linux-based Thin Client which combines Citrix, RDP and VNC, which runs through a VPN. This allows the Corporate Desktop to be extended to the insecure home environment, allowing the managers to safely access internal networks without worrying about keystroke recorders, trojans or hidden proxies exposing their information.

Naturally, this runs from Flash, so it's next to impossible for a virus infection -- and because home Internet connections are often shared, it allows other users at home to access the Internet (but not the VPN) transparently, and of course uses Shorewall to protect the home LAN.

Bottom line: thin clients improve the heck out of security for corporate LANs when they are deployed outside of the firewall.

LTSP & SuSE = GOOD!

[MeBadMagic]

I am a developer that make extensive use of ltsp. I also use SuSE for the server that LTSP runs on.

I can say from fist hand experience that installing and configuring ltsp is not as difficult as suggested.

The install scripts worked as expected on my SuSE 9 install.

Tech support for ltsp is wonderfull! Any questions can be answered in on on line chat room on freenode.net #ltsp

I just asked the main developer for ltsp about novell and he said it was news to him. I would invite him to comment directly to this thread.

Also, on a side note, disklessworkstations.com has very inexpensive boxes that just work when plugged into a network that has an ltsp server installed on it.

There is a sister project k12ltsp that is to quote Jim McQuillen, "k12ltsp is a distro built around Fedora, that includes ltsp".

websites for these projects are
ltsp.org
disklessworkstations.com
k12ltsp.o rg

B-)

MMMM....LTSP goodness

[thgreatoz]

If you're talking about the one in Southfield, then I was there as well. The implications of a Novell LTSP adoption almost had me drooling.
One of my colleagues and I had an opportunity to talk to a Novell engineer about it, and he said that Novell was indeed working very closely with the developers of LTSP, and that closed betas of the result of that collaberation would be starting in a few months.
An interesting side note -- the main presenter made a comment in that same conversation that he was "positively humbled" by the volume of people that were involved in the development of open source projects, and not only that, but the degree of intellect that these developers display regularly in the various IRC channels and usenet groups.

Re:MMMM....LTSP goodness

[chupacabrito]

How come Jim McQuillen doen't know about this? He is the lead developer. I have been with the project for years and know nothing about this either.

Re:MMMM....LTSP goodness

[Krondor]

That is very odd, I think I will email Jim with the business card from the novell presenter. There really should be dialog between them if this thing is a reality. They probably developed it all in house, but they did say they were working carefully within the LTSP framework to insure their changes would be compatible with future iterations.

Re:MMMM....LTSP goodness

[thgreatoz]

Indeed it is odd...to hear the engineer talk, you'd think they'd all been out to lunch.

Re:MMMM....LTSP goodness

[Anonymous Coward]

I was at the seminar in Toronto and had the pleasure of talking with the President of Novell Canada. I had also seen the slide regarding the LTSP and asked about this. I was informed that Novell is NOT going to take over the project, but was planning on assisting and adding to the project.

Re:MMMM....LTSP goodness

[Citizen of Earth]

The implications of a Novell LTSP adoption almost had me drooling.

It'd be neat if they can line up a manufacturer of tiny, stripped-down, solid-state PCs that boot off the network and run a Linux-based X server. If they could get the price under $100 per box, it'd be funny to watch Microsoft and Novell bid on a big installation contract. The Microsoft bid would include a full Windows PC on every desktop and various servers, and the Novell bit would be for these mini-boxes and a few servers and open-source software. The Novell bid would be for ten times less than the Microsoft one, the desktops would be rated to run unchanged for 10 years, and would require about one-tenth the amount of permanent admin staff.

I see this kind of computing as inevitable because of the incredible savings in money, staff, and security, and probably the only reason it hasn't happened yet is because Microsoft is still into the "Computer on every desktop" idea. The paradigms, they are-a shiftin'.

--
"A stuffed penguin on every desktop."

Terminal services replacement

[Adriax]

If they make a live-cd client (maybe live floppy), I'll be mucho happy.
I'd love to be able to offer customers a cheaper alternative to the overprices winterm dummy terminals out there.

Mini-itx board, small case, single drive, live-cd client, run this on the server with OO.org, mozilla, etc...
Heck of a lot cheaper than Win2k advanced server + terminal serviced + licenses + office and licenses...

Re:Terminal services replacement

[chupacabrito]

It boots off the boot rom. No floppy or cd needed.

Re:Terminal services replacement

[BiggerIsBetter]

You don't even need the drive, or floppy, or CD for that matter (although some users will want it for music). If the system supports network booting (which Mini-ITX does, I think) you can literally plug it in with net-booting enabled, and be ready to go. The minimal OS and everything loads over the network.

You can even go a bit further and run them as OpenMosix nodes to share processing. The keen admin may also consider adding a box or twenty on very fast links to the LTSP server, so allowing 600 MHzfanless bookshelf PCs to render movies (or whatever) in record time.

What I find funny about this whole thing, is that a few years back studying for my degree, I started writing an XDM login thingy which used NDIS PAM modules and stuff. When combined with LTSP and some cunning scripting would have been quite useful in a Novell school situation... Still, the IT dept there were Windows freaks so it would never have flown... Nice to see Novell is finally catching up ;-)

Re:Terminal services replacement

[afd8856]

It can boot of floppy. No rom or cd needed. Drive on! :)

Re:Terminal services replacement

[Etyenne]

In case network booting is not available on your board, a cheaper (and probably faster) alternative would be to use some kind of Flash storage (USB keychain, etc).

Re:Terminal services replacement

[Adriax]

With a 1ghz mini-itx board, case, and 256meg memory being around $300 retail (not looking harder than a quick search), this is a damn good idea.

This is temping for an internet cafe type of setup. With 50 of these clients, you could sell the pooled processing time to people wanting to do video rendering or anything else big.

Damnit, why do I have to be so money-challenged...

Re:Terminal services replacement

[Anonymous Coward]

Get one here :-)

http://rom-o-matic.net/

Re:Terminal services replacement

[Mindcry]

dumb terminals can be had for 20$, just add monitor, keyboard and mouse... optionally speakers... (the apps would run on app(s) servers, saving plenty of cash)...

Re:Terminal services replacement

[Adriax]

The cheapest thinclient for windows terminal services and/or citrix, that I can find, is $200 without monitor/keyboard/speakers.

The ones my clients use (not my decision) are around $400-500 a pop, and are the bare minimum to support terminal services. And that's just for the client, not including the massive server licensing requirements.
As I stated in a previous post, you can build a driveless 1ghz mini-itx machine for $300, use PXE booting as was pointed out earlier, and pool the leftover processing power for use on another project (pointed out earlier as well).

Re:Terminal services replacement

[BiggerIsBetter]

Yeh, it's not silly in an Internet cafe scenario either. Sure beats the current status quo of Winodws boxes that flake out every couple of hours or so, just make sure you use a tweaked Firefox or Opera or something and MPlayer plugin so the punters get all their designed for IE web goodness.

The other nice thing is you can run a centralised PC and just plug'n'play both clients and hosts as your needs grow. It's very scalable, and it's also easy to monitor cluster resource usage with OpenMosix. Don't overestimate the processing power of the VIA chips though. If selling processor power was your game, you might be better off with a P4 Mini-ITX system...

BTW, it's even cooler if you use a wireless LAN. :-)

LTSP sounds great but . . .

[IDidn'tPostThis]

Does it put the cover on the TPS reports ?

Project Sundance Internal LTSP Novell Project

[david_eliasson]

http://www.novell.com/documentation/lg/ex10lnx/pdf doc/21ex3_rn/21ex3_rn.pdf

This pdf shows a sundance.o linux kernel module under ethernet-drivers so that guess is probably correct.

LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding

[Eagle5596]

Can someone please explain to me how this is different/better than using SSH with X Forwarding? I run a server at home which I use in a manner similar to what I understand of thin clients, connecting to it remotely via SSH, and then forwarding the displays to my terminal. How is this different? Am I missing something?

Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding

[altair87]

The advantage of LTSP is you don't need the full operating system on the client. The client can be booted off floppy or boot rom and still connect by X.

If you are using ssh+x forwarding the client still has to have an operating system.

Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding

[drewzhrodague]

You're missing 30 layers of complexity, and marketing drivel.

Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding

[2.246.1010.78]

you can skip most of the os install and just tell your x-server to connect to your server. I'm not sure how small you can drive that, but I think with a ramdisk and some tftp you could boot of a floppy.

Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding

[chupacabrito]

Why not just boot off the boot rom. I have been using LTSP for years and have fielded all these questions and more in the booth at LinuxWorld, etc. LTSP is just the way to do it.

Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding

[Anonymous Coward]

As has been pointed out your running a "fat" OS on probably and even "fatter" machine. With a LTSP Server and a machine from disklessworkstations.com you just plug a station in a go. Your setup requires and actual OS to be hand installed and also requires a hard disk.

So technically your both running X remotely but from a hardware and administrative point of view its completely different.
Have a look at this box to get a glimpse at the potential.
http://www.disklessworkstations.com/cg i-bin/web/20 0009.html?id=rAcEmuqj

Now if you were running a retail business and needed 20 POS machines which is more appealing? How about if you running a school or company where you need 1,000 machines to all run the same 5 apps? You can sort of replicate this by buying 1,000 of the same machines from say Dell and making your own image but really that is a ton more work in the end.

A properly setup LTSP server and it associated thin clients are a real sight to behold. These thin clients often have no fans and are therefore silent and are also tiny and cheap. If one breaks drop another one in and Instantly your productive again with zero clientside configuration. Its not for everyone but where it does fit it works like a charm.

Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding

[pairo]

The differences between SSH X11 forwarding and plain X11 are:
a) you don't have to meddle with xauth and the likes to allow the host to connect to your X server
b) it's encrypted and can bypass some firewalls

LTSP is just the foundation for building diskless/thin terminals. You can use SSH X11 forwarding to display things, but in this case it would only slow (and complicate things).

Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding

[Short Circuit]

LTSP already boots over a network, with no hard disk whatsoever.

Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding

[teeker]

Congratulations! You've just reinvented the core of LTSP!

Seriously, there is no voodoo in LTSP..it works much like you've described...boot via ROM or floppy, download minimal OS into ram via network, connect to remote X server. The thing that makes LTSP worthwhile as a project is putting together the pieces to make this happen (think multiple client configs...even with a thin client you've got differing hardware setups), along with some other things like remoting sound and parallel ports and such.

Novell sounds like they are going to put some cohesive, enterprise-class management tools and packaging behind it. Which it could really use to make it more attractive to businesses who might consider such a solution.

Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding

[afd8856]

Not true. If you're a non-profit, like I am, then you can create a new station with 50$ (including monitor) and 15 minutes of your time (P2 266, 32-64 Mb Ram and a switched 100M network). You don't need a full Linux distribution. Upgrading apps on 20 stations is as easy as upgrading only one :) centralized management (through ltsp.conf), easy replacement if something fails, single point of backup, etc. It's really that good.

Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding

[AKAImBatman]

As has been pointed out your running a "fat" OS on probably and even "fatter" machine. With a LTSP Server and a machine from disklessworkstations.com you just plug a station in a go. Your setup requires and actual OS to be hand installed and also requires a hard disk.

Let me ask this a different way then. How is LTSP different from a diskless machine + a boot CD/Flash Drive/USB Drive with XDMCP query in the startup scripts?

Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding

[AKAImBatman]

How is LTSP different from a diskless machine + a boot CD/Flash Drive/USB Drive with XDMCP query in the startup scripts?

Reading up on the LTSP "theory of operation", it seems that the above is EXACTLY how it works. I'm afraid that I don't understand what's new here. The addition of the MickeySoft "Terminal Services" terminology?

Now if only PCs could get Network Booting and hardware drivers into the firmware instead of having to tote around an extra data storage drive. Oh wait. PCs don't have firmware. $%(^!!! That's it! I'm going back to buying NEOStations.

Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding

[ttldkns]

How is LTSP different from a diskless machine + a boot CD/Flash Drive/USB Drive with XDMCP query in the startup scripts?

it loads what would be on the CD/whatever into RAM over a network and allows setup of X settings etc from the server :)

Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding

[agoliveira]

On top of the thin client/fat server advantages, have you ever tried to do X forwarding over crappy, slow lines? If you combine it with NX you will see the difference.

Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding

[Craig Ringer]

Actually, you need about as much of an OS for ssh with X forwarding as for XDMCP-based remote X. Both need to boot up a local kernel and minimal userspace, the only difference is that one uses 'X -query' to do an XDMCP request, where the other SSH-es to a server and runs the desktop start script. Before starting X, the needs are the same, and the only extra thing the SSH -based one needs is the ssh program and a small shell script.

Thin clients are available that support getting a remote display over SSH with private key authetication, as an alternative to XDMCP. AFAIK LTSP also supports this.

Craig Ringer

Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding

[dbIII]

The advantage of LTSP is you don't need the full operating system on the client.

Unfortunately that is not correct.

While Microsoft may have conned some into thinking that the browser is part of the operating system, the reality is the operating system is the layer that works between the hardware and the software.

In this case the client still needs an operating system, but only needs enough in the way of applications to communicate with the terminal server and relay the users input to it. There are fairly lean implementations of X as well that run on thin clients - NCD has had one for years, as do several others.

Hopefully this whole thing is not some pointy haired MS/citrix catch up thing initiated by people that had never heard of X - because MS will certainly portray it that way. It doesn't make sense that sending bitmaps down the wire is going to magicly be more efficient than sending a few bytes every now and again for events - but some clever coding (detect window movements and only re-broadcast freshly exposed areas) and using better compression can get around it. You may even get much better results than XFree86, which is mainly drivers tacked on to the open groups reference version of X, and has made no effort to let people know that compression is supported. Decent widely available documentaion on running X on slow networks would change things - but until then everyone just uses the hack of shh because it is easy and you want your stuff encrypted anyway.

The whole beauty of X is that you can have people with win2k desktops with windows open from linux, solaris and AIX machines cutting and pasting their work into MS Powerpoint presentations (now the main reason to have MS licences). It's very hard to do something like that another way without duplicating the applications - the one login/one person/one desktop idea is applying to less people all the time in these days of VPNs.

Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding

[Curtman]

I'm afraid that I don't understand what's new here.

The only thing new here is Novell. Lets take a trip on the way back machine shall we?

Re:quit calling it LTSP Project

[Adriax]

ATM machine

Re:quit calling it LTSP Project

[Kegster]

Up with this errant pedantry I will not put

Another 10 year old idea from Novell

[IntlHarvester]

First they bring back "SuperNOS" (NetWare running on a *nix kernel), and now this:

Novell Brewing a New 32-Bit GUI Environment (PC Week)
>From PC Week for April 25, 1994 by PC Week Staff

Novell Inc. is developing a low-cost, 32-bit multitasking operating
environment based on a "freeware" version of Unix that sources said will
run Windows, DOS, NetWare, and Unix applications.

Novell is expected to demonstrate the software -- which it is developing
under tight security at an off-site warehouse -- to a few select users
at next week's NetWorld+Interop trade show, said sources close to the
Provo, Utah, company.

The new system, code-named Expose', is not a derivative of Novell's own
UnixWare; it is based on Linux, a full-featured Unix clone for PCs that
is distributed under a free GNU Public License, sources said. Linux 1.0,
which shipped in March, runs on 386- and 486-based ISA and EISA
computers.

Expose' will be based on a graphical X Window System environment called
Looking Glass, which Novell licensed from Visix Software Inc., of
Reston, Va. It is expected to use an advanced 3-D desktop metaphor to
allow users to easily navigate through it, sources said.

Expose' "is not as much an applications environment as it is a front end
to many environments, [including] NetWare, Unix, and Windows
applications," said a source who has been briefed on the project. Users
also will be able to run Expose' as a front end to the Internet, possibly
through the Mosaic GUI, sources said.

rest here

Basically, this was a X11 terminal server sort of thing that could also redirect Windows apps. The project was eventually killed, and Ray Noorda picked up the Linux pieces and formed Caldera (later SCO).

Quite complex not actually

[Donny Smith]

>greatly simplify the installation and configuration of LTSP, which is currently quite complex.

What? You mean "quite simple"?

"Greatly simplify", I presume, stands for "tie up with Novell's proprietary stuff".
How much easier can it get?

Downloads at:
http://www.k12ltsp.org/download.html

Re:Quite complex not actually

[freeze128]

Ever hear of ZENWORKS? The keyword there is ZEN.
It stands for Zero Effort Network.

That's how simple it can get.

K121LTSP is easy way to go

[AYeomans]

K12LTSP is a very simple way of installing LTSP. Current version 4 is based on Fedora Core 1 with a few updates. As easy to install as FC1.

Although thin clients have been around for a few years now, in those days 300 MHz server CPUs and 10 Mbit/sec Ethernet were top-of-affordable-range. And the performance was a bit clunky.

Now we have 3000 MHz servers and 100 Mbit/sec networks, thin clients can really fly. So long as you forget the clunky days and try them!

JDS Laptops

[CdBee]

Is there any significance in HP sending a rep with a laptop running Java Desktop System?
My understanding is that HP will offer Linux as an option on their systems but hasn't previously - to my memory - been associated with Sun's distribution.

That said, any Linux installation on laptops is a good thing.. lets hope it catches on. (personal note - A Sasser-infected Win2000 laptop knocked my network out yesterday)

Re:JDS Laptops

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did you see that he was running Java Desktop System? Ximian XD2 is not JDS.

LTSP + Ximian Desktop == killer!

[IGnatius T Foobar]

I'm running Ximian Desktop at home, and I've got a remote X display in a comfortable, sunny room (servers are in the basement). I can definitely attest that full support of LTSP would be a wonderful thing.

There's lots of talk about Linux desktops replacing Windows desktops, but too many people want to use Linux as a drop-in Windows replacement. That's unfortunate, because to really get the most out of Linux, you have to treat it like Linux -- play up its strengths. The remotability of X11 on a window by window basis (as opposed to the whole desktop, which is how it's done in Windows) is central to this.

This is, in fact, how the folks in Largo, FL made their system work so well. Everything runs from big servers. The nice thing about this model is that you can roll out dedicated servers for various applications. You could have a big box dedicated to OpenOffice, for example. It would run lots of instances of that application (and you get the associated memory footprint savings) being displayed on everyone's desktops. Easy to deploy, too: you just publish the icon or menu item to fire it up, and it executes remotely and transparently. The user doesn't even know that the app is running on a different server -- not even when he/she goes to load and save files, because you're using NIS and NFS to unify the authentication and the document directories across all servers.

It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. Elegant and seamless. And it's only possible in a Unix/Linux environment -- Microsoft doesn't have anything even close to this. They can't, because it screws up their pricing model. And we all know that money is more important than technology in their world.

Re:LTSP + Ximian Desktop == killer!

