Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-edu (45 mails)

["Christopher Dawson" <mrdatahs@xxxxxxxxx>]

Resending - original rejected d/t HTML.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Christopher Dawson <mrdatahs@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Jul 19, 2007 9:17 AM
Subject: Re: [opensuse-edu] what does LTSP\thin client technology mean to you?
To: James Tremblay <jamesat@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: opensuse-edu@xxxxxxxxxxxx

This is, in fact, my biggest deciding factor in choosing a Linux
distro.  Edubuntu works brilliantly and looks just like the ubuntu
desktop.  I like SUSE a lot and have been incredibly impressed with
it's speed, stability and interface.  However, there is no chance that
I would adopt openSUSE without LTSP support.  Edubuntu/Ubuntu is
sufficiently mature that OpenSUSE does not offer enough additional
features to sway my decision without supporting LTSP.

There must be some way that this can be monetized - LTSP certainly
represents a more robust and cost-effective model for small businesses
and education.

Posting to education.zdnet.com now...Good luck getting this included.
This is definitely a deal-breaker.

Thanks for the heads up,
Chris Dawson


On 7/19/07, James Tremblay <jamesat@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>  I have an important question. If I told you that LTSP5 was not going to
> be adopted in either openSUSE or SLE's thin client server (which only
> supports those 500$ type thin clients with flash drives, like those from
> Wyse and HP), would this influence your decisions about using Novell
> products? Would you be less inclined to buy an SLE based agreement if
> your thin client interests were only being met by Ubuntu? Would you
> simply say well I need a Linux server and I already have the Ubuntu
> server disk and I know how to use it so....?
>
> I'm being told that Novell can't find a fiduciary reason to support LTSP
> and I keep saying that giving us this feature means that, we can and
> probably will use an SLE server to host the applications we want to go
> with it, we can and probably will use e-Directory to manage our user
> ID's, but if we have to support multiple technologies (Ubuntu and SLE)
> we will probably shift to the one that cost us less at the desktop (both
> monetarily and intellectually) simply because supporting  the desktop
> translates into learning to support the server very easily. Reminiscent
> of the shift to MS servers from Novell servers, in my opinion Novell
>  lost the school server battle simply because schools don't have the time
> \money to learn\support two OSes. For how many of us is the History
> teacher who is good with windows XP, the guy who helps us maintain the
> 2003 server in that building?
>
> Is there really no money in supporting LTSP and Education specific
> products? If your answer is, "I don't really care about LTSP and it
> won't effect my decisions about my Novell purchases" then ignore me, but
> if the answer is "I rely on LTSP to help me put more desktops in the
> classroom and I really would prefer to have it managed with my other
> Novell products", then I must inform you that the likelihood of you
> being able to use LTSP5 with Novell products is slim, there are two of
> us working on integrating the bits and both of us are non-coders, we are
> merely translating some batch scripts that we can understand and
>  borrowing the best parts of KIWI( a new Novell imaging technology) to
> make most of it work, which leaves: local device support, network sound,
> a descent disk-less boot process and much more undone and likely never
>  to be done.
>
> Please respond to this list thread and any Novell employee you know, if
> you want this to change.
> --
> James Tremblay
> Director of Technology
> Newmarket School District
> Newmarket,NH
>  http://en.opensuse.org/Education
> "let's make a difference"
>
> --
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--
Christopher Dawson
508-826-0277 (mobile)
cdawson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
mrdatahs@xxxxxxxxx

--
Christopher Dawson
508-826-0277 (mobile)
cdawson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
mrdatahs@xxxxxxxxx
--
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