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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
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]>
And maybe use NetBoot for centralized administration, which should make it easy to reset the clients to a default state.
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.
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
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.