[moonwind]

@IGnatius T Foobar:

"The remotability of X11 on a window by window basis (as opposed to the whole desktop, which is how it's done in Windows) is central to this."
-------
I'm sorry, I have bad news to you (and I hate to say it): Citrix/ICA can do "window by window" remoting already a long time. and Microsoft's RDP (Remote Desktop Protokol) in their latest versions can do it too. Plus, both take less bandwidth than X. And both are snappier than X, with less latency for the user. And both can near-seamlessly print from the application server to the locally atttached printer of the (maybe Thin) Client. And both can detach from a running session and re-attach to it again (even from another client, effectively providing "session migration").. Can X11 do this too? It is a set of features that is absolutely essential in an enterprise environment of fat servers/thin clients. (Yes, I know Citrix and Windows Terminal Servers cost more money than X11 which ships for free on Linux)

But stay comfortable, I have also some good news for ya (and I luv it):

• The current version of NX/NoMachine, a highly efficient, GPL'd X11 compressor, supports this:
• run with the same speed (or faster) and consume the same low bandwidht (or lower) as Citrix/ICA and Microsoft/RDP. Ths will proof to be a pretty big asset for X11 in the future battle for the enterprise desktops.
• tunnel Citrix/ICA and Microsoft/RDP through its own connection. This will enable all NX clients to seemlessly access and bring to their desktops remote Windows sreens at a better speed than vanilla ICA/RDP.
• support access to X11 applicationss from Windows, Mac OS X, Zaurus, iPAQ and mobil phones. This is the start of ubiquitous desktop computing where my own desktop follows me to wherever I roam. I can even access it from booting the latest Knoppix (V3.4)

• And one of the next releases of NX/NoMachine will provide this:
• support the display of single application windows from remote Windows Terminal Servers. This will make Windows --> Linux desktop migration scenarios much smoother -- you can offer a better way of keeping a lifeline back to the MS world for the transitional period where your users still need it for lack of a Linux implementation of a particular software.
• support the de-taching and re-attaching from an X11 application without loosing the session.. This will enable "session migration": stop working in office, go home, kiss baby, have dinner, say goodnight to kids, finish that damn important document for next morning by dialing into your still running desktop session from home.
• support seamless printing from X11 applicaton server to locally attached printer. The benefit is pretty obvious.

Those who don't know about NX by now are missing something really cool and useful.

Hey, and it case you haven't noticed: I said it is GPL! Yes, GPL licensed!! (OK -- NoMachine as the NX inventors have dual-licensed:it to themselves, and they are also building and selling a commercial product on top of the exact same GPL libraries.... So what? Trolltech do this with Qt, Codeweavers do this with WINE, MySQL do this with MySQL and Redhat do this with the Linux kernel. Let NoMachine also pay their own developers.)

Oh, and in case I forgot to mention it: NX is really cool. See also this paper from Linux-Kongress 2003

Re:LTSP + Ximian Desktop == killer!

[0xA]

The remotability of X11 on a window by window basis (as opposed to the whole desktop, which is how it's done in Windows) is central to this.

Actually you can do this with Citrix Metaframe as well.

Laptops???

[WillAJ]

What model laptops were they using? We want to know.

Bad association

[AKAImBatman]

While many managers LOVED their ultra-fancy, green screen, terminals (despite never figuring out how to use all the extra features they paid for), they associate the idea with "old-tech". Managers want to be on the cutting edge. They perceive the cutting edge to be the tremendous waste of computing resources we call a PC. They don't have the background to understanding that a shared machine means the following memory usage pattern:

Let B = Size of binaries on disk
Let D = Size of working data set
Let U = Number of users for the given application

Memory = B + (D * U)

Instead they'd rather have:

Memory = (B + D) * U

Since the binary sizes are often significantly larger than the data sets (MB vs KB), the former simply makes more sense. But since it isn't as "cool", it doesn't catch on.

Re:Bad association

[Anonymous Coward]

The flip side of this is that the main frame requires enough horsepower to run the app for everybody, and high power servers cost bucks. While it might be more economical in terms of computer power and memory, in terms of real dollars it's often cheaper to put a PC on everybody's desk. This may be changing now, but it's been true in the past.

Re:Bad association

[AKAImBatman]

Read the equation. Unless everyone is using a different program, your machine usage is going to be less than with an individual PC. Less hardware == Less $$$.

And I know this from experience. I used to admin a 40 user Citrix machine. It was a dual 233 PPro w/512 megs of RAM and a mirrored 40 GIG drive. Everyone ran MS Office, shipping apps, mainframe access software, web browsers, email, etc. without any performance problems. The only time they complained was in the (relatively rare) situation that we had to restart the machine due to some Windows instability.

Your average user does NOT make use of their machine's CPU for any other purpose than games. The real killer to their performance is memory. They wouldn't need so much memory if they didn't run their own copy of everything. Ergo, a shared environment means big savings for the users, big savings in admin costs, and more effective use of purchased hardware.

Re:quit calling it LTSP Project

[Anonymous Coward]

Help stamp out and abolish useless and repetitive redundancy!

LTSP Compression

[Anonymous Coward]

I think LTSP's biggest shortcoming is the large bandwidth requirement for the X protocol. If they could develop a client that wouldn't need this it would greatly help my company in installations. We currently have two clients running LTSP in their environment. One with about 80 clients other with about 20.

Re:LTSP Compression

[codepunk]

And tell me what exactly are the bandwidth requirements of X? I actually run one of these setups and I can tell you that my 150 desktops only require around 200kb sustained which is not a whole lot.

Re:LTSP Compression

[moonwind]

And tell me what exactly are the bandwidth requirements of X?

Actually, the remote X problems aren't so much the bandwidth (which *is* important) but much more the "roundtrips". Depending on link latency each X protocol "request" by the X application client, that solicits a "reply" from the X server, introduces additional wait cycles. There comes a point where increasinb bandwidth doesn increase speed: you sit there with an empty pipe and waith for roundtrips to finish....

I hate to say it, but Citrix with their ICA, Microsoft with their RDP and Tarantelly with their IAP are all doing a much better job here and use far less bandwidth, making their stuff even work over modem links..

Overall, roundtrips make X feel very sluggish across WAN or low bandwidth links.

This paper gives a few good examples and figurs about plain vanilla X and NX-enabled X:

• a Mozilla start-up alone produces nearly 6.000 round-trips and needs more than 7 minutes to complete over a 9.600 baud modem connection. With the help of NX, the round-trips are boiled down to a few dozen, and a startup may only take 20 seconds over the same modem link!
• a full-screen KDE session transfers 4.1 MByte of data over the wire, if it is run over a vanilla remote X connection. Run it over NX, and the second startup data transfer volume is down to 35 kByte only! You can run KDE sessions over a 9.600 baud modem link and have a responsiveness which is better than TightVNC over a crosslink cable hooking together two boxes only 1 yard apart.
• overall compression/speed gain is 70:1 (on average, across various applications), but can easily achieve 200:1 and more for some applications, like Web browsing.

To me, the GPL'd NX from NoMachine are the saviours for X and remote X connections. Finally someone has created a plugin addon to existing systems, which lets the Unix world compete on par with stuff like Citrix (which, strangely, is now embraced by Redhat). NX is giving a bright future to ubiquitous desktop computing based on Unix. What's best: it can even access Windows sessions (via RDP) with a 2- to 10fold speed increase over plain rdesktop sessions.

I am looking forward to see their session "de-tach and re-attach" feature, as well as their "session migration" (leave office, go home, tease the baby, have dinner, and finish your work via a remote session from home by dialing into the very same destkop that you left back at work). ;-)

Re:LTSP Compression

[Anonymous Coward]

>tease the baby

Is that code for something?

Why dont LTSP/Novell use NoMachine's NXtechnology?

[moonwind]

To me it seems pretty stupid that Novell/SUSE/LTSP arent using NoMachine's brilliant and highly efficient and GPL'd NX technology.

After all, they could see during last LinuxTag and last Linux-Kongress how well this works even over a modem or ISDN connection with as little as 20-40 kBit/sec.!!

Not only does NX speed up Unix-type X connections with a turbo charger, but also Windows RDP and general VNC sessions.

In the case of X, the avarage gain is a ratio of 70:1 for an office productivity sesson (KDE/destkop, KMail/mailer, Konqueror/filemanager, OpenOffice/wordprocessor and Mozilla/webbrowser all open and in use), when you combine the highest level of compression, with the intelligent cache and roundtrip-elimination NX provides so reliably.

Pretty stupid by their technicians as well as their marketeers, if you ask me.

What processing do 3270 terminals do client-side?

[swb]

So educate us. What non-display-related computation do 3270 terminals do? Can you run processes on them? Do independent computing tasks?

The 3270 page at Wikipedia doesn't indicate any of this functionality, other than IBM's unique stream-based interaction between CPU and terminal. If you count these display based processes as processing, then why wouldn't a "dumb" terminal like the DEC VT series count, since they also do "processing" of the serial data stream?

running 150 desktops here

[codepunk]

I am currently running 150 desktops off of two servers using thin client deployment. Instead of going with ltsp we use a slackware live cd that gets it's final config from a web server using wget and a php script that passes out configurations based on the sent mac address.

Finally it just lanches x against the servers using the -query option. This is one hell of a lot simpler than ltsp and we do not have to worry about nfs mounted root or none of that junk.

The servers are actually redhat AS 3.0 running in clustered mode. Now if redhat would just hurry the up and release GFS I could run a shared /home which would be really cool.

The gnome guys could also help out greatly by adding the ability to deploy desktop icons to multiple users from say root's desktop. I have scripts to do this but it would be nice to have it
as a option to creating a link to a application.

Re:running 150 desktops here

[MeBadMagic]

Burning CD's
Installing CD Drives in thin clients
Setting up web servers
learning php and setting up php to run on said webserver

is easier than downloading app, installing with menu and turning on a thin client?

I don't think so. Sorry.

B-)

Re:running 150 desktops here

[chupacabrito]

But the moving parts is what we hate. mike@ltsp.org

Re:running 150 desktops here

[LDoggg_]

Can you use sound on the clients?
Sound is working on my k12ltsp setup

venerable Zenworks

[Anonymous Coward]

If you mean "venerable" as a metaphor for "Should be taken out to the woods and shot to death", I agree.

Same As X Terminal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is a Linux Terminal Server the same thing as
an X Terminal? Looking at the web site it would
appear so. Any differences, and if not, why don 't
they call it an X terminal (Server)? Having used
X terminals in the past I am a really big fan
of them.

Re:quit calling it LTSP Project

[Anonymous Coward]

Nabisco Co. (NAtional BIScuit COmpany Company)

Re:quit calling it LTSP Project

[Anonymous Coward]

...or "MAST [trousers | pants]". Highly annoying.

Someone needs to adopt them

[Orion Blastar]

also port it to Windows, MacOSX, and other platforms.

