Linux Dumb Terminals

[shovenose]

At school me and this other person had an idea...
We would set up a server, then make all the other computers in the computer lab connect to it. Meaning everything (software, etc) was on the server, and the computers would have a minimal amount of info on the hard drivers.
Basically a thin client/server setup.
He said I should figure out which OS to use on the server/client PCS. We're thinking either WIndows Server 2008/Windows XP Embedded, or Linux/Linux...but then which linux distros should we use?

Also, would we need crazy network connectivity? Because I'm thinking it would be better to host the "server" off-site (in one of our houses, or both in a fail-over switch sort of configuration)... but he's gonna want it on site.
Why offsite? So the school district can't interfere, of course. According to him he's got authorization to do whatever, as long as the computers work. Lol.

[ratdude747]

Re: Linux Dumb Terminals

linux distro: debian, do not install a GUI when given the option in the installer. I did my server that way.

[shovenose]

Re: Linux Dumb Terminals

OK. I'm leaning toward either CentOS or Debian.
Now, what about the clients/terminals? They need a GUI because for sure there are only like 4 people in my school that know what Linux even is...

[Mad_Professor]

Re: Linux Dumb Terminals

No hard-disk needed, just pxe boot the clients.

You'll want it on-site since having it off site will eat bandwidth and cause connectivity issues via the end-user and major issues with your ISP if you don't have business grade connection to handle all the request.

Take a look at the FOG project.

http://www.fogproject.org/

if that's not what you want, Then you'll want to pxe boot linux kernel and initrd on the client end.
Then from there whatever.
There's several guides and tutorials to do it.

Last but not least you can pxe boot a NFS share that has a linux distro.

You'll have to customize all images or shares to take you to a login/authentication terminal that connects to a radius server or NIS server or Open LDAP.

Server wise: CENTOS. clientwise: ubuntu, linuxmint one of the common user friendly distros alot of people will not know what the fuck they are doing.
Good luck.

[seanc]

Re: Linux Dumb Terminals

LTSP.
Tried it with Ubuntu, it works, but isn't really speedy on a 100mb network.

http://www.ltsp.org/

[shovenose]

Re: Linux Dumb Terminals

Lol. They replaced the core switches last year (I'm assuming they're Gigabit) but they don't have enough working Ethernet ports in the computer labs, so we've daisychained old 100mbit Ki switches... anything extremely network intensive is probably not a good idea...
I tried to downlod centos 6( I only have 5.6 on CD)...but there are too many downloads to choose from. Which ones?

Edit: I meant Linksys not Ki. Stupid autocrrect

[Mad_Professor]

Re: Linux Dumb Terminals

lol, 100mbit is perfect because tftp is slow.

Frankly if the network can't handle it then this little project your doing is not going to work.

if you have 24 or 48 port gigabit switch going to a 24/48x FIVE port 100mbit switches you're only utilizing half the gigabit connection, plenty of room.

But if you have all the connection on the same IP subnet then you're going to have collision problems and you'll need to vlan the switches to there own subnet with DHCP, this is one way to solve network congestion.

As for centos iso all you need is DVD 1 and DVD 2.

[shovenose]

Re: Linux Dumb Terminals

Update:
Apparently he decided to use opensuse for the server.
he said I could put anything I wanted on the other computers. I think I will use a mixture of Linux Mint or Ubuntu...

[toastygoodness]

Re: Linux Dumb Terminals

yeah, opensuse works well (though i'd go with SLES, the enterprise version). Otherwise, ubuntu's thin client distribution works well. GbE is recommended though not required.

We used clonezilla live for imaging our labs, it was pretty awesome. 24 compies on one switch. One hour later, windows and linux are both on each compy