Ltsp SuccessStories

From ltsp

Contents 1 LTSP Success Stories 1.1 Logical Networking Solutions - Northern California, USA 1.2 Faróis do Saber em Curitiba com LTSP, Brasil 1.3 The Main Library of Szczecin University, Poland 1.4 CPTTM Cyber-Lab adopts thin clients to deliver mobility & availability while cutting admin cost 1.5 Local Net Solutions installs 7 school LTSP pilot for Atlanta Public Schools 1.6 FCSE at GIK Institute, Pakistan 1.7 Tameer Microfinance Bank - A Bank with a vision to empower unbanked -- , Pakistan 1.8 Clube de Informática no CCOP - public internet access point, training and computer service - Porto, Portugal 1.9 Yet Another Corporate Desktops at Pskov Milling Plant LLC, Pskov, Russian Federation 1.10 Debian-CE/ACR Digital Inclusion Center, Ceará, Brazil 1.11 Dr. V. N. Bedekar's Institute of Research and Management Studies, Thane, India 1.12 Skegness Grammar School - UK 1.13 Convertion of Holy Cross School in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada 1.14 LTSP Installation at Central Computer Facility, National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi, INDIA 1.15 Corporate Desktops - Nashik, Maharashtra, India 1.16 Internet Kiosks - Chapel Hill, NC, USA 1.17 Infocentros Project - Bahia/Brasil 1.18 Mathematics Institute of UFBA - Bahia/Brasil 1.19 Handsworth Grammar School - England 1.20 Northland Polytechnic, Whangarei, New Zealand 1.21 Adams Brothers Produce, Birmingham, AL, USA 1.22 Gould Academy - Bethel, Maine USA 1.23 JC Cerberus - Hengelo, The Netherlands 1.24 Scouting Hartelgroep, Spijkenisse, The Netherlands 1.25 Ellsworth School System-Maine 1.26 CEFETRR - CENTRO FEDERAL DE EDUCAÇÃO TECNOLÓGICA - RORAIMA - BRASIL - Prof. Talles Dino 1.27 Hancock Public Schools, Hancock, MI USA 1.28 Nuchem, New Delhi, India 1.29 Guilford Public Library - Guilford Connecticut, US 1.30 American Israeli Paper Mills, Hadera, Israel. 1.31 Linuxcol - Cafés Internet en Bogotá (Colombia) 1.32 Meadville Public Library - Meadville, Pennsylvania, USA 1.33 Indonesian Internet Cafes 1.34 Bornholms Frie Idraetsskole, Denmark 1.35 Friskolen i Bramming, Denmark 1.36 Ambience Properties Ltd., Hyderabad, India 1.37 Baunehoej Efterskole, Denmark 1.38 Lucina Hagman gymnasium, Finland 1.39 Bristol Wireless and Psand.net Mobile Cybertent, Europe 1.40 Zeropiu - Milano, Italy

LTSP Success Stories

LTSP is in use all over the world, and we really like to capture some success stories from people who have deployed solutions based on it. This page may shown only the newest additions. Go to the bottom of the page and chose a previous archive or total history to see the older entries.

Some people may find it helpful for you to post details about your hardware and software. This will give them an idea of how much resources are required to run an environment. Suggested hardware details: CPU brand, speed and cache; total memory. Software details: LTSP version, window manager name and version, typical applications, kernel version (2.4 or 2.6?). Other details: number of total and concurrent users, whether the server is over- or under-loaded.

Logical Networking Solutions - Northern California, USA

Logical Networking Solutions has, so far, deployed 9 total Ubuntu LTSP networks in Sonoma County, California (USA).

7 networks belong to schools of an elementary school district in Santa Rosa. Each of these sites have 35-40 LTSP terminals in their computer labs, and will soon expand the network into the classrooms. The terminals vary in nature - some sites have older Compaq iPaq workstations (P3 500MHz, 128MB RAM). One site has all new Neoware E100 thin-clients (1GHz, 128MB RAM), and another site has all new HP T5530 thin-clients (also 128MB, 800MHz Via Eden low power CPUs). They all boot via PXE to a standardized HP Proliant ML370 G5 server (2x Dualcore Intel Xeon 1.6GHz CPUs, 8GB RAM, 2x SAS HDDs in a hardware RAID 1 mirror, 2x 1Gb/sec NICs, redundant power supplies, yadda yadda) at each school site, besides one site that has the same server hardware, except for the difference of 2x Quadcore Xeon 3.0 GHz CPUs. The servers all run Ubuntu LTS versions and LTSP, with Gnome as the graphical desktop environment. A mix of them have VMWare Server, handing out Windows 2000 Terminal Services for legacy applications through the open-source 'rdesktop' application on the thin-clients, sound included. The most used applications, however, are Firefox, Typing Master (a commercially developed typing tutor for Linux), Open Office - and of course, games at lunch!

Another site is an after-school clubhouse in Petaluma that serves hundreds of children a day. It utilizes a custom-built Intel Core-2 duo CPU server with 4GB RAM and a 160GB hard disk. It serves Ubuntu LTS to 10 Koolu thin-clients for their Learning Center. The youth utilize the system to do homework and do research on the Internet (and yes, games!).