It would be a good way to get employees to use Linux without having it installed on their machines. So machines that could not run Linux due to unfriendly hardware can run a terminal to it.

Re:Someone needs to adopt them

[Curtman]

also port it to Windows, MacOSX, and other platforms.

Port what? You can get Cygwin's X server for Windows for free (or any number of commercial offerings), and in OS X you can run XFree86, or Apple's own X server. Done and done.

Re:Someone needs to adopt them

[Orion Blastar]

Yes the X Server exists, but this program works with it to make client access a lot smoother. Perhaps you haven't used Winframe or MetaFrame, or Windows Terminal Server?

They found a way to make diskless workstations that could boot off a network card and save money. Yes it uses the X Server, but has code that makes connecting to it a lot smoother and less of a headache. That is the code that is needed to be ported to other platforms.

Re:Someone needs to adopt them

[Curtman]

Soooooo... You want diskless workstations that run Windows, and have an X server to use LTSP? The configuration is all server side. There is no OS on the client until you flick the switch and it gets transfered from the server.

In an LTSP setup, if you want access from a Windows box, you put an X server on it, and tell it to XDMCP query the LTSP server. You've then got an LTSP client inside Windows. Look here, The only thing left to be automated is the server setup. LTSP does this in Linux, being the Linux Terminal Server Project, but there's no reason you couldn't apply the same technique to any flavour of Unix. The tricky part is the transfering of the kernel, and in the DHCP server that dishes them out. Here is a Linux Journal article on LTSP from February that explains things quite well.

Re:Someone needs to adopt them

[Orion Blastar]

Well I was thinking of also letting the LTSP server part be ported to Windows to be used in place of Terminal Server, Winframe/Metaframe. If you knew the cost of those packages, you'd understand why there is a big need for an alternative. While Windows does have an X Server ported, this LTSP server makes it run a lot smoother.

Re:Someone needs to adopt them

[smcavoy]

which LTSP server part would that be?
AFAIK LTSP uses local X servers on clients which use XDMCP to query the "LTSP Server" (which is KDM/XDM/GDM in listen mode).
LTSP "glues" existing technologies together to provide its terminal services.

Re:Someone needs to adopt them

[Curtman]

Exactly. But there's no drives in the clients, and therefor no OS initially. There's no software TO port to Windows is what I'm saying. It's all on the server. If some pointy haired guy down the hall needs an app from the LTSP system, he just opens an X server, and he's on. LTSP is more than just the X server, its more about diskless workstations. How to transfer the kernel to the client, how to mount its root filesystem. All that is configured in Linux - on the server.

Re:Someone needs to adopt them

[Curtman]

If you knew the cost of those packages, you'd understand why there is a big need for an alternative

LTSP is the alternative. These are things we take for granted in the Unix world, that makes life so much easier as an admin. This is the kind of thing that X was designed to facilitate. What LTSP does is make things easier, think of it like a HOWTO, but with a skeleton set of configs in package form. It also makes things easier if you want to run certain applications on the client as opposed to everything on the server. An example of something that makes great sense to run on the clients, is a window manager. Just putting that on the local machine will make the difference between users 'coping', and not even noticing that they are on a terminal. At least that was my experience anyway.

MS can pump out as much FUD as they like about TCO, but LTSP is a shining example of how to reduce costs. The comments to this story seem to indicate most people see this as some great advancement for Linux, but its really not. Its more like Novell press hype. I'm not saying thats a bad thing either, there should be more. If Novell is going to make a nice GUI to configure the components of LTSP, thats all fine and good, but I think I'll just stick with nano TYVM.

Quick Start with Knoppix

[dilute]

Want to play with this? Pop a Knoppix CD into any X86 machine on your network and try 'knopixterminalserver' (from the command line or the KDE menus).

cool

[Anonymous Coward]

great for Novell - can't wait to upgrade my cne to a linux certification.

also nice to see someone actually use their product.

sun came and did a presentation and their laptop was running windows. I asked why and they said to be compatible with our standard - Riiiiiiiiiight.

Practice what you preach is what I always say.

Eating your own dogfood

[Marcus Erroneous]

I'm always happy to see them eating their own dogfood. Especially after reading an article where the presenter talked Linux but used a Mac with M$ Powerpoint for his presentation. Running Linux and using OpenOffice for their presentation shows that they at least use and know something about the Linux environment. It's kind of hard for me to take you seriously about your commitment to a Linux product line when you're using M$ products. If your company has so few people that are Linux literate that they have to send M$ drones to represent them, how do you expect to produce a native Linux product? I wish them success and hope for the best. But, their failure won't stop me from using my Linux boxen. ;)

NSS Availability

[Krondor]

I'm replying to myself because I also forgot to mention that Novell said that NSS has already been ported internally to Linux and will be available in Novell Open Enterprise System (Netware 7) with the linux kernel.

They did not say if non Novell server distros would have the ability to run NSS or whether it would be Open Source'd.

The full netware rights system will be there though, which is a good thing for me.

Re:NSS Availability

[FatherOfONe]

Thanks for adding this post. Comming from a NetWare background, I have kinda hated the Owner,Group,Other rights that Linux has. Yes I understand you can bolt on ACL's, but you still have the legacy OGO stuff to deal with. However, my concern is now the following: Will NSS be a "bolt" on also. If not then will it be closed source. I am concerned that they will not open source it, and if it is just a bolted on solution, then I have to ask them WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!!! Don't be stupid and start trying to fork off your own proprietary stuff again with Linux. Next they will be creating their version of IPX for it :-(, and of course some 100MB client that replaces all the normal native stuff and slows your machine down to a crawl.

I just guess I am having trouble seeing why Novell would waste resources creating yet another file system for Linux. Wouldn't one of the MANY current file systems be acceptable? Couldn't they take one of those and add to it? Any ideas?

Thanks.

Re:NSS Availability

[mjm1231]

I attended a different Novell seminar yesterday (geared more toward a CNE audience) and can tell you that all the other Novell Linux Services (eDirectory, DirXML, iFolder, etc.) supposedly can be installed on any Linux OS, so NSS should too. Much of the initial design was geared toward Red Hat, and the documentation I saw even mentions what changes to make (as far as install paths, etc) for Red Hat. Open sourcing it would probably require open sourcing eDirectory (unless it's compatible with any ldap directory) so I doubt that will happen.

They gave out demo CD's of the Novell Services packages at the seminar, but I'm pretty sure the iso's can be downloaded from their website. I plan to try it installing it on a Slackware box this weekend and see how it works. I'm also going to see how badly upgrading the Samba 2.2 they ship with to 3.0 breaks things. (Samba authentication through eDirectory is a feature I'd been hoping for for quite awhile.)

Re:NSS Availability

[Krondor]

... Next they will be creating their version of IPX for it

They did say at the conference that they will *NOT* be including IPX for Linux. They weren't sure if you would be able to use Linux's native IPX stack to authenticate NCP or not, I doubt it.

...and of course some 100MB client that replaces all the normal native stuff and slows your machine down to a crawl.

Actually, they did say that they will *NOT* be focusing on a Netware client for Linux. The reason is they are trying to get rid of the client totally, even in windows land. They said they are developing a new authentication framework that bolts onto the existing operating systems authentication scheme.. (read pam_nds). Basically, it's a native port of NMAS, and they also announced they will no longer sell NMAS as it will be the new authentication scheme.

Hope this helps you out, I should have done a more thorough post to begin with :)

Re:NSS Availability

[FatherOfONe]

No problem, and thank you.

Again, I am a NetWare fan and hope that this works out great for them.

I hope that they show where they can add value with Linux and price their stuff so it makes sense for people. I am a little bit skeptical, but I have hope.

Re:NSS Availability

[Qube]

IPX is pretty much dead in the Novell world, and you've been able to run a Novell-based network without it for a very long time.

Sure, you can take the latest NW6.5 and set it up with IPX, traditional volumes and the like and it'll happily take the place of a NW4 server, but the push over the last 7 or 8 years has been towards IP-only. The only reason we still run IPX is because the printers are still set up on legacy queues - soon we're moving to NDPS (introduced in 96/97?), the printers can be set up for plain IP/lpr printing, and IPX can finally go. We got to that state in my last company over 3 years ago, and we had all netware servers everywhere.

Running the Novell client has been optional since NW6 (released over 2 years ago) with native client support for windows/mac/unix (via NFS), and the same functionality was available as an add-on to NW5.1. Certainly in the 4 years or so I've been working with Novell stuff there's been bigger and bigger shifts away from their proprietary pasts and towards more interoperability and use of standards where possible. And more recently, lots of open source too.

As for the filesystem, our usual way of upgrading servers is to disconnect the data volumes and do the upgrade just with sys connected. Then once we're happy everything is OK, put them back. I don't want to have to faff about with converting to a new FS or doing a big backup/restore or copying huge amounts of data between servers when I don't need to. My volumes aren't even that big - some people are running multi-Tb ones that they wouldn't want to move to another FS.

NSS is excellent - journalling, excellent with large volumes (can mount a Tb volume in a second), does salvaging of folders as well as files, does snapshots and all sorts of other nifty stuff. It was done from scratch for Netware, I'd have thought it's less effort for them to port it than try tacking it on to a FS they don't know as well.

Re:NSS Availability

[FatherOfONe]

Thanks for the info.

My point was and is this though:

Novell has had a horrible past of switching directions. I could list multiple examples, but perhaps UnixWare and WordPerfect say it best. From what I have heard, there was a ton of issues between the people in Utah VS the people in California. The people in Cal wanted to dump IPX with NetWare 4, and wanted to migrate to their UnixWare stuff, but the boys in Utah saw life diffently, and they won.

I have also heard that the new management at Novell "Gets it". I hope and pray this is the case.

What I, and a lot of other Linux/Novell/SuSe fans don't want to see is Novell release a radically different version of Linux. Specifically one that most Linux people would go "Oh, you don't want to run Novell, they are way different". This file system thing is a perfect example. Your example of why they are doing it is perfectly acceptable, and it is cool if they have SuSe support it, but I would hope that it is not in their long term plans to replace ReiserFS or EXT2/3 with NFS. Unless of course they open source it, but even then you run the risk of being too different again.

