which Ubuntu would you use for LTSP for next two years?

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

sorry for the long reply.

On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, john  wrote:

> I've been through a successful first round of testing using Ubuntu
> 6.06 and LTSP 4.2 (two servers, 36 clients, six months) and now I am
> ready to put in a much more robust installation, double the number of
> clients and hopefully leave this system in place for the next two
> years without significant re-working midstream. 

> So my question is what would YOU use and Why if you wanted to finish this
> task by the end of the summer? My criteria are working, stable and
> supported.

Firstly, my personal preference for Debian-based would lead me to Edubuntu
or Skolelinux/Debian-Edu.  Edubuntu's cleaner desktop install with fewer,
more up-to-date packages installed by default makes me prefer it in
general.  I guess that's the criteria "working" and "stable".

Supported is more complex.

Feisty's support lasts 18 months, which is until October 2008 -- you
apparently need something which will last until September 2009.  Dapper's
support lasts until June 2011.  If fully supported for that time is an
absolute must, dapper is your only Ubuntu choice.  Of course, if you could
consider either running Feisty out of support or upgrading to Gutsy next
summer, you can last the full time by that means.

You say "without significant re-working midstream".  It depends on your
perspective but I'd argue that the upgrade to Gutsy would not be a
significant re-working.  Your thin clients should be untouched, you just
spend a couple of hours upgrading each server and then a few hours (?)
testing everything's okay and debugging the inevitable glitches.  There are
no guarantees that everything won't break, but it seems pretty unlikely in
my experience.  Your level of expertise will obviously make this
harder/easier.

The other thing to think about is the desktop software versions.  For
example, Dapper's version of OpenOffice is already a little old.  In two
years time, Microsoft Office XP will be more commonplace and I'm not sure
if the OpenOffice version in Dapper can read Office XP's file format (which
has changed significantly).  Firefox has moved on quite significantly as
well.  A lot of the desktop software is improving rapidly right now so the
difference between 06/2006 and 04/2007 or 10/2007 may be quite substantial.
This affects every distribution to some degree.

> 1) Ubuntu 6.06 LTS and LTSP 4.2 since 6.06 will be supported for
>    several more years (any plans to backport LTSP 5 to Ubuntu 6.06)?
> 2) Fiesty/Edubuntu with ltsp 5.0
> 3) Centos (slightly provocative, I know) or whatever stable gets LTSP 5
>    next?

4) Debian-Edu "etch" is due for release in the coming months (you'd need to
   ask them for an accurate ETA).  That release should definitely stay
   supported for the 2 years.  It should provide LTSP5.

5) You could perhaps also look at Suse/OpenSuse.

I guess it depends what you need.  LTSP5, as in feisty is undoubtedly
slower (particularly in boot time of slower thin clients) than any LTSP4.
Gutsy is supposed to address much of this with many speed-ups already
implemented but Feisty will not get these improvements.  If you want good
sound support, USB storage, local printers, etc.  on thin clients, you
definitely want LTSP5.

The desktop itself should be considered -- is CentOS a good desktop
distribution?  I don't know as I've never used it.

Gavin