The last site is our own headquarters. A dualcore AMD processor-based 1U rack-mounted server with 4GB RAM and a 500GB HDD serves 2 thin-clients, an LTSP 1220 PXE and a Koolu thin-client (we've engineered our network with expansion in mind). These are the only two user-based workstations in our support office, so it serves our day-to-day business and client support operations. Frequently used applications are Firefox (web), Thunderbird (e-mail), Open Office (business productivity), Sunbird (shared calendaring solution), VNC over SSH tunnels to administrate every LTSP server in the field, Pidgin and XChat for collaboration with the open-source community, Dia (network diagrams), and plenty of others, including a custom VNC client that reverse-connects to our Windows-based systems for remote support when they need us. We also use a simple Windows 2000 Virtual machine, hosted on the same LTSP server, solely for our accountant (Quickbooks).

The ability for us to administrate all 8 remote LTSP sites from our headquarters using secure methods such as SSH/SSH tunnels makes it simple and uniform. We utilize shell scripts to automate tasks such as synchronizing directories on each server from a "master", performing a command across all servers, etc. The reduced administration overhead of LTSP (and Linux in general) has made it easy for one person to stay on top of 8 remote LTSP sites. Our LTSP client-base is rapidly expanding as we set our sights on deploying a continuously safe, stable and rich computing environment.

Faróis do Saber em Curitiba com LTSP, Brasil

Há mais de 3 anos os Faróis do Saber de Curitiba no Paraná já utilizam a tecnologia do LTSP, está muito mais do que testada, em 45 Faróis do Saber e 5 Bibliotecas, possuindo 9 terminais e 1 servidor Ltsp, no total são 450 terminais e 50 servidores, os terminais foram doados pelo Banco do Brasil, Volvo e pela Prefeitura de Curitiba. O Instituto Curitiba de Informática mantém a manutenção das máquinas prestando o serviço de suporte técnico. Ainda não há um cálculo da economia gerada, mas sabe-se que foi consideravelmente grande.

Terminais: IBM 300GL, Pentium 166Mhz, 32MB, Placa de Rede RealTek 8139-A + EEPROM

Servidores: IBM NetVista, Celeron 1.8 Ghz, 512MB, 2 placas de rede RealTek, HD 40 GB

Esse é um grande sucesso!!!

-- EltonRauh - 14 Sep 2008

The Main Library of Szczecin University, Poland

We have LTSP deployed over (Screen #1) openSUSE 10.2 GNU/Linux running on a 2x Dual-Core Xeon 5110 1,6 Ghz/ 6GB RAM/ 2x SAS 73 GB 15k and (Screen #2) Windows Server 2003 by virtualization over openSUSE 10.3 (64bit) on a 2x Quad-Core Xeon 5310 1,6 Ghz/ 8GB RAM/2x 149 GB SAS.

This currently serves 40 thin clients (Celeron/Pentium) in our main building. Everything working on Gigabit network.

CPTTM Cyber-Lab adopts thin clients to deliver mobility & availability while cutting admin cost

We're a branch office of the Macau Productivity and Technology Transfer Center. Using LTSP we enable our staff members to move around, replace faulty workstations in a snap, while making it super easy to install software updates. For details, see [ThinClient].

Local Net Solutions installs 7 school LTSP pilot for Atlanta Public Schools

Atlanta Public Schools, an urban school system with nearly 100 school campuses across metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia contracted with Local Net Solutions to implement a large scale pilot of LTSP for use by K12 students for the 2006-2007 school year.

• 4400 students
• 2200 thin clients
• 233 classrooms
• 31 servers
• 6 months
• 4 engineers
• *1 HUGE success*

The main boot/application servers were HP DL385 - Dual core, dual processor AMD Opteron 285's with 8 GB RAM and 3 36GB SCSI drives and 6 Gigabit ethernet (4 ports bonded to be one _fat pipe_ to provide DHCP and data to the clients). Each school has 1 to 5 application servers with 70 to 120 clients per server. Each school also has a DL385 with 6 142GB SCSI drives acting as a common storage area for students.

The clients were HP T5125's with an HP 15" LCD monitor with sound bar. Everything on the clients was fully supported with LTSP.

There were many challenges with this scale or operations: The need to know the physical location of each thin client as well as the network location, the sheer number of cardboard boxes to be broken down and discarded, all networking was required to be Cat5e or better, fan noise for classroom switches, physical table space to place 6 to 12 client stations in each classroom.

In the end, the teachers are very pleased and the principals are reporting that student math scores are noticably improved. Currently, Atlanta Public Schools intends to use this model for all future technology refresh events for all of the remaining 90+ schools.

FCSE at GIK Institute, Pakistan

We have LTSP deployed over Debian GNU/Linux running on a P4 3.0 GHz/ 01GB RAM/ 80GB HDD.

This currently serves 25 thin clients (P2/P3) in one of our labs at the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering at GIK Institute, Pakistan .

These client machines ^S most of them are almost _eight_ years old ^S easily manage to provide user-experience of a modern graphical desktop computer.

For one whole semester, this setup has performed *well* beyond initial expectations. Plans are under way for initial extension to 40 thin clients.

The WoRP Project Team, Dec 29, 2006.