This leads in to my next issue. I hope that when they integrate their NDS/eDirectory with Linux that they don't go replacing any normal files. I hope that they use PAM and layer their stuff on top of normal Linux stuff. Perhaps you know the answer to this one?

The last question I have for Novell is what value does your software (besides SuSe), provide me over open source alternatives, and how much does it cost me for it. Examples:
Ldap vs eDirectory
FreeEmail vs GroupWise

Also, what are they going to start to include in SuSe enterprice and how to they plan on changing any licence fees?

Now having said all this. I think Novell is moving in a great direction, and I do expect some time to flush out all the issues. It would just be nice to know what they plan to do with SuSe.

Re:NSS Availability

[Krondor]

Novell has had a horrible past of switching directions. I could list multiple examples, but perhaps UnixWare and WordPerfect say it best.

Yes Unixware, but if I were them I would have switched as well considering how fast it was eating their money with little to no chance of rewards. Wordperfect on the other hand was one of the biggest mistakes they made, and they're still paying for that one (as in wishing they hadn't abandoned it). It's abandonement in the long term is actually beneficial because it allows them to focus on OpenOffice though (which Ximian is a prime contributor of), but they couldn't possibly have known that when they axed it.

As for switching directions I can see a few examples, but they are also very true to products. Look at Netware interoperability, you can tie Netware 3 servers into Netware 6.5 networks for gods sake, and they are making upgrade utilities that support 4-5 revisions back. That's impressive if you ask me.

The people in Cal wanted to dump IPX with NetWare 4, and wanted to migrate to their UnixWare stuff, but the boys in Utah saw life diffently, and they won.

Abandoning IPX in Netware 4 would have been incredibly stupid. There was way too many things that relied upon it, it would have alienated core segments of their market. A lot of people with huge networks had considerable money tied into IPX (databases that won't communicate IP Btrieve and the like). Netware 4.11 was IPX because that was what people wanted, Netware 5 - 6.5 is Mixed (you can do TCP/IP only, IPX only, or TCP/IP and IPX for compatibility, heck you can even do IPX encapsulated in TCP/IP), and Netware 7 (or Novell Open Enterprise System) will still support IPX, but only on the Netware Kernel not the Linux kernel. It is a slow road and people are still mad. There was a guy at the conference really upset that Netware 7 would not have IPX support in the Linux kernel. When you don't focus on small networks (microsoft) you need to be really worried about which customers you piss off, IE losing Ford could really hurt their bottom line ;).

I would hope that it is not in their long term plans to replace ReiserFS or EXT2/3 with NFS.

I assume you meant NSS. I don't think they would replace ReiserFS, and I'm also not sure NSS will be open sourced or available to more then just Novell's Server OS. They can't use ReiserFS or Ext2/3 because it has to be compatible with the rights system from other netware servers in your mixed environment. Frankly, they've supported lots of file systems for a long time, what's one more? If you were thinking of using NSS for your desktop I would think that'd be a bit overkill. I would like to see it opensourced and commited to seriously though by other distributions for servers. Maybe IBM would drop JFS in support of NSS.

You mentioned them being too different, well that doesn't really matter either if it's their server line that is offering this stuff. They already offer services on that line you can't get in other distributions. It's the differences that help customers decide who to buy. I do hope more of it becomes open though (but I'm not sure they're probably scared of RedHat I know I would be).

what value does your software (besides SuSe), provide me over open source alternatives.

LDAP vs eDirectory = Manageability, Interoperability (with native authentication), custom applications to leverage those directories to do thinks like distribute security policies, distributed applications, etc..

FreeEmail Vs GroupWise = Collaboration Utilities galore (actually your comparison would probably be better between NetMail and FreeEmail since NetMail is more just the mail side as GroupWise does more of Exchange's functionality (only non crappy))

The cost will not be cheap probably, I really have no idea how expensive.

One things for sure things will be interesting soon.. I can't wait to play with all the new stuff, and I hope they stay smart about what they're doing. It sounds good so far.

Re:NSS Availability

[FatherOfONe]

Thanks again for your reply.

We would disagree with NW4 and TCP/IP. They had NetWareIP, but they also had the ability to offer true IP like NetWare 5 with NetWare 4. They didn't. They also had samba back with NetWare 3 and 4, but they didn't push it. Also, I do not mean abandon IPX, but like Microsoft did with NetBeu they could not make it the default protocol. Also I will assume that NetWare 7 (SuSe 9 Enterprise?) will support IPX, it may not be Novell's blessed IPX, but there is IPX for Linux. It would be nice of Novell to perhaps take up the open source implementation of that IPX and work with it in their envirionment.

Yes, I ment NSS. :-)

We ran Groupwise 5.5ep before, and wanted to stay with it, but they didn't offer a version for Linux. Yes I agree that it has a lot of nice features, but so does qmail + squirrlemail + Apache. (No good scheduler though..) but you could look at http://www.opengroupware.org.

I could make some strong arguments that more applications use LDAP than eDirectory, and with openLdap you have no vendor lock in, and the management tools are getting better every day. Now if I was to make the argument for NDS, I would focus on replication, but having spent many nights with Novell's dsrepair.nlm, I am very very very scared to look at NDS on Linux. It seemed very fragil with NetWare 4 and 5. Specifically you would extend the schema and then suddenly stuff was broken, but you wouldn't know about it for a while. While nwadmin and console one were cool, the overhead and headaches with keeping NDS working was barely worth it for our somewhat large company. Now for some reasons those issues are not there with Ldap.

You and I would also disagree with UnixWare. If Novell would have started the migration off of NetWare to UnixWare (seemed insane at the time), then they would be in a far better position now to migrate to Linux.

There will be a lot of questions for Novell when it comes to open source (as with Oracle, IBM, etc). The question is what do you want to contribute to vs. what do you want to keep proprietary. With Oracle and IBM it is easy.
They will NEVER open source their DBes. With Novell it is a bit harder.

Thanks again. You sound like a current Novell customer, and you are definately more up on modern NetWare than I am. Are you planning on switching to SuSe?

We were a Novell/Microsoft/Linux shop and last year switched off NetWare 5, Windows NT 4.x to an all Linux shop. So for us (small company), I wonder what value Novell could add. We do currently have two SuSe Enterprise 8 servers for AMD Opteron, that work well.

Re:NSS Availability

[Krondor]

... more applications use LDAP than eDirectory, and with openLdap you have no vendor lock in, and the management tools are getting better every day.

True, but i was referring more to native client access.. WIndows machines don't really have a native LDAP authentication layer which Novell's tools provide (NMAS). Also Novell's LDAP authentication to eDirectory is completely compliant with the LDAP standards X.500, which means that LDAP enabled appliations can directly authenticate to Netware's LDAP.

If Novell would have started the migration off of NetWare to UnixWare (seemed insane at the time), then they would be in a far better position now to migrate to Linux.

This is also very true, and a good observation, but as you sad at the time it seemed insane. I was just saying that at the time I probably would have been in favor of axing the project just like I would have been opossed to axing WordPerfect even though both of my opinions would have been negative in the long term. I guess that puts Novell's future prediction batting average at about 500 hehe.

You sound like a current Novell customer, and you are definately more up on modern NetWare than I am. Are you planning on switching to SuSe?

We use a lot of Linux around here, but not really for clients yet (it's in the works). We can't really make the move to a full Linux environment because the manageability Novell brings enables us to do so much with so little (2000 Workstations, 25 Servers, 4 IT Staff members). We had been looking at Mandrake primarily for our desktops, but with Novell's aquisition of Suse we are probably going to try to standardize all our linux machines around Suse.

When Novell does ship Open Enterprise System (probably based around Suse Enterprise Server) then we will be using that with the Linux kernel, not the Netware kernel. We would be using NTerprise Services for Linux if it had full functionality (but it's missing some vital components so far). Groupwise on Linux should be interesting I think, I wonder if they would leverage traditional MTA's and such or if they would still port GWIA. Currently we use Groupwise on an internal domain with postfix, spamasssassin, and amavisd-new to filter viruses and spam before our domain. Works very well so far.

PXE Boot

[nurb432]

Instead of a 'hard' client, PXE booting is the way to go.

Just plug in a machine, and let it go..

Most any new machine does this..

Re:PXE Boot

[Anonymous Coward]

Any machine since about 2001, PXE boot is part of Intel's WfM spec and the PC99 guidelines. Older machines can use Etherboot or Netboot, either on floppy or burned into a PROM that goes onto the network card.

By the way, there is also the PXES distribution, which is similar to TLSP, but claims to have simpler configuration. I haven't tried either yet, so I can't vouch for the claim.

How about an open configurator

[nurb432]

We all know that Novell will keep theirs closed and commercial, ( they are a company that wants an income afterall. ).

Has anyone started a project to create an open tool for configuration and management for those of us that cant purchase what Novell will be offering?

Re:How about an open configurator

[gral]

What's wrong with WebMin? It seems to work pretty well for me, and everything is a web page. You can set it up to access from various locations as well.

Re:How about an open configurator

[theblkadder]

You will hopefully be happy to know that we just recently GPL'd YaST.

See
http://www.suse.de/us/company/press/press_r eleases /archive04/yast.html

Patrick Greenwell
SUSE/Novell

What's your point about their laptops?

[Anonymous Coward]

"On a side note, the laptops of both the HP rep and Novell rep were running SuSE Linux Desktop with Ximian XD2 installed and the presentation was made using OpenOffice Presentation."

I went to a Novell engineer's presentation earlier this year, and he was running XP and using PowerPoint. What's your point?

not LPST then?

[cdavies]

I read that as LPST project. LPST being of course a Lisenced Practical Sexual Therapist.

I'm slightly bummed that Novel aren't becoming a company of pimps.

