Any LTSP/Linux ideas?

Discussion:

Joseph Bishay

2013-04-18 08:48:56 UTC

Hello everyone,

I hope you are all doing well today.

So every few years the issue of "shouldn't we be running a Windows
network?" pops up. It very recently came up again and I'm looking for
help on how to tackle it. This is the first time it nearly was
mandated and I'd like to be ready with a response.

This is a school environment with about 60 desktop computers. The
question is coming from the administration -- they have been using
Windows since the 3.11 days and so I believe it's just a matter of
inertia. I am also a volunteer and I'm not really sure if I'd like to
continue as a volunteer if they do switch over -- the administration
of it would be too much effort I fear.

I'm looking for any stories, presentations, charts/data/graphs, white
papers, case studies, etc. -- Anything you'd use to convince the
administration that LTSP is a better choice than Windows / Apple for
us.

This is a crucial issue so I apologize for cross-posting to the
different LTSP-based mailing lists.

Thanks very much,
Joseph

Johan Vermeulen

2013-04-18 09:35:16 UTC

Permalink

Hello Joseph,

I work in an organization that runs shelters for the homeless, refuge
houses for abused women and so on.
We have about 160 people.
It was recently calculated that for us, should we be about 300 people,
we would gain about 100.000 Euros a year because we are on Linux.

Here is your first reason for being on Linux.

Further I always like to present it this way:

* we have our own 2 servers for our 160 guys, running as mailserver,
webserver, database server and ldap server and we have our own guys
working on it, some in conjunction with other jobs. We also have
volunteers, like yourself
That's cheaper than renting servers and services from another group that
will maybe give you good or maybe crappy service.

* off course we run Linux on those servers, why would we pay for licenses?

* it's all downhill from there. Why would you set up Samba to connect
with Windows machines when it's much easier to use ssh to communicate
with Linux Desktops?

I also migrated our admin department, that wasn't easy.
I have to say that before I came into the organization, they were
already running OpenOffice, which is a big obstacle to take.

I convinced them with

* expanding the life of there Windows Xp machines, instead of having to
buy new ones with Vista.
* better and safer backups to the already existing Linux machines.
* safer and better sharing of files with the rest of the groups, who
were alreay on Linux.

Joseph, I really hope this is of some help to you.

Let me know how it goes.

Greetings, J.

Post by Joseph Bishay
Hello everyone,
I hope you are all doing well today.
So every few years the issue of "shouldn't we be running a Windows
network?" pops up. It very recently came up again and I'm looking for
help on how to tackle it. This is the first time it nearly was
mandated and I'd like to be ready with a response.
This is a school environment with about 60 desktop computers. The
question is coming from the administration -- they have been using
Windows since the 3.11 days and so I believe it's just a matter of
inertia. I am also a volunteer and I'm not really sure if I'd like to
continue as a volunteer if they do switch over -- the administration
of it would be too much effort I fear.
I'm looking for any stories, presentations, charts/data/graphs, white
papers, case studies, etc. -- Anything you'd use to convince the
administration that LTSP is a better choice than Windows / Apple for
us.
This is a crucial issue so I apologize for cross-posting to the
different LTSP-based mailing lists.
Thanks very much,
Joseph
_______________________________________________
K12OSN mailing list
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>

Joseph Bishay

2013-04-21 19:16:40 UTC

Permalink

Hello Johan,

Thank you for your reply.

How did you calculate that you would save about 100,000 Euros? I'd
like to make that same sort of calculation for our own situation.

Thanks
Joseph

On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 5:35 AM, Johan Vermeulen

Post by Johan Vermeulen
Hello Joseph,
I work in an organization that runs shelters for the homeless, refuge houses
for abused women and so on.
We have about 160 people.
It was recently calculated that for us, should we be about 300 people, we
would gain about 100.000 Euros a year because we are on Linux.
Here is your first reason for being on Linux.
* we have our own 2 servers for our 160 guys, running as mailserver,
webserver, database server and ldap server and we have our own guys working
on it, some in conjunction with other jobs. We also have volunteers, like
yourself
That's cheaper than renting servers and services from another group that
will maybe give you good or maybe crappy service.
* off course we run Linux on those servers, why would we pay for licenses?
* it's all downhill from there. Why would you set up Samba to connect with
Windows machines when it's much easier to use ssh to communicate with Linux
Desktops?
I also migrated our admin department, that wasn't easy.
I have to say that before I came into the organization, they were already
running OpenOffice, which is a big obstacle to take.
I convinced them with
* expanding the life of there Windows Xp machines, instead of having to buy
new ones with Vista.
* better and safer backups to the already existing Linux machines.
* safer and better sharing of files with the rest of the groups, who were
alreay on Linux.
Joseph, I really hope this is of some help to you.
Let me know how it goes.
Greetings, J.

