Will Novell Adopt The LTSP Project? 277
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."
Reinventing X? (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Reinventing X? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Reinventing X? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Reinventing X? (Score:2)
Re:Reinventing X? (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:Reinventing X? (Score:2)
Re:Reinventing X? (Score:2)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Reinventing X? (Score:2)
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 t
Re:Reinventing X? (Score:2)
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? (Score:2)
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 ho
Re:Reinventing X? (Score:2)
He was talking about bandwidth, but he meant bandwidth+latency.
"X" versus "Frame Buffer" is a tradeoff (Score:4, Insightful)
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:"X" versus "Frame Buffer" is a tradeoff (Score:3, Informative)
*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
Re:Reinventing X? (Score:2)
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.
Codenamed:Project Sundance (Score:5, Interesting)
NSS Availability (Score:2)
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 (Score:2)
Migration (Score:2)
Filesystem-support is definitly something you'd need.
Re:Codenamed:Project Sundance (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:2)
Stand up and yell, "I'm right here, Rick". I think we work in the same office.
Re:Codenamed:Project Sundance (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:2)
But then again, it is Novell, they could make the configuration tool Windows only..
Project Project? (Score:5, Funny)
So why does the title read "...LTSP Project"?
That reads Linux Terminal Server Project Project
Re:Project Project? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Project Project? (Score:2)
Re:Project Project? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Project Project? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Project Project? (Score:2)
Has thin-client computing come of age? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Has thin-client computing come of age? (Score:5, Funny)
Thank you
What processing do 3270 terminals do client-side? (Score:2)
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?
Re:What processing do 3270 terminals do client-sid (Score:2)
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 typ
Re:What processing do 3270 terminals do client-sid (Score:2)
>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 eve
Re:Has thin-client computing come of age? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:3, Informative)
Network Printer (Score:2)
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 !
Re:Has thin-client computing come of age? (Score:2)
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) the
Re:Has thin-client computing come of age? (Score:3, Informative)
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 obvious
Re:Has thin-client computing come of age? (Score:2)
Bad association (Score:2)
Re:Bad association (Score:2)
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 t
Re:Has thin-client computing come of age? (Score:4, Informative)
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? (Score:2)
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 sim
Re:Has thin-client computing come of age? (Score:2)
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 ca
Re:Has thin-client computing come of age? (Score:2)
Re:Has thin-client computing come of age? (Score:2)
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 t
Re:Has thin-client computing come of age? (Score:2)
LTSP & SuSE = GOOD! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
B-)
MMMM....LTSP goodness (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:MMMM....LTSP goodness (Score:2)
Re:MMMM....LTSP goodness (Score:3, Insightful)
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-sour
Terminal services replacement (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:2, Informative)
Forgot one ! (Score:2)
Re:Terminal services replacement (Score:3, Informative)
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 MHzfanle
PXE Boot (Score:2)
Just plug in a machine, and let it go..
Most any new machine does this..
Re:Terminal services replacement (Score:2)
LTSP sounds great but . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Project Sundance Internal LTSP Novell Project (Score:2, Informative)
This pdf shows a sundance.o linux kernel module under ethernet-drivers so that guess is probably correct.
LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding (Score:5, Informative)
If you are using ssh+x forwarding the client still has to have an operating system.
Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding (Score:2)
Thin clients are available that support getting a remote display over SSH wi
Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding (Score:3, Informative)
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 s
Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding (Score:2)
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 (Score:2)
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. $%
Re:LTSP vs. SSH + X Forwarding (Score:2)
it loads what would be on the CD/whatever into RAM over a network and allows setup of X settings etc from the server
Another 10 year old idea from Novell (Score:5, Informative)
rest here [google.com]
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:2)
It stands for Zero Effort Network.
That's how simple it can get.
K121LTSP is easy way to go (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:2)
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)
LTSP + Ximian Desktop == killer! (Score:5, Informative)
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 [zdnet.com]. 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! (Score:2, Interesting)
"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
Re:LTSP + Ximian Desktop == killer! (Score:2)
Actually you can do this with Citrix Metaframe as well.
running 150 desktops here (Score:4, Interesting)
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
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.
Someone needs to adopt them (Score:2)
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.
Quick Start with Knoppix (Score:5, Informative)
Eating your own dogfood (Score:4, Interesting)
How about an open configurator (Score:2)
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?
Webmin? (Score:2)
Thats news to me..
Re:Webmin? (Score:2)
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
Installing LTSP is Easy with K12LTSP Isos (Score:5, Informative)
But you still pay the Microsoft tax. (Score:2, Informative)
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 t
Wouldn't it be nice (Score:2, Interesting)
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 [pcxperience.org] and other enhancements (like bandwidth optimisation).
Interesting... very interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Another easy way... (Score:2, Informative)
From the page:
PXES Universal Linux Thin Client Features
Supported servers and protocols
Boot methods
I doubt they will find it as easy as they think... (Score:5, Informative)
Our company [lumensoftware.com] 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:
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.
Re:I doubt they will find it as easy as they think (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Mandrake is already there... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why all linux (Score:3, Funny)
On Slashdot, every day is Linux day!
Of course, I like that about
Re:Why all linux (Score:5, Funny)
*blinks*
That's like asking why so many of the "articles" on boobdex are porn.
Re:Why all linux (Score:5, Insightful)
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? [slashdot.org]
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:quit calling it LTSP Project (Score:2, Funny)
Re:LTSP Compression (Score:2)
Re:LTSP Compression (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Are you a shill? (Score:4, Interesting)
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/Knop
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.