Tameer Microfinance Bank - A Bank with a vision to empower unbanked -- , Pakistan

LTSP was not unfamiliar to me when I was asked for a solution that can save Licensing & Infarastructure Cost. LTSP is the only matured solution with ovewhelming support available in Opensource Community. I already had a flavour of LTSP 4.1.x in my previous organizations and various communities and schools anc academic institutions. We assess and finally decided to take this initiative to become ever first Bank in Pakistan with total Opensourced based Technology from Top to Bottom. In the result of Cost vs Benefits Analysis; we decide to deploy LTSP 4.1.x at our Head Office, Successfully deployed @ Server (unbranded -- self designed) with AMD 2x 446 64 Bit Opteron, 4GB Memory, 200x4 SATA Hotswapable, Highpoint Raid Controll, Redundant Powersupplies with SUSE Linux 10.x 64Bit. It went thru a test phase,load balancing, process testing and finally we planned for end user Training of Open Office, Kontact / Kmail. We select P-III (used-branded HP Pavallion) as our workstation. The whole project deployed successfully with Printer (emulated as Network Printers). Its now become our Technology Standard for our all branches nationwide. LTSP is just peace of mind for Administrators, Support Engineers, Management (Cost point of view), Users as Centralize Data / Profile Management, Virus Free. The whole setup is backed / authenticated by world fame Opensource Dirctory Server -- LDAP v 3.0 and my branches are connected via OpenVPN. We are now deploying Bacula as Backup Tool for User data and Profiles. We are also moving to deploy Openfs to centralize all profiles for roaming and transparency. This LTSP is also serving our Training Department for all Media Requirements like CD, CD Buring, USB etc. I must say -- Linux (LTSP) is stable, secured, virusfree and Dependable. I thank LTSP wiki sectino/ community to provide me an opportunity to say my words and publish my success stories. Thank you all.

Clube de Informática no CCOP - public internet access point, training and computer service - Porto, Portugal

We find out about LTSP in a Linux magasine and after some tests we were received by an association, Círculo Católico de Operários do Porto (CCOP), where we opened the Clube de Informática, for internet access point, technical assistance and training in informatics. It has been opened to the public on a daily bases since March, 2005. With a very small investment, we were able to create a network with one 1 server and 4 terminals and during one year we growed to 2 servers with 8 terminals each one.

Hardware configuration is between the limits sugested in this site and it function properly. The applications we use are Fedora Core 5, Mozilla Firefox, aMSN, Thunderbird, Open Office, Kaffeine.

We share the same internet connection, and some directories, with another two computers, one Linux and the other Windows XP. We can access from each LTSP terminal at the time, the Windows computer and applications, by r-desktop. In the Linux computer we use a free invoicing application for Linux, in Portuguese, Evaristo.

The biggest problems we had in the LTSP terminals were:

• the sound and video, wich we solved using the Kaffeine.
• the USB drives for common users . This we have partially solved using MtoolsFM.
• the Gaim application requiered always our help for the first times using, so we add the aMSN (MSN is mostly used in Portugal), and now, it is all ok.

Most of our clients are now using the LTSP terminals without any special training or help from our side.

The Clube de Informatica it is very greatfull to the developpers of the LTSP.

Robert e Delia Benedek, Clube de Informática, http://www.clubedeinfo.org

Yet Another Corporate Desktops at Pskov Milling Plant LLC, Pskov, Russian Federation

We have avoid different windows versions on our work places. And now we have ~ 60 thin stantions with LTSP 4.1+hands ;-)

Hardware: Server is just usual P4 3000Hz with HT, 3Gb RAM, software RAID 0 on SATA disks with Raiser FS 3.6 Clients - different old PC, from P1-166 to P2/P3, with (maximum) 128 Mb RAM, without HDDs at all. Some client's have printers (HP, Epson), CD-drives, floppy and USB-mass storage devices. For boot we are using Intel and Dlink NIC with PXE support. Some clients that can not load NIC bios start from floppy.

Software: On server we are using Suse 9.1 (2.6.4) and planning to replace it with Suse 10. On clients we add some custom scripts for logging, monitoring and access local devices. Most of clients just get their desktop via XDMCP from server and use a lot of applications. Desktop is KDE powered with kiosk mode. They use OpenOffice 2.0, Firefox, Thunderbird, PSI (for corporate jabber) mostly. And games of course. Several clients have sound support to play music with XMMS and even video with mplayer. For launch windows specific applications we use Wine as soon as possible, or if we have no choice RDesktop, for applications hosted on Windows 2003 Server with terminal services.

Now we are trying to find solution for using two LTSP-servers (old and new with AMD Athlon X2 CPU) as load-balancing cluster.

-- YuriKolesnikov - 03 Apr 2006

Debian-CE/ACR Digital Inclusion Center, Ceará, Brazil

The Project 'Digital Inclusion with GNU/Linux @ ACR' is a voluntary contribution from Debian-CE members to the digital inclusion project of ACR that if gives in the quarter Mounte Castelo in Fortaleza city.

The project consists of giving technician support in the maintenance of computers and system, that uses Debian GNU/Linux and LTSP to provides stations for the educational use.