_______________________________________________
K12OSN mailing list
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>

Johan Vermeulen

2013-04-23 15:45:53 UTC

Permalink

Hello Joseph,

over here every legal district has it's own social benefit organization,
so far we all choose our own it-path.

Because there is a merge of one district that uses Linux and ltsp with
two districts that use Windows, the calculation was made how much it
would cost for the new org the Windows way or the Linux way.

I guess the calculation was made by the Linux -side and is subjective.
But the Linux-boys made it.

I think the big difference in the cost is doing-it-all-yourself (with
the help of volunteers ) vs renting-someone-to-solve-your-problems
and some rent complete networks from a provider or Dell, while we use
OpenVpn to connect different locations.

I think this discussion is very interesting and refreshing. I certainly
have much less experience than a lot of people on the list.
I too would have to pack it in if my group would switch to Windows,
because I don't have the knowledge.

I always assumed that there was a Windows ltsp alternative that I didn't
know about. Reading the different posts I guess there isn't.
Which is a good thing.

Greetings, J.

Post by Joseph Bishay
Hello Johan,
Thank you for your reply.
How did you calculate that you would save about 100,000 Euros? I'd
like to make that same sort of calculation for our own situation.
Thanks
Joseph
On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 5:35 AM, Johan Vermeulen

_______________________________________________
K12OSN mailing list
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>

Hung Phan

2013-04-18 15:53:05 UTC

Permalink

Hello, Joseph

We implemented LTSP about 6 years ago when our Windows computer lab became too old. At that time, we either have to spend $40,000 for the desktops plus other necessary equipments to monitor and manage the lab. At the end, we decided to go with LTSP because we can reuse the workstations. We bought two Dell PowerEdge 1950 and have 50 clients boot from them.

Benefits:
1. Cost: we spend $10,000 vs ~$50,000
2. Simplified management: one central point to manage user accounts and profiles. Our environment is mostly Mac so the Windows systems were managed manually. This is a great advantage for us. In your case, it going to depend on how comfortable the admin will be in switching to Linux and whether the place already has a system in place to manage Windows systems.
3. Less repair and support: the majority of the work is from the servers, less demand on the workstations. So less breakdown.
4. Replacement: a lot easier to get old donated equipments vs asking to purchase a brand new system.

Joseph Bishay

2013-04-21 19:28:27 UTC

Permalink

Good day,

Thank you for your reply.

We are in a lucky situation in that we just received 60 workstations
for free. These are Core 2 Duo machines with 4 GB RAM each and 80 GB
drives. So the administration is thinking "well we just saved a lot
of money on the hardware, so we can now afford Windows".

I tried out the machines and they work perfectly with LTSP but even so
that's not going to eliminate this line of reasoning.

The other reasons you mentioned are great ones -- especially the
centralized management. We don't have any administrators other than
myself, and I'm a volunteer.

Thanks
Joseph

Post by Hung Phan
Hello, Joseph
We implemented LTSP about 6 years ago when our Windows computer lab became too old. At that time, we either have to spend $40,000 for the desktops plus other necessary equipments to monitor and manage the lab. At the end, we decided to go with LTSP because we can reuse the workstations. We bought two Dell PowerEdge 1950 and have 50 clients boot from them.
1. Cost: we spend $10,000 vs ~$50,000
2. Simplified management: one central point to manage user accounts and profiles. Our environment is mostly Mac so the Windows systems were managed manually. This is a great advantage for us. In your case, it going to depend on how comfortable the admin will be in switching to Linux and whether the place already has a system in place to manage Windows systems.
3. Less repair and support: the majority of the work is from the servers, less demand on the workstations. So less breakdown.
4. Replacement: a lot easier to get old donated equipments vs asking to purchase a brand new system.

_______________________________________________
K12OSN mailing list
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>

William Fragakis

2013-04-19 17:43:55 UTC

Permalink

Post by Joseph Bishay
This is a school environment with about 60 desktop computers. The
question is coming from the administration -- they have been using
Windows since the 3.11 days and so I believe it's just a matter of
inertia. I am also a volunteer and I'm not really sure if I'd like to
continue as a volunteer if they do switch over -- the administration
of it would be too much effort I fear.

Joseph,
I've been involved with K12LTSP/K12Linux since Fedora 5 (what year was
that?) - from a primary school conversion to, today, running my wife's
medical practice on K12Linux running Scientific Linux.

Stories like mine are pretty common. In reading your post, I'm guessing
something else is up than just considering costs, etc. The
administration is not only used to Windows but used to the old desktop
model of computing. Word processor, a few apps and a browser to look at
"educational sites".

