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Thin Client Solutions For Libraries?
phatlipmojo writes "I'm a librarian in the process of opening a brand new small public library from the ground up (literally; we don't even have a building yet). The library director and I are considering our options for public computing terminals. Having experienced the frustration of dealing with Dell machines running Windows XP on a daily basis, we're trying to consider other options, and we've been talking about maybe using thin clients. Have any of you used or worked in a library (or similar environment) that uses thin client stations for public computing? What are your impressions? What are the perks and what are the drawbacks?"
"I'm hoping that using thin clients could save us daily time troubleshooting bluescreens^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H computer glitches, allow us a greater degree of uniformity on the public terminals, save us the trouble and expense of putting Anti-virus software, Fortres, and Deep Freeze (or other such utilities) on each machine, and make our machines more difficult for black hat types to mess up on purpose. I'm also hoping we'll be able to offer web access (IE and Mozilla, hopefully. IE at a minimum), Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. And have floppy drives. Plus, it would really comfort me not to pump several hundred dollars per machine into a monopolist's coffers for an OS we're just going to debilitate anyway.
We're in the odd (for a public library) position of money not really being a significant factor in the decision. So, for those thin-client-lovers among you if cost weren't a factor, would you still prefer them to full-fledged PCs?
The other factor here is the tech skills required, because our IT department is me. As librarians go, I'm pretty tech-savvy, but as Slashdotters go, I'm pretty much a luser. So homebrew Linux solutions are really out (plus, vendor support is important for selling ideas like this to the municipal government), but systems requiring basic-to-intermediate networking and troubleshooting skills are in, and I'm not afraid of non-Windows OSes."
We're in the odd (for a public library) position of money not really being a significant factor in the decision. So, for those thin-client-lovers among you if cost weren't a factor, would you still prefer them to full-fledged PCs?
The other factor here is the tech skills required, because our IT department is me. As librarians go, I'm pretty tech-savvy, but as Slashdotters go, I'm pretty much a luser. So homebrew Linux solutions are really out (plus, vendor support is important for selling ideas like this to the municipal government), but systems requiring basic-to-intermediate networking and troubleshooting skills are in, and I'm not afraid of non-Windows OSes."
success story
To quote Wikipedia: "In hackish, the word luser takes on a broader meaning, referring to any normal user (i.e. not a guru), especially one who is also a loser (luser and loser are pronouced the same)"
So she's okay.
success story here, sorry
As Auger recently wrote in an article for Library Journal: "Our two Linux luminaries, Michael Ricksecker (network specialist) and Luis Salazar (network engineer), created a kernel and resulting user desktop that closely mimic not only the look and feel of a Windows desktop and browser but lack the unnecessary bells and whistles that come with a standard Windows installation."
l
Using LFS as a starting point, Luis and Mike were able to build a minimal Linux kernel that included only the functionality required by the "kiosk style" machines. They added the Gnome desktop environment, the Mozilla browser, and OpenOffice.org to complete the picture. They call the new distribution "Lumix."
Anywho, give that a try --
Article From Newsforge-
http://www.newsforge.com/os/04/05/03/1520209.shtm
LumixTech (link from article doesn't work...give this a try or google it)
http://www.lumixtech.com/
Good luck with your new library!
-thewldisntenuff
My MythTV HowTo
I know you said that money is less important, but Sun Rays still might be out of your league. I have no idea what they go for.
Sun Rays are the epitomy of the thin client. I mean, they really are thin. Only like 2 inches thin. They run off a Solaris central server, and have no hard disk or much of a CPU. I use them all the time in my CS lab at UC Berkeley.
I'm commenting more on the general aspect of the thin client than these specifically, because I think something else might suit your needs better. So let me just say that in a lab of 30 sunrays, they always seemed slow. But then you (probably) don't have freshmen writing C programs with memory leaks and infinite loops that clog the pipes. If you had a moderate number running off a decent server, I'm sure they'd be fine for just about anything you do. Solaris is a pretty standard UNIX environment; you can offer Gnome and KDE and such, and all the applications you described, and they'll work fine as long as people don't expect 3D games.