The computers are donated to ACR by ONG's, companies and volunteers. Currently, the project takes care of approximately 400 devoid childrens. In case that you has some computer or the old hardware and wants to help the project, enter in contact with us so we can make possible that more children can be taken care by the project.

You can visit your web site hosted by Debain-CE community

http://projetos.debian-ce.org/idlinuxacr/

-- AlexandreCavalcanteAlencar - 17 Nov 2005

Dr. V. N. Bedekar's Institute of Research and Management Studies, Thane, India

VPM's Dr. V. N Bedekar Institute of Research and Management Studies located in Jnanadweep, Chendni, Thane, Maharashtra, India has a setup of 50 Thinclients served by two HA-DRBD enabled servers (Dual Opteron,4GB,2x80GB). This setup went operational from mid-August 2005. The technology was provided by Anant Corporation, Thane. The setup serves Institute's office staff, faculty, classrooms and Computer Centre.

VPM's Polytechnic also has 5 labs with 10 thin clients and a server each.

In all there are 100 Thin clients using LTSP to operate

Skegness Grammar School - UK

Skegness Grammar School is on the east coast of England and has been running LTSP and Open Source software for 3 years now. We have over 100 terminals on 4 application servers arranged in two main teaching rooms and several clusters and individual machines throughout the school. All the curriculum teaching is done using LTSP Terminals from KS3 to KS5.

Convertion of Holy Cross School in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

The Prairie Linux User Group based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada was approached to convert a local private school to GNU/Linux. The story was covered by the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter and can be found at the following URL: http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20050509-newsletter.xml#doc_chap4

LTSP Installation at Central Computer Facility, National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi, INDIA

I am a LINUX enthusiast for the last 3 years, to make LINUX more popular at my office I1 created a 15 node LTSP setup which is used by the users out here for surfing the Internet, checking mails and doing official work using Open Office. It gives me great pleasure to say that I m working towards improving this great software by improving the local device support.Now the local devices can be automounted as per the hostname and that they an be accessed from the desktop itself. The whole setup is working fine and we plan to make use of the same application in our next projects as well. Hope evrything works well.

Corporate Desktops - Nashik, Maharashtra, India

I suppose I don't have to detail the reliability and support costs of Windows desktops. The management of C&M Poultry were looking for a better solution and decided to give GNU/Linux a try. Within three months, I changed about 50 computers from Windows into LTSP thin clients. Backups are now centralized. C&M is very happy with the reliability. The only snag is that they can't find a replacement for me. There are very few people in Nashik with GNU/Linux experience since most of the good people are hired away by foreign software firms. So I'm stuck doing basic, day-to-day system administration work. Ick.

-- JoshuaPritikin - 27 Jan 2005

Internet Kiosks - Chapel Hill, NC, USA

We deployed Firefox only kiosks using LTSP in the student union at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Using IceWM, Firefox and KDM for auto login running on RedHat AS 3. Currently we have 5 stations running off of one server and plans to expand to include more. We are using HP t5500 diskless clients for the workstations. Firefox is configured to not cache web-sites, not store browser histories and automatically reload when it is closed. Details on the set-up of the locked-down IceWM, Firefox and KDM set-up can be found here:

http://www.unc.edu/~payst/ <p> Many thanks to everyone involved in the LTSP project, we've had over a year of maintenance free, virus free, heavily used kiosks happily serving hundreds of users per day! -- BrianPayst - 29 Dec 2004

Infocentros Project - Bahia/Brasil

A project of Bahia government that is installing about 100 Infocentros (like telecentros) on many cities of Bahia. We are using Debian-BR-CDD + GNOME-2.6, kernel-2.4.28-fairsched with LTSP. Each Infocentro works with one server and 10 workstations. You can see more details at: <p> Identidade Digital: http://www.identidadedigital.ba.gov.br
Berimbau Infocentros: http://infocentros.incubadora.fapesp.br <p>

Until 2006 we've probably 217 Infocentros running with LTSP.

-- TiagoVaz - 14 Dec 2004

Mathematics Institute of UFBA - Bahia/Brasil

We have a lot of 486 and pentium 133 machines that works fine as LTSP workstations. Currently we've 2 labs with about 30 workstations each, 1 LTSP server for each. Both servers and stations are simple PCs. Most of stations are IBM 486 and the servers are P4 1.6Ghz with 1GB RAM. We'are using Debian + IceWM running a kernel-2.4.27 fairschedule-patched. So, we also use TWiki! :o) See: http://www.im.ufba.br and http://gavri.im.ufba.br

-- TiagoVaz - 14 Dec 2004

Handsworth Grammar School - England

We have 90 LTSP terminals deployed in the Computing Department. We use standard PCs as servers. Our clients are very cheap machines - we recently bought a batch of second hand PIII 533MHz machines for 17GBP (about $25) each - so we are looking at running local apps. We have recently been involved in a TCO investigation with Becta (http://www.becta.org.uk) - the Governmennts ICT Education agency and been shown to be about half the price of proprietary offerings :-) We have a !MoinMoin wiki at http://www.openhgs.org. Next year we will be installing many more clients.