This reminds me of the resistance we encountered because "everybody uses
MS Office at work and kids will need to learn it to get jobs". What
people could see was only in their near experience. They'd forgotten how
Office supplanted Word Perfect and couldn't imagine something like
Writely/Google Docs or even how Office would change it's own interface
significantly in future versions.

Desktops still have their place but our kids are moving into a world
where the "cloud" is their desktop - everything from Google docs to
online apps and web sites that do much of the processing done by
desktops in the past. Intel's Chromebooks, smart phones, smart TVs and
tablets are examples of devices that enable users in the new
environment.

In my mind, the move to the cloud has made LTSP more, not less,
relevant. What is important today is to have an inexpensive
web/network-enabled device that is easily configured, supported and
managed. LTSP does that; it does it very well. Many of the barriers we
had to overcome in the past simply are going away. Proprietary
technologies like Flash and Silverlight are dying or dead as the move to
smart phones has forced providers to adapt HTML 5 whether they like it
or not.

Good luck,
William

Jim Kinney

2013-04-19 17:59:50 UTC

Permalink

To add a concept to Williams experience, LTSP _IS_ a cloud computing
environment for schools. It's completely cutting-edge technology that
Microsoft wishes it could replicate. And it was invented in 1970. :-)

Post by Johan Vermeulen

Joseph,
I've been involved with K12LTSP/K12Linux since Fedora 5 (what year was
that?) - from a primary school conversion to, today, running my wife's
medical practice on K12Linux running Scientific Linux.
Stories like mine are pretty common. In reading your post, I'm guessing
something else is up than just considering costs, etc. The
administration is not only used to Windows but used to the old desktop
model of computing. Word processor, a few apps and a browser to look at
"educational sites".
This reminds me of the resistance we encountered because "everybody uses
MS Office at work and kids will need to learn it to get jobs". What
people could see was only in their near experience. They'd forgotten how
Office supplanted Word Perfect and couldn't imagine something like
Writely/Google Docs or even how Office would change it's own interface
significantly in future versions.
Desktops still have their place but our kids are moving into a world
where the "cloud" is their desktop - everything from Google docs to
online apps and web sites that do much of the processing done by
desktops in the past. Intel's Chromebooks, smart phones, smart TVs and
tablets are examples of devices that enable users in the new
environment.
In my mind, the move to the cloud has made LTSP more, not less,
relevant. What is important today is to have an inexpensive
web/network-enabled device that is easily configured, supported and
managed. LTSP does that; it does it very well. Many of the barriers we
had to overcome in the past simply are going away. Proprietary
technologies like Flash and Silverlight are dying or dead as the move to
smart phones has forced providers to adapt HTML 5 whether they like it
or not.
Good luck,
William
_______________________________________________
K12OSN mailing list
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>

--
--
James P. Kinney III
*
*Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain
at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail.
It won't fatten the dog.
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain
*
http://electjimkinney.org
http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
*

Joseph Bishay

2013-04-21 19:41:24 UTC

Permalink

Hello William,

I'm happy to say I've been running LTSP since K12LTSP prior to version
4.2 based on Fedora Core 3 and it's been phenomenal. I'm starting to
wonder if I've been inadvertently shielding everyone from how amazing
it is because it's just plug and play so they think a Windows network
would be the same. I mean my first machines were so old they were
scraping the bottom of the barrel and the CRT monitors had the burned
ghost image from their bank software. What a long road it's been!

You are right that it's more than just money. I feel there's some
sort of concern that LibreOffice isn't compatible 'enough' with MS
Office. I know when it comes to report cards for the kids part of the
issue is that the teachers are transferring back and forth and the
report cards are losing their formatting causing everyone grief. I
created standard templates to try to resolve this but it seems like
some of the teachers were still breaking it.

I'm not sure what else -- the idea 'kids need Word to succeed' as you
said is also being floated around. Clearly that's no longer true.

Joseph

Post by Johan Vermeulen

Joseph,
I've been involved with K12LTSP/K12Linux since Fedora 5 (what year was
that?) - from a primary school conversion to, today, running my wife's
medical practice on K12Linux running Scientific Linux.
Stories like mine are pretty common. In reading your post, I'm guessing
something else is up than just considering costs, etc. The
administration is not only used to Windows but used to the old desktop
model of computing. Word processor, a few apps and a browser to look at
"educational sites".
This reminds me of the resistance we encountered because "everybody uses
MS Office at work and kids will need to learn it to get jobs". What
people could see was only in their near experience. They'd forgotten how
Office supplanted Word Perfect and couldn't imagine something like
Writely/Google Docs or even how Office would change it's own interface
significantly in future versions.
Desktops still have their place but our kids are moving into a world
where the "cloud" is their desktop - everything from Google docs to
online apps and web sites that do much of the processing done by
desktops in the past. Intel's Chromebooks, smart phones, smart TVs and
tablets are examples of devices that enable users in the new
environment.
In my mind, the move to the cloud has made LTSP more, not less,
relevant. What is important today is to have an inexpensive
web/network-enabled device that is easily configured, supported and
managed. LTSP does that; it does it very well. Many of the barriers we
had to overcome in the past simply are going away. Proprietary
technologies like Flash and Silverlight are dying or dead as the move to
smart phones has forced providers to adapt HTML 5 whether they like it
or not.
Good luck,
William
_______________________________________________
K12OSN mailing list
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>