But I'd consider alternatives. It all depends on how many systems you want to offer. If it were 5-10 systems, I'd just get cheap PCs and install RedHat or other linux, or an old version of Windows. Then keep a disk image handy so you can wipe them whenever you want. But if you need a lot of workstations, then a thin client might be more economical. Work it out and see.
"!"
If you have the money for Citrix, they provide a great thin-client on option where with the hardware you can put Linux on the client and have put straight into Citrix. 99.99% of the users will never know the difference.
Daily Shenanigans
I've setup a classroom before with LTSP, and although it was impressive it had many shortcomings. For a non-linux veteran it could also introduce security vulnerabilities. I suggest you instead take a look at Windows terminal server, the CALs are sometimes even included in a site license.
u at ion/casestudies/CaseStudy.aspx?CaseStudyID=13563
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/eval
Thinstation is a 'distro' that i'm currently using at work (a hospital). It can be used to connect to Citrix, RDP, VNC, Unix, Telnet/SSH, or (with the help of fluxbox/icewm) as a lightweight standalone linux workstation (with an optional FireFox package). The people on the mailinglist are VERY helpful as well, so you don't need to worry about support when you've a problem.
I can really recommend it as a thinclient solution.
There are plenty of resources for thin client computing in a library environment.
s /caseStudy.asp?storyID=13818
I would start by checking out the case studies that are listed at citrix.com. One immediately comes to mind: http://www.citrix.com/site/aboutCitrix/caseStudie
Incidentally, the man in question here runs a little site by the name of http://www.thethin.net/. It is hands down, the number one resource for thin client solutions on the web. Join the list and listen in for a while, I guarantee you'll learn more about terminal server and thin clients during the first week on this list than you will learn in any classroom.
Good luck to you!
At my university (http://www.kuleuven.be/) the library uses Sun terminals. Searching for books can be done online from your dorm or from one of the netscape browsers running on the Sun thingies.
The Sun computers look very sharp, are very small and are all accompanied by a LCD display. They run some sort of Linux-Unix like OS.
There is also StarOffice installed on all computers so you can type something and mail it to yourself
The books themselves have RFID tags on them (or something like that, the building knows when you take a book) and you have to enter/leave by using your University ID card
You do realize that a thin client is not a slimline desktop, don't you?
A thin client is one with little or no computing power... Just a screen, keyboard and mouse, give or take...
A slimline desktop is one where you "pay more to have all that computing power stuffed into a smaller case."
OTOH, maybe IHBT.
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
Lots of people talking about 'how-to', but nobody really answering your question. Typical slashdot...
The advantages of thin clients in this type of environment are many. It's almost impossible for a user to screw up what is effectively nothing but a terminal.
Downsides would include the need for a more expensive server on the back-end, as all the horsepower now has to reside in one place. Also, when the server dies, _everybody_ dies.
And if you use commodity hardware for the thin client, it can be harder to lock things down on the client end. General rule of thumb is NO drives of any kind with the client configured to boot across the network.
Many people have suggested the SunRay, and it's hard to argue with that - it's one of the first thin clients that's really usable (IMHO).
http://www.theboyz.biz/ Computer parts & more!
If you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space!
2) install mandrake linux official 10.0 on it
3) install ltsp 4.1 http://www.ltsp.org/ on top of it
4) get a load of old PC hardware (everything up from pentium goes, all you need is a non s3-grahic card and one spare pci-bus)
5) rid the PCs with all moving parts (leave the fans though...)
6) get pxe-booting network cards for the clients (100mbit is fine, via-rhine for example)
7) fire up.
if you want to do it with new hardware, just buy some via epia+case combos =)
Mail me for more details - I can also do the actual job if being paid =)
++K
<[letter kay][at][number seventy seven][dot][finnish TLD]>
There's been a few stories about Multihead Linux recently. Here's an implementation built specifically for libraries:
http://userful.com/products/library
Unlike the common 'backstreet ruby' approach, the userful stuff can handle 8-10 heads at a time, with full acceleration.