Northland Polytechnic, Whangarei, New Zealand

A great teaching tool. Part of my second year course for students of the Poly is - quote - a multi-user operating system - unquote. There is nothing better than Linux. LTSP is great for a text-based login (telnet session) to teach the essentials of using the command line in Linux. Then on to the GUI - something that the students will not believe until they have seen and used it. The server is a dual PIII 800 MHZ, 1.25 GB of RAM, 100 Mbs network card. The GUI workstations are either old 500 MHz PIII without a hard disk drive or Dell GX270 (no HDD) that boot using PXE. This year (2005) I will explore further uses of LTSP and encourage my students to do the same.

2008: I am still using LTSP as a teaching tool. The server hardware has been upgraded to a Dell SC1420, dual Xeon processors and 4 GB of RAM. The thin clients can be anything from diskless PIII hardware to the new HP quad-core, 4GB of RAM but diskless workstations. I also teach my students how to set up LTSP.

Northland Polytechnic web site: http://www.northland.ac.nz. My email: mmossom@northtec.ac.nz or mmossom@igrin.co.nz

Adams Brothers Produce, Birmingham, AL, USA

We replaced Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Service Edition with LTSP 2.x many years ago. We've never looked back. We currently serve about 60 clients from four LTSP 4.1 servers at offices in three states. All locations are connected with frame relay and internet connections. We only have about six windows machines company wide, including four laptops. In the beginning we re-used all our pentium or better machines and stuffed them with etherboot cards from disklessworkstations.com, over time we've replaced everything with thin clients, some jammin 125's and some netier boxes we bought second hand for $30-$75 each! Starting out, we made the switch to save on licensing costs that we didn't half understand to begin with. Immediately we realized we were saving far more admin time than licensing costs, because we were able to lock everything down better. LTSP has saved us piles of money over the years. I've seen LTSP evolve over the years and get better and better. Thanks Jim and crew!

Adams Brothers Webiste web site: http://www.adamsbrothers.com My email: jeff@adamsbrothers.com

-- JeffRoberts - 17 Dec 2004

Gould Academy - Bethel, Maine USA

Gould Academy is a small private boarding school. We have been using LTSP since early 2001. Currently, we have approx 90-100 diskless terminals (old PC's and thin clients) all over campus. They are in school labs, classrooms, meeting rooms, faculty appartments, student dorm rooms, etc. This year we started migrating our administrative users. We support approximately 300 users and commonly have 50 or more concurrent sessions on a Dual Xeon 3.2G with 4GB of RAM. The most common applications used are OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Gaim, rox file manager. We also offer terminal sessions remotely using SSHVnc so people who are travelling or day students at home can use our LTSP server from a web browser. We are using sound based on ESD and have many users hooked on Internet radio. A big thanks to Jim and everybody. LTSP is a critical part of the services we offer our school community.

-- DerekDresser - 22 Dec 2004

JC Cerberus - Hengelo, The Netherlands

JC Cerberus is a place where young people (aged 14 to 28) can meet, play, get some help with their homework or with their personal problems. Cerberus is run by volunteers only and receives no funding from goverment or other institutions. With the aid of (RedHat/Fedora) Linux and LTSP we managed to set up some ten computers which are used for internet, chat, making homework, playing music or organising parties. The costs were so low (1 x AMD 1800+ server and 10 x Pentium I 90Mhz), it's cheaper to run this 10 terminals than 1 MS Windows system.
Our most used applications are:
- Mozilla 1.7 (thinking about switching to FireFox 1.0)
- aMSN
- OpenOffice 1.3
- xmms
All running on Fedora Core 2.

Starting this new year we're going to experiment with two items:
- NX clients (have it up and running, but no visible performance gains yet)
- x11vnc (also up and running, now working on some pretty scripts)

For more information (in Dutch) see: http://members.home.nl/jccerberus/trapveld.html, or send a mail to: jccerberus@home.nl


-- MarkLeeuw - 3 Jan 2005

Scouting Hartelgroep, Spijkenisse, The Netherlands

The Hartelgroep has an multifunctional building used by some 150 scouts in the evenings and weekends. During the week the same building is used by kids in the age 5 to 12 years after there schooltime until they are pick up by there parents. During school vacations those schoolkids are the whole week in the building. As scoutinggroup we have almost no funding and to start some internet cafe we asked for old stuff. We start with LTSP back in 2002 after we installed our first LTSP server (P 800, 512 Mb) and three terminals (P90 up) The LTSP server worked also as firewall and contentfilter (porno). That setup worked very good for several months and we attached some more terminals. Our costumers (scouts and schoolkids) wanted more computers to play on so we decided to get some decent hardware for the server (P 2G, 1G Ram, raid disk) On the server we installed Suse 9.0 and LTSP 3. We locked the KDE desktop a little down with the kiosktool, so there is not to much to do harm on the system. This year we placed an extra server ( P 2G, 1G Ram, raid disk) And some more terminals. We have found that in an kids environment where they like to play flashgames (www.funnygames.nl) and java games its best to run an maximum of 6 to 8 terminals from the 2G servers before the load gets to high and things become very sluggisch. Only websurfing and do MSN the load is very minimal. My advice to everybody is get good network hardware, we use an cisco as mainswitch and some cheaper switches in the four internetcafes. Those seperated cafes have 3 to 5 terminals each. <p> The best advantage we have from LTSP is the opportunity to easy plug in extra computers. In the last scout event of JOTA/JOTI we were able to put in 10 extra terminals without problems or installing many computers. <p> In the meantime we have interested some scouts in linux and LTSP. They have now an project to learn to install en maintain an LTSP environment. See http://www.cyberscouts.nl
For more information on the Hartelgroep http://www.hartelgroep.nl

