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The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com)The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com)Posted Sep 23, 2006 17:45 UTC (Sat) by elicriffield (guest, #33738)Parent article: The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com)
It annoys me when i have to dig and dig to figure out what a product actually does.
LTSP says its: "LTSP is an add-on package for Linux that allows you to connect lots of low-powered thin client terminals to a Linux server. Applications typically run on the server and accept input and display their output on the thin client display"
How is that diffrent from X windows? I know what X windows does what does LTSP do?
I'm sure it describes what it does somewhere, but you'd think it would be in the description. More and more i see descriptions that don't want to get to technical so there so vague there useless.
Eli
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The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com) Posted Sep 23, 2006 19:06 UTC (Sat) by arcticwolf (guest, #8341) [Link] According to Wikipedia, LTSP actually uses X at its core, but builds a more complete, "turn-key" environment on top of it - kind of like the difference between the Linux kernel and a distro, I assume.
The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com) Posted Sep 23, 2006 22:55 UTC (Sat) by mrons (subscriber, #1751) [Link] I've been using LTSP since it began, and my own home grown version before that.
Essentually, you take a low powered workstation and make it boot a linux kernel over the net. The kernel will have an NFS root and /usr filesystem and (optionally) network swap.
You then fire up an Xserver on the workstation and point it at a remote display manager (xdm,gdm,kdm) which will give you a login screen. Users login to this system and run their applications there, remotely displaying back to their workstation.
LTSP installs on an existing linux/Unix box and provides, to the workstations, an NFS root and /usr filesystems, a linux kernel and initrd, various X servers, and various tools for managing multiple workstations. There are also several enhancements to take advantage of any "local devices" the workstation may have.
So LTSP is an implementation, and enhancement, of the old idea of an X Terminal. It is also built with Free software.
The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com) Posted Sep 23, 2006 22:46 UTC (Sat) by penguin (guest, #36771) [Link] Ltsp is a complete package for running thin clients that boot over PXE. It bootstraps a kernel over tftp, mounts nfs and slaps open an X session to the xDM on the server. It also consists of daemons that handles local device support. Like plugging in a usb thumbdrive puts it on your desktop. LDM is another fun thing to use in conjunction. Its and xdm that does ssh tunneling, talk about secure clients =)
The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com) Posted Sep 24, 2006 12:00 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Ya that's the jist of what I understand.
It's nothing you couldn't do yourself using a bunch of different software packages and manually setting everything up. It's just their to make it easier and take care of details and such that you may not notice at first.
Sort of like the difference between Ubuntu vs Linux from scratch. (although obviously to a different scale.)
The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com) Posted Sep 24, 2006 21:29 UTC (Sun) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link] So it's a Linux distribution?
The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com) Posted Sep 25, 2006 7:04 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Sort of, I guess. But not realy. Keep in mind that I haven't used it myself.
You need two parts..
So it's more like a system for doing X terminals were your using a existing Linux distro to do the X clients (the applications) portions and to serve as a PXE (or etherboot or whatnot) boot strap server to launch a mini linux system for running the diskless X terminals.
Before I think they used a stripped down redhat system for running the diskless clients.. but it makes sense that if your using Debian (for instance) to run LTSP from you'd want to use a stripped down version of that system for running your clients. Same package versions, updates and drivers and that sort of thing. Which is the direction things seem to be going.
It's nothing you can't do yourself, of course, by taking a Debian or Redhat or whatever box and setting up client images and configuring your graphical login manager and stuff. LTSP would just aim at making it much easier to setup and manage.
The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com) Posted Sep 25, 2006 14:20 UTC (Mon) by elicriffield (guest, #33738) [Link] All the other comments prove my point. Lots of smart (all lwn.net readers are smart, right?) people can't tell what it is without a lot of digging.
Why can't LTSP say in there discretion "LTSP is a configuration tool to make setting up diskless remote X displays easier"
Then i would know what it does. From its description it makes it sound like before LTSP there was no such thing as thin clients on unix. Anyone who who's seen 15 year old X terminals would disagree.
Are they trying to take credit for something they didn't do?
It's things like this that someone sells to management for some insane amount of money and then it gets handed down to a real Linux admin with something like "Here this product only cost us 10x your salary this year and it allows you to remotely login to a Linux box"
Not that LTSP is selling anything but they have the same kind of vague description and overselling of what the product does I've seen from commercial products.
Eli
The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com) Posted Sep 25, 2006 16:25 UTC (Mon) by hathawsh (guest, #11289) [Link] "Are they trying to take credit for something they didn't do?"