William Fragakis

2013-04-22 17:05:59 UTC

Permalink

Joseph
Not to detract from the wonderfulness that is LTSP, I hope you are also
aware of this:

DRBL http://drbl.sourceforge.net/

Last thing (and I know I'm preaching to the converted):

One thing school (non-technical) administrators forget is that the
Windows license is just for the OS. At the point you have an empty
toolbox and pricey one at that. There are no tools. Each tool in the
Windows world, typically, has it's own license that must be paid for.

Compare that bare Windows box with a full-featured Linux desktop box
with Libre Office, GIMP, Stellarium, Celestia, LMMS, Audacity,
Childsplay, GCompris, Tux Paint, Blender, etc.

Then most traditionalists will spend for Symantec bloatware and some
proprietary firewall (which in our case was a $2000 box actually running
Fedora underneath). Now, price in all the administration tools -
authentication servers, web servers, mail servers, database servers,
firewalls.

Sure, there are Windows versions of many of these programs (e.g.
LibreOffice) but why pay for Windows to run the same program you can run
on Linux?

For those who insist on Microsoft Word as a mandatory requirement, you
might kiddingly ask them how the students are ever going to learn how to
use Google Docs for when they do a collaborative project in college.

Having 60 workstations with 60 hard drives means a lot of possible
points for hardware failure. Small hard drives are still ridiculously
expensive (a 160gb HD and 1 TB aren't that much different in price)
compared to other hardware and 3-5 yr old hard drives are just waiting
to throw bad sectors if they aren't already failing SMART tests. You
have to manage 60 software installs - that's always a lot of fun (no,
it's not) when you install a new program and very expensive in terms of
time.

All the best,
William

To: "Support list for open source software in schools."
Subject: Re: [K12OSN] Any LTSP/Linux ideas?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Good day,
Thank you for your reply.
We are in a lucky situation in that we just received 60 workstations
for free. These are Core 2 Duo machines with 4 GB RAM each and 80 GB
drives. So the administration is thinking "well we just saved a lot
of money on the hardware, so we can now afford Windows".
I tried out the machines and they work perfectly with LTSP but even so
that's not going to eliminate this line of reasoning.
The other reasons you mentioned are great ones -- especially the
centralized management. We don't have any administrators other than
myself, and I'm a volunteer.
Thanks
Joseph

Jomegat

2013-04-23 13:24:14 UTC

Permalink

I ran into that a couple of years ago. I too am a volunteer sysadmin,
and the only one doing it for our school. I do not know how to maintain
a Windows network, and I told them so. If they wanted to go with
Windows, they were going to have to find another volunteer - not because
I hated Windows (which I do) but because I did not possess the necessary
competence to maintain it.

I also told them the task would be much more difficult:
*Maintain individual workstations+hard drives vs a single server
*Software updates would be N times as much work, where N=number of
workstations.
*Malware - kids are not great at resisting even the most rudimentary
social engineering tricks. "I was the millionth visitor to the website?
Cool! Click!" We've never had a single instance of malware at our
school, except for the teacher's personal Windows laptop. I asked if
there was anyone on the school board who had not been hit by malware
themselves, and there were none. The argument was that if savvy adults
such as themselves were unable to thwart malware, what chance did the
kids have?

In spite of my arguments, they had a consultant come in and price what
it would cost to switch us out. It was way more money than we had, and
I suppose that's what saved the day in the end. They also realized that
switching would not give them any advantages or capabilities they did
not already have for free.

Another thing to consider is that Windows 8 has driven PC sales through
the floor. People are abandoning Windows in droves, so why would you
want to switch to a sinking ship?

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/research-firm-pc-sales-plunge-windows-flops-18926235#.UWX6sRlAv1I

The world is moving away from the desktop and towards the cloud. THAT
is the wave of the future, and LTSP has been riding that wave for at
least 15 years (probably more - I've been using it for 15 years).

I hope this helps. It's very disconcerting to watch people try to
disassemble all the free work you've done for them for years.

--
Jim Thomas (a.k.a. J Omega T) ***@jomegat.com
If your knees aren't green by the end of the day,
you ought to seriously re-examine your life. - Calvin