Ellsworth School System-Maine

Ltsp installs in all six Ellsworth Schools as well as Cave Hill Surry Lamoine Trenton schools in Union 92. we use thirty netvista 2200 in the linux lab and 60 terminals scattered in pods in classrooms in the High School with windows dhcp offering out for netvista and linux offering on alteernate port.We use nx for remote connections aaround the world. cliebow@ltsp.org

CEFETRR - CENTRO FEDERAL DE EDUCAÇÃO TECNOLÓGICA - RORAIMA - BRASIL - Prof. Talles Dino

Começamos a pesquisa sobre o LTSP no início do ano de 2004, nosso objetivo era conseguir economizar com investimento de novos equipamentos, visto que tinhamos bastante computadores obsoletos que seriam inutilizados em pouco tempo. Desde o início a idéia foi bem recebida, estavamos enfrentando muitos problemas com vírus, além disso, o número de equipamento disponíveis era insuficiente. Quando o primeiro servidor LTSP ficou pronto disponibilizamos 10 terminais para que os alunos pudessem conhecer o linux e acessar a Internet, foi muito gratificante, estavamos imunes a vírus e utilizando computadores antigos como se fossem novos. Hoje, temos algumas máquinas na biblioteca, o servidor LTSP esta sobre o GNU/Linux-Debian 3 R1 2.4.27. Temos planos de montar também laboratórios conectados via wireless por toda área do cefet.

For more information (in Portuguese) see: http://www.atia.cefetrr.edu.br, or send a mail to: talles_dino@click21.com.br


-- TallesDino - 11 Jan 2005

Hancock Public Schools, Hancock, MI USA

Hancock Public Schools is a small K12 School District located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We've been using LTSP and K12LTSP for a few years now. For students we've found that a combination of Pentium 133s and K12LTSP works great in the classroom. Openoffice, Firefox and the Gimp are the main applications used.

We also use LTSP as a delivery mechanism for our office staff running Win4Lin. Quite a few of our office applications are PC only. With Win4Lin and LTSP we've revitalized old hardware and created a very simple to manage and affordable thin client system.

-- ScottSherrill - 23 Feb 2005

Nuchem, New Delhi, India

My compnay, Nuchem, moved all desktops at its network to LTSP two years back and we have enjoyed the experience. Today we are supporting almost 200 desktops at 8 locations, including for four other organisations who moved to LTSP after seeing it operate seamlessly at Nuchem. All office productivity applications are run off a server for each group of about 30 desktops.

After a local magazine published our case study, we get many vistitors from different organisations and they are simply amazed at the reduction of effort & time needed to maintain and support network.

-- SudevBarar - 02 Mar 2005

Guilford Public Library - Guilford Connecticut, US

The Guilford Public Library began replacing PCs used for public access computing with LTSP driven Thin Clients in September of 2004. Their system includes a touch screen Kiosk where patrons can request use of several different types of workstations, one, for example, with a large screen monitor for people who are visually impaired. So far there are 13 workstations and 1 Kiosk on the system. The libraries initial experience lead to the installation of three more workstations and a second Kiosk, all in the Children's area of the library.

Patrons use the workstations for Internet browsing, webmail, and running the Open Office suite. They register at the Kiosk by touching the screen to select the type of workstation they want to use. They are assigned a username and password printed out on a receipt printer at the Kiosk. If a workstation of the type they have requested is available, they may log in immediately. If not, the new user name is added to a queue and given first priority for logging on to the next available station. User session time is currently set to 1 hour. 15 minutes before the session ends, a warning message is sent to the station and another 5 minutes before the end of the session, then the user is automatically logged off. If no one is waiting in the queue, users may extend their sessions in 5 minute intervals by clicking on the request button presented with the warning message.

All workstations support USB diskettes and thumb drives. 3 have CD/RW and 1 has a document scanner. The system has, so far, processed 12,573 patron registrations. It operates with virtually no library staff intervention. The next planned system extension will add printer manager services so patrons can release print jobs by passing a bar coded card through a bar code slot reader at the Kiosk. Development of this system was by Suellen Croteau and Doris Andrews of the library staff, Victor Virball of Acton Consulting, and Tom Curl of Enertex Systems. The system was implemented in the library by Open PC Solutions.

-- TomCurl - 03 Mar 2005

American Israeli Paper Mills, Hadera, Israel.

LTSP has been in use at AIPM (American Israeli Paper Mills) Ltd. since year 2001, beginning with version 2.91 of the software. The initial aim was to remove old VT terminals and related serial communications equipment. The first stations ran Open VMS Hebrew DEC Terminals and custom Java clients under QVWM environment (all turned now into RDP clients).

At the moment there are about 300 LTSP 4.0 workstations on the company's WAN, served by 12 Red Hat Linux servers. Most of these thin clients run in the "rdesktop" mode, mainly for office staff; the rest ( about 10 stations) are used in the "startx" mode, as FOXBORO or ABB operator stations on the shop floor.