For your purposes, it's already been integrated into a library situation...
http://k12ltsp.org/
K-12 Linux Terminal Server Project
Perfect for what you're looking for and already in use in various schools and libraries.
And maybe use NetBoot for centralized administration, which should make it easy to reset the clients to a default state.
Here is one I've used Check it out.n dout.h tmls entat ion/
http://meadvillelibrary.org/os/pala-ltsp/ha
http://meadvillelibrary.org/os/pala-ltsp/pre
There is no justification for ever installing full-blown PCs in this kind of environment. (No, I don't work for or with these guys, I just have way more experience than I ever wanted administering extensive networks of independent PCs in environments where the cumulative equivalent of VT's Big Mac was brought to bear on tasks that cumulatively required roughly a dual P4). Web browsing, word processing and the like require almost no processing power. Unless your users are creating/editing/transcoding audio or video, compiling elaborate programs, or doing deep data searches on local data, the computing power is wasted.
Not to mention the time wasted on cleaning up after clueless users (in a properly configured thin client environment users are only users, not manipulators, of the core operating environment), keeping up with the latest patches, x number of software/OS "up"grades instead of one (and the requisite hardware upgrades - two, three years down the road, instead of replacing a library full of obsolete machines, you replace one, and keep your clients),... I could go on, but /. comments aren't supposed to be books, so I'll stop.
Hi,
Take a look at Pilotlinux: http://www.pilotlinux.nl/pilotlinux/.
PilotLinux is a thin client LiveCD. It's Knoppix/Morphix based and supports RDP, VNC and X. Citrix support is being added.
This is how I would do it.
:) Mount the mATX card with CPU, small amount of RAM (like 128) in a small fanless mATX case. Each client should not cost more than 200-300 USD including keyboard+mouse. No harddrive, cdrom or floppy!
:)
HARDWARE
--------
Server: Some modern athlonbased computer, maybe dual if it is not too expensive. Lots of ram! (like 2 GB or more). This should not need to cost more than 1300-1500 USD (or less if you do not need dual CPUs, etc).
Clients: Some kind of mATX motherboard (that supports network boot) with integrated sound, networkcard and graphics. Buy the cheapest duron-CPU money can buy
Monitors: The most costeffective is probably cheap AOC 17" monitors for around 100 USD. (or less)
Network: Go for dlink or netgear, cisco would be overkill in this type of setup. Cost: around 100 USD (or less).
Total cost of hardware: 1400+100 = 1500 USD for server and network, Then an additional 350 USD for each client. So a 6 client setup would cost somewhere in the region of: 3600 USD.
SOFTWARE
--------
Server: Standard debian installation. I would use GDM as login manager and KDE as window manager. With the program "gdmchooser" I would configure gdm to accept connections from other hosts (it is located under the last tab i believe). And i would configure KDE into kiosk mode (however, you can use whatever windowmanager you like). For booting the clients i would set up a DHCP server and BOOTP server, with a small vanilla debian installation (I believe there is a debian package containing a small vanilla debian system).
Clients: Using DHCP + BOOTP the clients load a small linux installation from the server, which only includes what is necessary (like X server, drivers for LAN interface, correct XF86-config file, etc). Add a startupscript that does: X --query SERVER-IP, and voila you now have the gdm login screen from the server when you boot your clients!
(you can configure gdm to autologin a special library-user if the library-visitor is not supposed to have an own account).
Sun Rays are dead silent (no moving parts), very low power (20W) which also saves you on air-con, last forever, require no maintenance on the client side, are very secure (air traffic control for Air Force One is run off a network of Sun Rays) and easy to setup.
Version 3.0 of the server software also runs on Linux. V3 is also bandwidth efficient enough that you can deploy over broadband or a group over 10Mb Ethernet.
As for how much they cost, on modern hardware the main thing to bear in mind is the amount of main memory you have. Sun have a sizing guide to help. For lightweight usage, eg a library, they suggest you can run 40 clients off a server with 4GB of main memory.
