Thin client computing is nice
These HP t5125's are really nice. Quite cheap, small and really silent (fanless).
They also have a flashcard onboard with XFCE on it, from where you can connect to X or with rdesktop. Although I must say it wasn't optimal, the video driver seemed really slow. Connected to an Ubuntu terminal server the screen buildup was really slow. But we couldn't care less since we would boot it from network with PXE anyway.
You did have to specifiy the amount of video ram in lts.conf but thats really minor. We use the via driver and it works good.
Really nice to work on it, you do have to get used to an office without computer noise, but you don't hear people complain about that.
Of the 9 offices in our building, 3 are using Ubuntu thinclients. We have been busy. 
Dapper Thin client
Checking out the improvements. There is a lot of progress to make if you look at the breezy packages and obviously the first steps are taken. It got a little faster at the moment, but big changes to the bootprocess still await.
Its quite easy to upgrade the thinclient chroot from breezy to dapper. 1) backup the ltsp dir 2) chroot 3) change breezy to dapper in the sources.list. update and dist-upgrade. 4) exit the chroot 5) ltsp-update-kernels 6) reboot thin client. Although I got some small errors the worked out fine.
The login screen got some changes as well. LDM got themable and at the moment it presents you a similar login as gdm by default.
Last step install bootchart to show off the bootup time (26 seconds!). :p
Tweaking Ubuntu for Terminal server use
First I have to say I'm really positive about FreeNX. The performance is great and looks really scalable. I can really recommend it if your setting up a Linux terminal server. It is much more flexible, easy and future-proof then a setup using XDMCP. And its even supposed to be usable if you connect over a modem line (cannot test that myself 
). For the windows kids, its somewhat comparable with RDP but much nicer (ofcourse 
).
Currently working on speeding up GNOME somewhat. So it will eat less memory and less cpu. Next thing is to make some scripts to add users with complete or stripped/locked-down GNOME environment. Don't want to confuse poor lusers with too many options. End of the day I should have build a custom kernel for the machine so I can build a security policy for the server somewhere next week. That would finished it up mostly I guess.
When I finished this setup I'm thinking about making it available on fry as well if some users are interested. Should use that 1GB ram a bit more.
Powered by (a bit less) strong coffee.
ps. Feel free to leave a comment if you have something to say regarding this topic.
Twitter: hpbos
- Gisteren the men who stare at goats gezien. :-) jeff bridges++
- @Ronald_R: Anders heb je nog Zombie Strippers! als optie.
- @Ronald_R Lesbian Vampire Killers... http://www.pajiba.com/trailers/new-lesbian-vampire-killers-trailer.php
- @joostdrijver stink voetbal, mijn reistijd naar kantoor verdubbeld in de laatste 500m.
- wie wil er vanavond "the men who stare at goats" met mij kijken? :P
- Rabobank internetbankieren is buggy as hell.
- Net film the fountain gezien. Wel mooi gemaakt maar niet mijn ding.
- Groningen binnen. Niet bijzonder. Nu coma tijd.
- Wat een kak verhaal van rouvoet. Ook met 4 procent geteld, lame.
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