The software customization included : - random choosing of RDP server from weighted priority list with preliminary ping check; - rejecting MS DHCP offers in dhclient.conf; - using xwud for quicker prompting between RDP connections; - adding local Hebrew fonts; - upgrading rdesktop, with keyboard changes to support LK450 scancodes and Numlock handling; - upgrading sane backends (for Canon and Avision scanners via Sane Twain, had problems with some newer scanners); - configuration script limiting options to local standards for the central Help Desk.

None of LTSP servers in the company is dedicated, all of them are providing for other needs also: samba, openswan, squid, java applications, hylafax, sendmail, antivirus gateway, cvs, MRTG, etc. Thin clients are of various hardware types, 200-1500 MHz AMD and Pentium CPUs.

-- GennadyLitvak - 27 Mar 2005

Linuxcol - Cafés Internet en Bogotá (Colombia)

Llevamos ya 4 años instalando LTSP en Cafes internet en Bogota (Colombia) con un gran exito. Creo que instalar Cafes o cibercafes en windows genera un alto costo de licenciamiento y de mantenimiento, en mi local tengo 7 maquinas corriendo Mandrake 10.2 con muy buenos resultados ( 2 cafes adicionales sobre k12ltsp, migrando a Mandrake) hemos disminuido el costo de equipos en mas de un 80% y el mantenimiento de software se realiza cada vez que se instala una nueva distribución, mientras que en las maquinas que tengo corriendo Windows es necesario hacer reinstalaciones de software cada 30 días maximo. La acogida del publico hacia Linux ha sido gradual utilizamos KDE con un tema que le da apariencia tipo windows XP, así que mas de un navegante ni se percata que esta en Linux. ha sido un camino largo el recorrido hasta hoy pero con grandes satisfacciones, Gracias a toda la comunidad y a Jim McQuillan por este excelente trabajo

Cafes Internet en Linux
alejandrolizcano(arroba)gmail.com

-- AlejandroLizcano - 5 Junio 2005

Meadville Public Library - Meadville, Pennsylvania, USA

We've been using LTSP since about 2000. We use it to run 8 public Internet computers. I'm presently working on a new server, and hope to add more thin clients in the future to be used as word processing stations, and may possibly convert our staff circulation computers to thin clients once we have migrated to a browser-based circulation system. Thanks to the LTSP team for creating such a great public computing solution!

-- CindyMurdock - 30 Jun 2005

Indonesian Internet Cafes

With personal internet access still very expensive for most people, Internet Cafes are becoming the main gateway to the Internet for many Indonesians.
However, lately the police has been sweeping these small businesses for illegal software. If they found any, they'll close down the business, and confiscate the equipments. Microsoft Indonesia said that they'll protect those who used legal Microsoft software, but this promise has been proved to be false so far (case: Pointers cafe, Semarang - still closed down by the cops).

This heavy-handed treatment on these small businesses made a lot of people feel scared to use proprietary software. Many has started to migrate to the free (as in freedom) alternatives. A lot of local Linux activists are working together to help realize this.

One of the solution is to use LTSP for the Internet cafe.
It's very helpful because it help push down the initial capital (no need for high-spec workstations). Also with the right distro, you can offer a similar environment to Windows - for significantly less money. And once setup on the server, it works almost straight away with all workstations.

A few tutorials (in Indonesian) can be found here:
How to: Build an Internet cafe: based on FC3 and LTSP
How to: Accessing local floppy on FC3 + LTSP
A few FC3 tips
More FC3 + LTSP tips

Latest news: I heard that Indonesian Ministry of Research & Information will soon release several Linux distros for our Internet cafes. From the description, it seems that one of that will be based on LTSP. That's all for now. And if I may, I'd like to thank everyone who has made LTSP possible / what it is now. Your product is a godsend for many.
Thank you.

-- HarrySufehmi - 04 Jul 2005

Bornholms Frie Idraetsskole, Denmark

An LTSP implementation using one SUN with dual P4s, 3Ghz, 4G RAM. The machine is serving some +30 clients, all very old outdated PIIs and PIIIs with as low as 16Mbyte RAM. A very powerfull UPS is supporting it, keeping it running during blackouts - which occur some 2 - 3 times a year.

1Gbit main PDS cable feeding strings of 100Mbit to each client.

Version 4.1 of LTSP in use, 2.4 kernel. The server OS is plain vanilla SuSE92 with OOo1.1.4 and the usual stuff. We used the KDE kiosk-tool to handle desktops.

