The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com) [LWN.net]

The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 25, 2006 16:25 UTC (Mon) by hathawsh (guest, #11289)
In reply to: The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com) by elicriffield
Parent article: The future of the Linux Terminal Server Project (Linux.com)

"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.)

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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
sbalneav@ltsp.org