So 40x Sun Ray 1g = $359 * 40 = $14.4K (re-use monitors from your existing systems). On server side, a Sun Fire v20z with 2x Opteron 250s and 4GB of memory is $7k, though you could get a model with slower CPUs and pay for more memory. As a library, you should be able to get an educational discount too.
I have read a lot of different definitions of what 'thin clients' are in this thread. Actually, they are all right and wrong. 'Thin client' has quite a few definitions and the definition that applies to you depends on your appliction. For this application, I think we can assume that 'thin client' means a computer without a natively installed OS. In reality, what you want is a standard run of the mill PC for each terminal. There is no need to get exotic towards either end of the spectrum.
For arguments sake, lets assume you want 5 terminals throughout your library. If money were no object, I would order 5 standard PCs from your favorite computer manufacturer (this could be a big dog like Dell or HP or a local computer store.) The only things you want to pay special attention to are warranties. Get the best warranty you can get your hands on. Not to be an advertisement for Dell, but they do have a nice 4year/4hour on site warranty. Once you call in a hardware problem, within 4 hours there will be a tech there to work on it and they'll do this for 4 years. That's hard to beat. One nice thing about buying a standard PC instead of one designed to be the minimum thin client configuration is that if you change your mind later, you can always use a non-thin client solution. I would also consider buying an extra PC. Depending on how busy your terminals will be, you may not get enough time on one of them to update your deploy image. You will need to do things like perform virus scan updates and apply security patches and bug fixes. If taking over a terminal every once in a while is no bigge, don't worry about the extra PC.
Once you have your 5 terminals you should set them up with the standard OS and software you intend to support. I see a lot of Linux suggestions here and Linux could very easily pull it off. But, for a public library, Windows will easily work as well. It is really up to you and which OS you want to support. Whatever you do, make sure you have Mozilla, an office suite, and a virus scanner. If you run Linux, this should be Open Office and if you run Windows, it should be open office AND Microsoft Office. Once you have decided that, I think the idea of bootstrapping over the network is a good idea, but there are other options. Wether you choose Linux or Windows XP, both are capable of firewalling and you should definitely use that feature on the clients and it probably wouldn't hurt to have a firewall protecting your entire building too. But that's just my paranoia kicking in.
First, the drawbacks of net bootstrapping. If you do this, you will either be loading an entire OS and it's apps onto the client hard drive which would take a long time and every reboot of the machine would have that minimum as a downtime. Or, you could just load the base OS onto the machine and have all the apps installed on a server via a mapped drive. This would require less downtime at boot, but your network and server become single points of failure for your clients and you would have long application load times. I would recommend a daily reboot. If you do this when the library opens, then the downtime is not a problem. I would snag the whole OS over the network. This way, regardless of who walks in and out of your library, at least once a day you have cleaned up their messes and you will only have to maintain a single deploy image for all of your terminals. Also, if a computer has trouble and you are too busy to spend time troubleshooting or if you're out and a non-techy person is there, all that is needed is a reboot to take care of the problem.
There are a couple of things to keep in mind. I assume your computer will be capable of searching some sort of database to let patrons search for books and what not. If this is so, you might also want to consider having the terminals have their own databases that snag a copy of the database data from the server at boot time. Every 15 minutes or 30 minutes or so, the clients can request updates. This way, you still only have to u
There is another step you can do if ou want to control the access and or monitor use.
look on freshmeat for some of the cybercafe management systems. you can allocate time to a user and it will shut them down at the end of the alloted time. if your library is not busy, this is not needed, but some libraries are very busy and instead of having the librarians police the stations, you can have the computers police them for you so those waiting to use them will get their time at the terminal.