Re:What processing do 3270 terminals do client-sid

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at it this way: What non-display-related computation do non-javascript Web Browsers forms do? Are web browsers "thin clients" or "dumb terminals"?

VT/Unix Terminals are really dumb, they echo every keystroke back to the server.

Installing LTSP is Easy with K12LTSP Isos

[Doug Dante]

I had a hard time installing LTSP for a demo until a friend suggested using the K12LTSP Iso images. Installation was completely painless using them.

Novell

[JustNiz]

Novell... are they still around ? :-)

XD2 Installer

[kingbyu]

I'm sorry if this is a little off topic, but while following links from this story, I found the install instructions for XD2:
# Open a terminal window.
# Using the su command, become superuser (root).
# Type the following command or cut and paste it into your terminal:
wget -q -O - http://go.ximian.com |sh

Does this seem like a bad thing to anyone? Wouldn't this give complete control over the entire system to some script from who knows exactly where without at least being able to look at it first?

Re: XD2 installer

[sloanster]

wget -q -O - http://go.ximian.com |sh

Does this seem like a bad thing to anyone? Wouldn't this give complete control over the entire system to some script from who knows exactly where without at least being able to look at it first?

I wouldn't say it's from who knows exactly where, in fact one may deduce from the url that it's in fact from go.ximian.com - if you want to see what the script does, you can download it to disc for analysis before running it.

I'd wager that ximian would be loath to cause any problems that would reflect negatively on their reputation.

Re: XD2 installer

[Bensmum]

And who says that url is actually the one replying? This shows they are completely out to lunch, and have no idea how to use unix. Running wget|sh as root is one of the most incredibly stupid things you could possibly do. There is absolutely nothing to assure that what you get came from ximian, even if you trusted ximian not to get their website hacked and have a malicious script put up instead. (Given this stupidity, I wouldn't trust them to keep their website/server from being hacked.)

Re: XD2 installer

[sloanster]

There is absolutely nothing to assure that what you get came from ximian, even if you trusted ximian not to get their website hacked and have a malicious script put up instead.

We are very suspicious aren't we? With that degree of paranoia, one would be essentially paralyzed, unable to trust anyone, or engage in any type of electronic commerce or online transaction.

But you still pay the Microsoft tax.

[HarveySchmidlapp]

On a side note, the laptops of both the HP rep and Novell rep were running SuSE Linux Desktop with Ximian XD2 installed and the presentation was made using OpenOffice Presentation."

In spite of this, if you want an HP laptop, you have to buy Windows (XP Home). Since their upgrade to XP Pro is $50, about half the retail difference, I suppose you could only expect saving 50% of the retail price of XP Home ($200*50% = $100) if they were to leave it off. While saving $100 would be nice, NOT sending anything to Redmond would make me even happier.

I don't mean to pick on HP in particular. This is true of IBM, Toshiba, and Dell (and probably any others you can name). Do any of the big name makers let you avoid the Microsoft tax?

Re:But you still pay the Microsoft tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been said on Slashdot that you can avoid the Windows Tax by ordering the computer and then calling them up and saying you disagree to the MS EULA, and they have to refund you for the software (and I'm guessing you have to ship it back to them). I haven't tried it myself, but plenty of other people say it works for them.

Of course it's just easier to order a computer from somewere without the Tax like monarchcomputers.com

Re:But you still pay the Microsoft tax.

[linux_author]

yep - my feelings exactly! - i'm still waiting to be able to walk into compusa/best buy/circuit city/micro center and be able to buy a laptop with no Microsoft software...

Re:But you still pay the Microsoft tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

Avoiding the Microsoft tax is good, but I gave my sister my emachine last year. I had never used the windows that came with it but was good to have a legal copy rather than a pirated one.

If we expect people to honor the GPL we need to honor their copyrights.

Webmin?

[nurb432]

Webmin has modules for managing a TS/cluster environment?

Thats news to me..

Re:Webmin?

[gral]

TS?

There is some configuration for Clusters. I haven't used them, but they are there.

But, my point was that Webmin already has the interfaces and pieces in place to create a module for doing whatever would be needed for configuration of a machine, whatever the purpose.

Re:Webmin?

[nurb432]

TS = Terminal services.. ( sorry, its habit )

Their 'cluster management' is for clusters of webmin servers, not true 'clusters' in this context.

However, I do agree webmin is nice for what it does, and is one of the first things i install on a server, ( after Joe :P ) its just missing a few 'enterprise' pieces..

Re:Webmin?

[gral]

The missing pieces could be made though. It has a pretty nice interface for everything. What pieces would be needed?

Re:Webmin?

[Krondor]

Their 'cluster management' is for clusters of webmin servers, not true 'clusters' in this context.

Webmin has modules that support true clusters and of course clusters of webmin servers. I think you need to look into it more :).

Re:What processing do 3270 terminals do client-sid

[T-Ranger]

The handle display /formating/. You can send exact positioning data to a vt102 (and you would)... But you send something more akin to HTML to a 3270.

And they handle data input. You can have fields that hold more chars then fit on the screen.. That kind of processing is done client side. You send data back to the 3270 controler a screen at a time. 3270s are the reason why there is a distinction between ENTER and RETURN. ENTER enters the data into the controler, RETURN does what a carage return does on a typewriter. All these PC keyboards are mislabled.

Conceptually, a DEC style terminal is like, well, ssh. A 3270 is like HTML/HTTP.

Wouldn't it be nice

[Action_Jax]

If they could work on other enhancements to LTSP or X such as "screen" like session management or vnc session management or load balancing like Citrix.

I think its greating them getting involved, LTSP is quite a mature project and while I'm not quite sure what kind of extra value they would add hopefully they will be looking at solidifying LDAP/Edirectory integration and other enhancements (like bandwidth optimisation).

Re:Wouldn't it be nice

[LDoggg_]

Cool stuff like this is indeed coming. Jim has been kicking major ass. Check out this post for some of the new features.

Are you a shill?

[ripcrd]

I've seen these posts about NX over the last few days and I'm not sure if you are just impressed by the product as a user or a shill for the company to sell more licenses.

IIRC, Novell just bought a company that made a Live Linux CD (Knoppix derivative) with all the free Novell client tools and some sort of Citrix (or NX) like software for terminal serving. It was something like Novix or something. I found a link to them on the Knoppix Cousins page.
http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/Knopp ixCusto mizations

What's wrong if Novell want to contribute to an Open Source project of their choice? It may be that Novell chose LTSP because it will fit more of the situations they are looking at than NX.

Re:Are you a shill?

[moonwind]

What is a "shill"? (my dictionary doesn't tell me...)

I'm not sure if you are just impressed by the product
------
In that case I am pretty sure that you can't have seen and experienced the product's technology (which, BTW, was released under the GPL). Otherwise you *would* be sure....

I think the company has a pretty poor marketing. For example, their website doesn't state clearly enough the fact that they release the source of their core libraries under the GPL. That one is pretty much hidden. (The source files themselves do state it very clearly)

Re:Are you a shill?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the poor marketing :-). Anyway, isn't this enough?

Gian Filippo Pinzari - NoMachine

Suse & openoffice manditory for Novell workers

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for an IBM business partner in The Netherlands and am working on a project with Novell here.
There was a presentation a few weeks ago and the entire Novell staff was upset to say the least that they where forced within the timespan of 2 weeks to install openoffice and remove ms office from there desktops and laptops.
The presentation was therefor the first build with openoffice and let me tell you...that was interesting to say the least.
These poor people at Novell Holland need some Openoffice training !

Re:What processing do 3270 terminals do client-sid

[Clover_Kicker]

>What non-display-related computation do 3270 terminals do? Can you run
>processes on them? Do independent computing tasks?

Let's watch Alice doing data entry with her 3270.

She hits TAB, types in some stuff in the field. Hits TAB, types in stuff in another field. Hits TAB, types in stuff in yet another field. The 3270 hasn't communicated with the mainframe at all during this time - the terminal controls the cursor, and buffers the data she has typed in.

Now Alice hits ENTER, and the terminal sends everything to the mainframe in one shot.

Contrast with a VT100 or telnet, where every keystroke is sent to the host.

I don't know if you'd call that "independant computing tasks", but the 3270 does cut down a lot of host-terminal chitchat.

Interesting... very interesting

[tulare]

Sometimes it's hard not to kick oneself for being an early adopter. I've been successfully deploying LTSP labs at work this year using SuSE 9.0 as a base system, and the project has been a success, but it's been a heck of a lot of work. As we're deploying these as student lab computers in a K12 environment, lockdown is key, so I've had to learn (and make good use of) the KDE Kiosk API, and of course this is before the Kiosk admin tool became available. Additionally, we have an Active directory with accounts for all secondary students, so I got to learn how to compile, install, and configure Samba 3 to get winbind to do some of the tricks I needed it to do besides just auth. Also, our primary students don't have an account of their own but rather use a shared school account, and Mozilla has that very annoying profile problem when a user tries to run multiple instances of it, so I had to write a wrapper so that it could run sandboxed (which also provides the benefit of keeping the kids from setting bizarre configurations which are then replicated to all the other users as they are wont to do in our other labs).

All in all, I'm kind of glad I did all this work by hand - I learned a lot, and most of it is now very easy for me to do. On the other hand, had the rumoured deployment tools been available when I started the project, I would have jumped on that and quick. I'm frankly not sure which is better in the long term, but I know it would have been faster to just click'n'run =]

One last thing - before someone flames me for being stupid and not just using K12LTSP, I have to say I tried it, and didn't like it - for one thing I needed more flexibility than was provided by K12LTSP, especially where AD auth comes in, and besides that, as a matter of preference I like what the KDE Kiosk api provides, and we all know just how much Redhat-based distros Don't Support KDE =] In the end, I got to know the system a lot better, and can do a lot more with it than I would have been able to do under a K12LTSP system. This isn't to disparage the effort and amazing work produced by the K12LTSP team - they really do have an excellent product and I recommend it wholeheartedly for K12 staff needing to get a fast deployment out - it just wasn't the fit I needed for this project.