No. The linux.com article links to a history page on ltsp.org that says:
"... the credit belongs to many people who's names are not mentioned in this document. The developers of Linux, The X Window System, Etherboot and the thousands of lines of code that glue this technology together are the people who we are gratefully indebted."
Also, the project describes itself without any boasting at all:
"LTSP is an add-on package for Linux that allows you to connect lots of low-powered thin client terminals to a Linux server. Applications typically run on the server, and accept input and display their output on the thin client display."
It doesn't say "LTSP is the only way", "LTSP is the market leader", or any of the other wasteful things that commercial projects say. Like most open successful source projects, LTSP relies on honesty and a good reputation to get the message out, not noise. So your concern that LTSP is taking undue credit is quite unfounded.
What LTSP produces is more than just a configuration tool. There's interesting, original software going in there somewhere. For example, when today's users plug in a USB memory stick, they expect the computer to pop open a window showing the memory contents. That is a reasonable expectation that shouldn't be broken even if you're running a thin client, yet it is not obvious how a thin client should fulfill that expectation. Well, LTSP has apparently solved that problem, among many others, I'm sure.
The LTSP home page says, at the bottom, "The LTSP project contains all of the information and software you will need to build your own diskless workstations and configure your server." That description is spot-on, I think. Perhaps it should be at the top rather than the bottom; that would be a reasonable request.
(BTW, I'm not affiliated with LTSP.)
The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com) Posted Sep 25, 2006 16:28 UTC (Mon) by hathawsh (guest, #11289) [Link] s/open successful source projects/successful open source projects/
;-)
The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com) Posted Sep 25, 2006 20:03 UTC (Mon) by elicriffield (guest, #33738) [Link]
If it does more then config other services then i still don't know what it does.
The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com) Posted Sep 26, 2006 0:43 UTC (Tue) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link] I used LTSP on a project a couple of years ago, and even used it on a couple of client machine on the local net for a while, so I have a reasonable idea of how it works. The LTSP package installs (or did then) a complete root environment for the clients to mount as well as config files you could tweak from which the client-machine config files were generated dynamically at boot-time. That is rather more than just 'a config system for existing software'. It is, as people have said, sort-of a mini linux distro as well as a remote services config tool. And then there are the daemons to prove sound and other 'multimedia', printing, and USB accesss on the client machines, and etherboot ROM/floppy/HD/CD generation so if your machine is too old to PXE boot it can still network boot.
In many ways it is 'just' some config of existing tech, but the sum really is much greater than any of the individual parts - it is really quite powerful. I did have problems in practice with a slow network and the load it places on the server machine so it does have its limitations. It worked great for the entirely-volatile embedded system we did with it though.
The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com) Posted Sep 26, 2006 15:44 UTC (Tue) by sbalneav (guest, #12434) [Link] If one goes to the LTSP.org site, and clicks on "Documentation", you'll find some very complete documentation, including a very comprehensive "Theory of operation" section, which describes exactly what's going on.
Scott Balneaves
So it's a Linux distribution? Posted Sep 26, 2006 1:47 UTC (Tue) by kmself (subscriber, #11565) [Link] Pretty much. That's its strength and weakness. The good side is that all you need is to install LTSP and you're set. The downside is that if you're used to running another distro; using that distro's update tools; and accessing its bugfix, documentation, and support infrastructure, LTSP leaves you somewhat out in the cold. There are no technical reasons why LTSP couldn't simply be an add-on package to any standard APT or RPM-based distro, but it's not. There are equivalent tools for Debian, FC, etc., but they don't have the mindshare of LTSP. I'd much prefer that projects pulled together rather than apart.
So it's a Linux distribution? Posted Sep 26, 2006 15:49 UTC (Tue) by sbalneav (guest, #12434) [Link] > There are no technical reasons why LTSP couldn't simply be an add-on> package to any standard APT or RPM-based distro, but it's not.
That was entirely the point of the hackfest. On Debian, Ubuntu, and soon to be Fedora, the LTSP chroot will be built using the local package management tools, and packages.
We look forward to working with Novell, Mandriva, Slack, Gentoo, et. al. in the future to help them to fit into this model as well.
Scott Balneaves
So it's a Linux distribution? Posted Sep 26, 2006 16:55 UTC (Tue) by dberkholz (subscriber, #23346) [Link] I'd certainly like to help get Gentoo working properly with this. Where do I sign up?
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