It worked great for us at a company demonstration of broadband. we had people waiting to "feel the future" so I set up the linux boxes to only allow 15 minutes per user. it worked great and it eliminated the leaches sitting there for 5 hours hogging the access terminals.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The articles:
0 209 0 08
http://os.newsforge.com/print.pl?sid=04/05/03/152
http://www.libraryplanet.com/2004/05/lumixis
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA406
are about a distro based on "Linux From Scratch" that was specificly created for public access terminal use in a library. It has been deployed and is loved by everyone, the public and library management included. I have not used it myself, I heard about it at a user's group meeting. You might want to contact the author and get a copy. ljsalazar(at)comcast.net The project website http://www.lumixtech.com/ seems to be down.
A library I worked with a couple of years back used windows with a restore-on-reboot card. They'd get hit with a virus, or some other bad thing would happen to a system, but they could bring the system back to a known state by turning it off and back on.
Not the be-all answer (no fun if you have to restart XXX times a day) but in conjunction with not-too-frequent patching (weekly?) and a decent anti-virus package it can be good.
Also handy for getting rid of content/screen savers/other unwholesome content that a user might download.
(I'm not a fan of windows, just relaying an experience)
http://www.juzt-reboot.com/
http://www.hddguarder.com/
I have created a customized LTSP installation for libraries that is currently running in 7 public libraries. The system provides Web browsing and an Office Suite with timed sessions, print management, use statistics, floppy disk access, filtering (or not!). You can see one example install here
The system is completely GPL, requires no special hardware and I am currently working on an automated install system to make installation easier. If you are interested I can give you the email addresses of the directors that are using the system if you contact me: pete at elbnet.com.
-- I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken
Sorry this is not directly related to Thin Clients for libraries, but I had to mention it anyhow Koha - Open Source Library System http://www.koha.org/ It is an excelent open source library management system that should recieve more attention
Last year at Torcon, the internet lounge was run off of a bunch of old machines running Knoppix. It had been customized in a few ways that I could see. The nice thing is that the customization was done once and then a bunch of CDs were burned. Any time one of the clients had a problem that could be resolved quickly, a CD was shoved into the drive and it was rebooted. Many of the users never noticed that they weren't using Windows. The ones who did generally commented on the fact that Linux was much friendlier than they expected.
Most of the guys doing the late-night support didn't have any particular sys admin experience as far as I know. They got a brief intro and were off and running.
I've set up this kind of system for a number of local non-profits specifically because they don't have an IT department. It works great. After you set it up it just works. If a client starts acting funny, you just restart it and it gets a brand new copy of software. You can configure how much access users have to software. You can make different rules for different users or different computers if necessary. It's really stable. The ones that I have running right now are up from security patch to security patch. Also, each Netboot server can handle up to 50 clients. So with an education discount, a G5 with the OSX Server and 50 eMacs will run you about $40,000.
Really? How many? ...Having spent a lot of time on the Moz Tech Evangalism team, I'd have to say that the number of websites that aren't standards-compliant enough to be viewed by Mozilla is well below 1%.
There are definitely still sites that are incompatible with Mozilla. However, unless there are specific sites that you need that are incompatible (usually sites that require ActiveX, which for Windows there's at least an ActiveX plugin for Mozilla), this "incompatibility" thing just isn't a good enough reason anymore. And if people start to use Mozilla (or other non-IE browsers), most of the leftover web sites will come around...
I work for a rather large library system in the Houston area (25 different locations, and I'm in the CO), so I'd like to touch on a few points in your post.
:)
So you don't want Windows, but you want IE, Word, Excel and Powerpoint?
I don't believe she said she didn't want Windows, but rather she was unafraid of a non-Windows alternative.
I'd personally try to push you away from supporting a lot of apps outside of just plain-jane internet access.
That would be suicide! At least in my library system. You see, a lot of the time people come into the library to use the computers because *they dont have one*. What this means is that they use computers for all sorts of things, from doing term papers on Word and using our printers to print them. Some come in and work on a spreadsheet for something they are working on at home. Powerpoint? Sure! Why not? What if they need to do a presentation for a class, or for their own business, and they'd like the resources of a library system at their backs while doing research on it. Again, people come to the library to use the computers for all sorts of reasons, and it would be quite presumptuous of us if we thought they only need Internet access.