See the school (160 kids) at www.bfis.dk (danish :-)) -- VernerKjaersgaard - 04 Jul 2005

Friskolen i Bramming, Denmark

An LTSP implementation using one DELL PowerEdge2800 with dual XEONs, 2.5Ghz, 2G RAM. The machine is serving some +15 clients, all very old outdated PIIs and PIIIs with as low as 32Mbyte RAM. All cabling standard 100Mbit, no 1Gbit anywhere. Most of the client boot from floppies, using the Microsoft-make-any-netcard-look-like-a-PXE-card. This works great. Version 4.1.1 of LTSP in use, 2.4 kernel. The server OS is plain vanilla SuSE93 with OO2.0 and the usual stuff. We used the KDE kiosk-tool to handle desktops. -- VernerKjaersgaard - 20 Jul 2005

Ambience Properties Ltd., Hyderabad, India

The organisation was faced with the dilemma of investing in IT to upgrade its facilities. Investing in M$ $oftware meant throwing away all existing hardware (some date back to 1996). The overall cost was proving to be prohibitive. Upon invitation, I created and installed LTSP on a Red Hat Linux 9 running on a Powerful Destkop machine (AMD 2000+, 1GB RAM, 40GBx2 Linux RAID). A total of 8 systems were connected to the server using D-Link 10/100 Switch. Since PXE cards are not easily available, PXE boot floppies were used.

Most vexing installation issues were related to NFS & XSession using UDP. On a HP 10Mbps hub, the clients would occasionally drop the session. Users would occasionally get locked out. Gradients & Wallpapers really slowed the display and caused huge CPU Usage spikes on the Server.

With minimum investment (10/100 Mbps Switch, Realtek 10/100Mbps cards), these issues were ironed out. At only 1/10th of the cost (of upgrading to M$), desktops that would have been otherwise sold for scrap were given a new lease of life.

-- RajibGhosh - 26 Aug 2005

Baunehoej Efterskole, Denmark

Bording School for 79 10.graders. LTSP Server Dual AMD MP2600+, 2GbECC memory, 2x36GbSCSI Raid 1, 1Gbit net. 18 Clients from 100Mhz P1 to 850Mhz AMD duron all 100Mbit connected to a 24x10/100 switch with 1Gbit uplink. Using a samba/LDAP fileserver for authorization of ltsp-server and for 10 Windows clients for teachers/office. Have used ltsp from version 2.x on RedHat 7/8 in 2002, now using Ltsp 4.1.1 on Gentoo.

Todo: Add 6 more clients, add freeNX for home users.

-- JesperBerth - 30 Aug 2005

-- ErkkoS - 01 Sep 2005

Lucina Hagman gymnasium, Finland

Small-ish gymnasium in middle Finland. About 150 students. After getting fed-up with M$, blue screens and HD crashes now running LTSP for a second year. 20 Acer 600/333 computers booting from floppy and 3Com PXE, Fujitsu P4/1G/2xSCSI160/100MEther server. K12LTSP 4.2=Fedora3. Freezes occasionally with heavy OpenOffice or GIMP load, would definitely need more RAM ang 1G Ether. Otherwise works just great. Once the ws's are booted to W98, server works as a workgroup server for educational software (unfortunately, not available for Linux) and DHCP/Firewall/Router for the class. For us the best in LTSP is centered administration and MUCH less HD:s to maintain.

Have tried to implement LocalApps but not yet successful. Running OpenOffice and Firefox+Java locally would be fantastic. More server memory is a must. Should update to 1G switch+cards. But it works, day in, day out. And that is what counts.

Bristol Wireless and Psand.net Mobile Cybertent, Europe

Working together on a joint project to set-up a mobile Internet café, during the summer of 2006, we have been using a 20 terminal mobile LTSP suite of 'old useless PI laptops' powered by a 'pretty decent server laptop'. Main apps ran for this have been Mozilla Firefox, but also xchat, games and education programmes as well, and even, OpenOffice.org. The network connexion has been provided mainly using a bi-directional parabolic antenna to connect to a satellite Internet service. We have also in one instance run of purely renewable energy (meaning batteries, solar panels and wind generators), where our total energy needs amounted to 650 watts.

Here's some links to it in action, with more of the technical details about our set-up and the results:

LTSP suite at Home Education Festival
FieldIMCHowTo LTSP suite as Indymedia Center in G8 protest camp

We'll put more up shortly.

-- MikeHarris - 7 Sep 2005

Zeropiu - Milano, Italy

Zeropiu is a system integrator we start to migrate some company to LTSP solution.

The last sucess story is :
- 330 client with PXE
- 4 LTSP server, 2 x Xeon 3,06GHz , 6 gb RAM ( max per server 50/55 client) HQ office
- 5 LTSP server, 1 x Xeon 3,06Ghz , 2GB RAM (max per server 20 client) / 4GB RAM (max per server 35 client) Branch Office
- Centralized File server based on GFS ( for home dir)
- Ldap for user account repository ( Gosa admin tool)
- Mono

Our most used applications are:
- FireFox 1.0
- evolution
- OpenOffice 1.3
- Hylafax ( kdesendfax)
- Acrobat Reader
- autoroute ( with wine emulation)
- Terminal Emulation
- rdesktop

All running on Fedora Core 2.
We also move the Windows domain controller to Samba (120 windows client remain), all provisioning operation are made by Gosa ( mail, windows and unix ). Many other service are now OpenSource:
- Fileserver ( Samba)
- Mailserver ( Postfix/Cyrus)
- FaxServer (Hylafax)
- Backup Server (amanda)
- DNS / DHCP ( ISC)
- System/Network Monitor ( Zabbix)

Starting this year we're going to experiment with some items:
- NX clients, for branch office
- openSSI
- load balancing (LVS)
- Lustre / OpenAFS
- Bacula Backup

- Xen