Re:Interesting... very interesting

[iantri]

Just out of curiosity:

I understand the need to lock things down under Windows 9X and (maybe) a little under 2000/XP, but why does Linux need it? They can't break anything unless the system is configured improperly, and the only settings they can change are their own.

Mozilla has that very annoying profile problem when a user tries to run multiple instances of it, so I had to write a wrapper so that it could run sandboxed (which also provides the benefit of keeping the kids from setting bizarre configurations which are then replicated to all the other users as they are wont to do in our other labs).

Uh.. are they all logged in as the same user or something? Moz. configs are stored on a per user basis.

Re:Interesting... very interesting

[tulare]

As far as locking down goes, there's plenty of stuff on there the kids don't need - the shell for instance =]. You have to remember, these computers are going to be used by K-12 students, often with inadequate supervision, as budget cuts have pinched us between state-mandated online testing, the need to purchase and upgrade equipment, and the obvious need to keep enough staff to maintain basic order (not to mention actually educate the kids).

If nothing else, your average linux distro has about a zillion and one features, which for someone like you or I is a Good Thing, but can be overwhelming to someone who is just learning how to use a computer. Beyond that, locking down the interface reduces the hell out of our support burden, as it completely eliminates the "I lost the Mozilla icon from my toolbar" type of problems. What's there is there, and will be there tomorrow - another Good Thing(r) for support folks.

While on the subject of Mozilla, yeah, the reason I put it in that wrapper is exactly because there are a lot of cases where multiple terminals will be logged in under the same username. It's hard enough keeping a couple hundred staff and 1500 high- and middle-school students to remember their passwords - forget about trying to do that with the first graders =] So I put Mozilla in a wrapper on the primary school lab servers, and they all login with a schoolwide student account. Part of me understands why mozilla is set up the way it is, and the other part of me hates the setup with a passion. And I still needed the primary school lab computers to be able to authenticate with regular user accounts... long story but trust me it's the right call. So mozwrapper it was!

Re:Interesting... very interesting

[iantri]

Beyond that, locking down the interface reduces the hell out of our support burden, as it completely eliminates the "I lost the Mozilla icon from my toolbar" type of problems. What's there is there, and will be there tomorrow - another Good Thing(r) for support folks.

Ahh.. I see. The local schoolboard (Kawartha Pine Ridge) finds it wise for some reaosn to run Windows 98 with some cheesy lockdown software (Fortres 101 from Fortres Grand). Suffice it to say, it doesn't work -- porn pictures magically appearing on the desktop and other vandalism are common, since W98 has no real concept of profiles (well, it does, kind of, but no access control..).

I never though of this sort of problem.

Sad that Novell/SuSE did not choose NoMachine

[Anonymous Coward]

I just read yesterday that RedHat went through some sort of partnership with Citrix. Now I read that Novell is going to support LTSP to provide "policy based security and administration to the LTSP similar to those found in Microsoft and Citrix terminal servers". This is exactly the goal of the NX project, developed by NoMachine. As CEO of NoMachine I repetedly invited SUSE and RedHat to look at our product and bundle our offering with their Linux servers. Unfortunately I never received any response. This is quite unfortunate as, judging from their recent moves, there is a significant customer demand.

On the technology side of the story, the LTSP project produces a fantastic Linux distribution aimed at thin-clients and I'm reall glad it's seeing increased corporate interest. LTSP lets users boot their machine over the network and runs a X server on the client. Unfortunately bringing X-Window over the Internet is a completely different story. We have been working long enough on bringing X-Window on-par with Citrix that I hardly see LTSP comparing in this field.

I hope to see more interest about NX in the Linux world in future as I really see a need for an OSS alternative to Microsoft and Citrix dominance in this field.

Gian Filippo Pinzari - NoMachine

Another easy way...

[swusr]

PXES

From the page:

PXES Universal Linux Thin Client Features

Supported servers and protocols

• Unix/Linux supporting XDM
• Microsoft Terminal Server using RDP
• Citrix using ICA
• VNC using TightVNC
• LOCAL local graphical session with simple desktop
• LTSP or K12LTSP
• IBM Host using 3270 or 5250 emulation (soon)
• Telnet emulating ANSI terminal
• SSH
• Tarantella using proprietary protocol
• Nomachine using NX

Boot methods

• PXE network card included in most modern PC hardware
• Etherboot to boot from diskette or EPROM
• CD-ROM
• Hard disk
• DOC DiskOnChip and DOM DiskOnModule
• USB Storage

Hardware requirements

• Processor: x86 architecture (i486, i586, i686, VIA C3, etc.)
• BUS: PCI recommended (although ISA works)
• RAM: 32 Mb recommended (16 Mb minimum)
• NIC: see supported card list in Readme
• Video: see supported card list in Readme

Local devices

• Diskette
• Hard disk
• CD-ROM
• Printers parallel, serial and USB
• Serial devices (bar code reader, etc.)
• Audio

Supported operating system

• Linux
• Solaris
• AIX
• SCO
• BSD
• HP-UX
• Microsoft Windows NT4
• Microsoft Windows 2000
• Microsoft Windows 2003
• Microsoft Windows XP

LAMENESS FILTER SUCKS

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Already Done!

[dkeeler15]

Our EzThin Server product our Linux Integration Specilist group created provides a complete LTSP solution, preconfigure, today and is deployed across the country. It utilizes our centralized User Desktop Management System along with our import\export User Management System as well. We utilize and are a contributor to Gentoo as well which allows us to offer managed server solutions. Check it out at http://www.lumensoftware.com (new website coming next week). We also have our own XThin client and EProm boot media to make installation easy. Using our Lumenation middleware\framework and development suite an organization can fully realize even greater scalability and realize the most possible value proposition of Linux.

I doubt they will find it as easy as they think...

[jdclucidly]

Our company has been been doing LTSP server installs in local area school for a year, now. In that time we've learned a lot about what LTSP needs and doesn't have and have developed tools to deal with those issues. Novell has a long road ahead of them to deal with that list of challenges. Off the top of my head, here are some common ones:

1. Devices connected to thin clients are extremely difficult to bind back to the server for enumeration and individual user access. Think users in different rooms want to print to their printer on their desk. Our tools handle that but took months to develop.
2. Managing the KDE Kiosk API to lock down user desktop is not currently possible in anything but config files; again, our tools manage those things but took months to develop.
3. Managing the rolling out of user profile changes requires scripts and GUI interfaces to those scripts.
4. Changes in hardware configurations require close relationships with customers where an advanced Linux technician can respond timely. This is a huge cost to our company but it make the stuff work and makes our customers happy.
5. People that purchase LTSP servers have no interest in learning or administering Linux. They want it to just work; they're tired of adminstering variances in Windows labs and networks. You have to have a Linux tech to closely support the server.
6. Upgrades between releases of SuSE cannot be done, AFAIK. Presently, the only distros that can continually upgrade without breaking are Gentoo, Debian, LFS, and Slackware. This is Novells biggest challenge. This means that users of Novell's implementation would have to reinstall to receive any new software.
7. With currently available SuSE tools, it's not possible to boot from CD remotely and do a complete server rebuild or forensics in case of absolute disaster. We can do this by using Gentoo boot CD's.
8. Clients invariably have one Windows app that they just have to run in Wine. It requires time, patience, and working with the Wine folks and good debugging skills to get some of these things to work. I don't think Novell has the time or interest due to costs of such things.

Novell has their work cut out for them but I think that, ultimately, a company this large will find that the cost of supporting these servers running in places with noone with any Linux knowledge is too high -- they'll get out of the business or their customers will not get sufficient support and leave.

... IMHO, of course.

"X" versus "Frame Buffer" is a tradeoff

[Kunta Kinte]

Yes, and I was talking about bandwidth, not the particular technology. An RDP session with bitmap caching running at 800*600*16bpp or 1024*768*8bpp is completely usable with the bandwidth of a 28.8 modem, whereas X is often unresponsive over a 604/128 DSL line.

This argument always comes up.

X uses and alternative approach to network transparency which comes with the trade off of higher bandwidth. The advantage though, is much less load on the servers.

Framebuffer based solutions eg. RDP are a joke when considered as a means of deploying applications to large groups of users.

You might end up with configs like 10s of users per server for even simple applications simply because all the rendering has to be on on the servers.

In the long run RDP is very expensive because of the equipment cost.

While with X, with the rendering offloaded to the client, happily chugging along.

Personally I think the X approach is a lot saner. Why render the entire application on the server when you have a client that probably can easily do this rendering as well? ...If you have the bandwidth, that is.

Re:I doubt they will find it as easy as they think

[RustyTaco]

# Devices connected to thin clients are extremely difficult to bind back to the server for enumeration and individual user access. Think users in different rooms want to print to their printer on their desk. Our tools handle that but took months to develop.

Really? I just did a quick lookup in the login script to set the PRINTER environment variable to the right printer depending on the hostname/display (depending on if it was an LTSP terminal or full Linux system). It's a little ugly but dead simple. If you're using CUPS (as you probably should for sanity sake) use lpoptions -d printer instead of export PRINTER=printer.

- RustyTaco

We have an open configurator

[chupacabrito]

VI

Migration

[Lennie]

As Novell will be releasing a Linux and a Netware bases File-server/whatever, they need to be able to easily migrate between those.

Filesystem-support is definitly something you'd need.

Network Printer

[Lennie]

People want/need a good Network Laser Printer.. don't they ?

Who wants to give up desk-space for something silly as a printer ?

If it prints to a set of 3 printers in seperate room, that's just perfect (automatic printer routing, weeeeh ! ;-) ).

Cinco De Mayo - The will be the day of Linux!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why co-opt a Mexican holiday to take potshots at Microsoft? Hell, that's business as usual around slashdot. So what does that make March 6th (The day in 1836 the Alamo fell to the Mexican army)? Is that a good day to take potshots at SCO?

Re:Why all linux mod down

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess what should be surprising on Slashdot is that "Asses in Hats" didn't get modded up.