My point is, the library is where information is collected with the tools to utilize all of it. Not just Internet access. Heck, we even provide free 'Computer Use' classes that teach people from the nearby trailor parks how to browse the web, or click with a mouse.
Hope this helps clear up a few things.
++Om
Go here: http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/thinclients/ind ex_t5000.html
HP makes Windows and Linux thin clients - all fully supported. This is not something I've tried, but I agree that thin client is the way to go in this situation (low user needs and high maintenance worries). You might think about sticking with windows since so many people know how to use it - hard to say. On the other hand, linux is better in so many ways ($$$ and stability/susceptibility to viruses). Go with Linux and all will be well. Have one windows machine in the corner 'just in case'.
After a few initial glitches at my CyberCafe, LTSP-based thin clients ran flawlessly thereafter. Our main troubles were in printers jamming. Although we mainly ran KDE/Linux systems, even Windows Terminal Server ran more reliably (in a GNU/Linux-protected network using rdesktop on the clients).
My advice (inclusive of some flamebait) is the following:
*. First, if you need/want help contact the WSU Lug or me (smutz) on the #wsulug irc channel on freenode.net
1. Use LTSP (add a separate Windows Terminal Server and rdesktop, if you need Windows)
2. Gentoo, SuSE and Mandrake seemed to work best for various reasons. Gentoo is the very best, but takes a lot more work to get configured.
3. Use ReiserFS (but not on RedHat). Never mind all the anti-reiser FUD. I've been using Reiser for years on sometimes as many as 30 servers, six in one area with power outages at least once every two weeks. Reiser really is badly broken on RedHat, but has honestly been vastly more reliable than Ext3. I am running mostly Reiser but Ext3 on a few systems and the Ext3 systems are periodically corrupted after power outages or cable kicks...sometimes irrecoverably. We've repeatedly unplugged our Reiser-based systems and never had any corruption, except for a physical disk error, a bad disk controller, and an overheated system (due to a dead fan).
4. Do not standardize on Mozilla!! It is by a huge margin, the number one crashing and account-disabling application we've used in the Cafe. The latest versions of Konqueror can replace it very handily if you put a lot of work into configuration: installing all the Netscape pluggins and setting it to say it's Internet Explorer (latest version). On the other hand, FireFox (light version of Mozilla) is reasonably stable and works great without much work into it. Konqueror has the advantage that, when it does crash, it doesn't lock up the whole user account, as does Mozilla or Firefox. Konqueror just closes as where Mozilla-based browsers (like FireFox require superuser intervention to kill it and let the user keep working) The latest versions of Konqueror have pretty much done away with the last rendering problems and stability is pretty good. Remember: Even Mozilla only locks up one user account, and doesn't effect other users. With LTSP, you can just hit reset and login as a different user..
5. If you are going to let people do word processing, set OpenOffice to automatically save as Microsoft Word format. It'll save you and your users TONS of headaches...because they never remember, if you tell them... And get rid of KOffice.. As much as I like it, people really do need MS Office compatibility and it doesn't reasonably offer that, yet. And, make sure you install Microsoft Fonts and/or set the default font to something Microsoft Word has that is similar.. I forget what we are using...sorry.
I'd love to offer more help but don't want to post my contact info in an open forum. You can find me and others who know of me on the wsulug IRC channel on freenode.net
Matthew C. Tedder
BTW, the classic example of a major modern-day language reformation, complete with real language police, was the reformation by decree of Turkish starting about 1930. They switched to the Latin alphabet from Arabic letters, and threw out all non-Turkish borrowed words, replacing them with either historical Turkish words or newly coined terms. There's a book about it for the curious.
eMacs (or any recent Mac for that matter) also support NetBoot. Basically, this lets you use a Mac as a thin client. Each Mac will boot from an OS image on a server (Apple XServe) which would allow easy administration. The cost: a little more expensive than standalones or true thin clients, but not horribly so.
Best of all, it's easy. OS X and OS X server are easy to learn for non-techies.
The Mac OS, as mentioned above, also supports Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. Event IE, though its a little out of date.