[ale] New Twiki topic LinuxInGASchools

[Jeff Hubbs]

On Wed, 2002-08-14 at 12:18, Charles Marcus wrote:

> Although Jeff did not actually say 'LTSP is a bad product', he most
> certainly did blame LTSP for a misconfigured KDM.
> 
> > only that it may require some configuration tweaks
> > in order to perform properly in a particular
> > situation - just like any other piece of software.
> 
> Again.  LTSP does not install KDM.  LTSP has nothing whatsoever to do with
> KDM (or GDM, or XDM), beyond the fact that it uses whatever login method is
> defined by the System LTSP is installed on.
> 
> > Jeff's point, and Mike's restatement of that point,
> > is just that requiring a user to deal with those
> > issues is a recipe for disaster; they need to be
> > addressed elsewhere, comprehensively, and be resolved
> > long before the user has a chance to trip over them
> 
> Jeff's point was that a misconfigured KDM was the fault of LTSP.  He is the
> one who said that, not me, and I didn't make it up.  When I tried to correct
> him, he took umbrage, and proceeded to twist things around, instead of just
> saying, 'yeah, OK, your right'.
> 
> The only problem I have with your statement above is, LTSP is a SERVER
> application, and is most certainly *not* something the typical 'User' should
> be installing as a first experience with Linux.  SERVER implementations
> *always* require, to one degree or another, minimal System Administrative
> skills.  So, in Jeff's situation - blame the KDE RPM maintainer, blame
> Redhat, or blame the System Administrator (in this case, Mr. Jeff Hubbs),
> but don't blame LTSP.

I did not BLAME LTSP or anything else for the problems I noted.  As I
recall from the LTSP docs, it presupposes a distro installation, takes
up from there, and then leaves off with no follow-through.  LTSP as
presented by its creators, whether in documentation or in software, does
not leave you with a production-ready platform - it's a demo, at best. 
I'm just STATING that; I'm not making a BLAME or FAULT issue out of it. 
I'm just recognizing that LTSP's goals appear to stop short of the goals
that I (and, I think, others here) would have for a production LTSP-type
system as has been proposed for school system use here in the list.  To
address those, a distro-maker approach is going to have to come into
play.

My major concern - which, by the way, is *not* engaging personal insults
- is that even a demo setup that is actually seen by (hopefully)
interested parties should be ready to go into production with NO big
glaring "oopses" that a hostile lower-downer can point to and go
"THERE!  THERE!  You see??  Our Win2K (or whatever) environment doesn't
have THAT *FLAW!*"  

It's important to understand that the mere EXISTENCE of the solution
being proposed makes someone somewhere *look bad* for not having already
implemented it or at least instigated exploring it.

- Jeff




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