Forgot one !

[Lennie]

It's of CD, no floppy or ROM needed. :-)

why didn't you ask him ?

[_Qiang_]

you were in the seminar, weren't you ? have you tried to ask him ?

Re:Why dont LTSP/Novell use NoMachine's NXtechnolo

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I woudn't call it "pretty studid". it may just be that they are uninformed, no? Who *does* know about NX after all?

Taking myself as an example: *I* didn't know anything about NX (not even its name) until a few days ago. Someone over at OSnews.com did sing some Hossianahs for NX and that's when I started to look at it. It is truely an amazing product.

I have also scanned through their nxusers@nomachine and nxdevelopers@nomachine mailing archives. There I found messages which seem to suggest that NoMachine are working on an LTSP port. NX seems to be easily integrating in all kinds of environments.

The question isn't "either NX -- or LTSP" for Novell/SUSE. They can easily combine both into a great product.

So maybe us reading "Novell partners with NoMachine" headlines is not to far away...

OTOH, some got lots of bandwidth...

[Anonymous Coward]

*_Personal opinion follows_*

And so, latency is king. People with Fast Ethernet would gladly trade bandwidth for lower latency.

RDP is not so great in this scenario, X is perfectly ok and VNC is deadly sucking.

You need a lightweight REMOTE windowmanager!

[poopie]

As much as you can say about X working across the WAN and performance issues or suckage,

A very large amount of real user experience of using remote x comes down to WHAT APPLICATIONS ARE BEING RUN.

I can run vi in an xterm from halfway around the world decently, but try running a GNOME or KDE desktop environment from 30 milliseconds away with ample bandwidth and almost everyone will say, "it sucks"

When using x across the WAN, GNOME and KDE desktops suck!

Try using something like twm with a plain xterm or fvwm and a plain xterm and compare that to a GNOME or KDE desktop with gnome-terminal. You'll be surprised how much better the remote experience is when you use a simple windowmanager.

Re:You need a lightweight REMOTE windowmanager!

[AvitarX]

What I really like to do is open the xterms locally and use ssh. That seems to be really fast too.

Also I use it cross platform much easier (ssh clents for windows are easier to come by then X servers).

Why dont LTSP/Novell use NoMachine NX technology?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The question isn't "either NX -- or LTSP" for Novell/SUSE."

You are absolutely right. LTSP and NX ara doing different things. They are orthogonal. They can be easily combined. LTSP provides the ultra-thin client OS. NX provides the speed booster and bandwidth saver. NX powering a LTSP/SUSEdesktop setup would be a really good solution to compete with Citrix Metaframe and MS Windows Terminal Servers.

An easily installable package of NX for LTSP environments will be released soon, according to a recent pre-announcemnt by Gian Filippo Pinzari (CEO of NoMachine) on a users@nomachine mailing list.

Re:"X" versus "Frame Buffer" is a tradeoff

[Anonymous Coward]

I administer a citrix terminal server farm for about 4000 users. There is no comparism between X and the ica protocol. X sucks. Can you load balance with X? Map client printers, drives, comm ports, and audio? Easily shadow other X sessions? Experience a usable desktop over a dsl line, much less modem?

Try using ica/rdp before making nutty claims like that.

Re:"X" versus "Frame Buffer" is a tradeoff

[afidel]

Bandwidth is expensive and recurring, server hardware is cheap and getting cheaper all the time (well ok bandwidth is too, just not as quickly). A Citrix farm for a midsized company (100-200 employees) is 3-4 Dual Xeon's with a couple gigs of ram per server, total cost, under $20K easily, whereas each T1 around here runs about $1K/month for managed bandwidth (not including installation). So you have paid for a server in a couple months if you can use one less T line.

reverse operating rdesktop

[Keruo]

That's one thing I'd love to have.
It's nice to be able to access windows terminal server from linux using rdesktop, but I'd love to access my linux desktop from vanilla windows machine without installing VNC clients and local Xservers in order to run the software I need.
Why don't I just install that vnc software?
Because most of the computers I tend to use won't allow that. The local policy rules block installing non-specified software, which is good.
Keeps unwanted adaware etc away from the workstations.
Every windows workstation has the remote desktop client installed in them.

Is it secure to run remote desktop you say? Well, probably not, but I could always tunnel it through ssh. Same goes for X you say, yes, but still you need the local Xserver etc to run the progs and that doesn't work.

So any bored coders willing to take the challenge and create Xrdpd server?

Re:reverse operating rdesktop

[LDoggg_]

do the clients you are using have a java vm installed?
If they do, you can just open a browser and run the applet version of the vnc client delivered from the vnc server.

Re:reverse operating rdesktop

[Anonymous Coward]

how about running a windows x server instead like the one at www.hob.de (grep around for the us address).

Re:"X" versus "Frame Buffer" is a tradeoff

[natmsincome.com]

If you want frame buffering using X it's fairly simple. Basically you make a Local VNC server and connect to it but if you want X to use less bandwidth use a Proxy for X. The proxy strips and compresses the data so it uses up less bandwidth but still works the same.

There are lots of ways to reduce the bandwidth use b X.

Re:"X" versus "Frame Buffer" is a tradeoff

[natmsincome.com]

You can map:
*Drives - http://nbd.sourceforge.net/
*Audio - http://www.ltsp.org/ltsp_sound_docs.txt and http://www.ltsp.org/contrib/ica/ica-howto.html
*P rinters - http://ltsp.org/documentation/ltsp-3.0-4-en.html (Section 5. and 8.2.6.)

As you can see none of this is through X. X only does the screen. This is the classic windows product that does everything VS unix where you have 5 different products that combine to do the same thing.

The difference is that with Linux you can change to a different product for a single subsection if it doesn't do what you want (I've ready about 3 or 4 different network audio servers)

As for shadowing X sessions you can using VNC. Serial ports can be mapped to the server but I don't know of any projects deddicated to making that easy only a couple of scripts that do.

As for using X over a modem try http://www.xfree86.org/current/lbxproxy.1.html which reduces the bandwidth X uses. Also you can use VNC which allows you to trade quality for speed.

Is all of this through a simple GUI provided for you like Citrix? No! Does it give you more flexability? Yes! Does this mean more work? Yes! Once it's up and running do you care? No!

Does X compare to the ICA protical? No! Why? One is just for the GUI whereas the other does everything else as well. X is designed for system with limited hardware which is why by default it doesn't work in the situations your talking about but that's why there are other products that do what you want.

Comparing X and RDP/ICA is like comparing MP3 to FLAC they both do the same thing (compress audio) but not in the same way or with the same goals.

Also think when you compare Windows and Linux remember:
*Windows - One mega application that does it all.
*Linux - Lots of little applications that do the same job together.

Sweet

[zin]

now I can open a bash shell over a graphical (X) terminal server. Oh wait I could already do that.

Rob

ummm no

[Arker]

The X Window System predates 10base5 by several years. It goes back to a time when 1 or 2 mbps was common, and that generally in a ring environment which meant that collisions were frequent and usable bandwidth was a fraction of that theoretical max.

Re:ummm no

[afidel]

In a ring environment there are NO collisions, there IS contention for the token but that doesn't reduce bandwidth at all and generally affects latency less than Ethernet's CSMA/CD. The problem was that it didn't scale well. Of course eventually we went back to ring topologies for FDDI which was very high speed but still not good for connecting large numbers of hosts (ask Case Western Reserve).

Re:ummm no

[Arker]

Grr bus. Teach me to post when I should be sleeping.

Mandrake is already there...

[LibrePensador]

Mandrake already offers what Novell is now getting around to implement. Look at Mandrake's terminal server, which also does audio and local terminal to floppy file saving through some pretty nifty tricks.

Re:Mandrake is already there...

[4lex]

Mandrake may offer good software (it does, indeed). Novell, on the other hand, is trying to take the IBM path, in my humble view (although they are not a hardware company, methinks). When you offer an integrated solution consisting in "hardware + OS + apps + great-support-for-all-of-the-above", you may get a lot of enterprise customers happy, because they always know who to blame for a fault.

It was real, it was cool - NT4 killed it

[dbIII]

Basically, this was a X11 terminal server sort of thing that could also redirect Windows apps.

Microsoft changed the API of NT4, kept it as a trade secret and effectively killed this project. Pity, there's been so many times when a remote window to an NT box would have been very useful. Thankfully *VNC plugged that gap a few years ago (full desktop - but its a start) and Microsofts own products are aparently getting very good in that field now too.

Use a web browser for TightVNC

[dbIII]

Why don't I just install that vnc software?

You don't have to, you just need java and a web browser. At the VNC desktop end you just need a simple bit of javascript that exports VNC as a web page and sends an applet. I have that running so that people with windows machines can see the gkrellm (cpu,memory etc graphs) displays for all the machines on a cluster at once.

Re:"X" versus "Frame Buffer" is a tradeoff

[Anonymous Coward]

How much money have you paid to Citrix, would you know? And how much did it cost to build the server farm? Oh, and how much to Microsoft? We'd like to know.

Re:"X" versus "Frame Buffer" is a tradeoff

[JasonAsbahr]

Why not use a compressed/stripped approach in the X protocol itself?

NX the new X

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.nomachine.com/

This stuff looks good... No NX looks better than good! And its core is open source.

Re:"X" versus "Frame Buffer" is a tradeoff

[robpoe]

Uhm...Not under $20k. ONE server is about $17k once you've purchased the Citrix and M$ licensing. The server is a Dual Xeon, 3 gigs ram, 72g hard drive.

Re:I doubt they will find it as easy as they think

[Anonymous Coward]

jdclucidly (520630) wrote: we've learned a lot about what LTSP needs and doesn't have and have developed tools to deal with those issues

Unless your tools incorporate proprietary software or are being used as strategic differentiators for your service, may I humbly suggest that you release them under the GPL and submit them to the LTSP project? That way, you'll get improvements to your tools for free, and nobody else will have to reinvent that wheel.