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

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

Posted Sep 26, 2006 0:43 UTC (Tue) by wookey (subscriber, #5501)
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)

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.

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