sm8ps-x2go1@yahoo.com schreef:
Dear all,
I have been looking for a suitable set-up for our high school (Swiss Gymnasium, grades 10 through 13, 400 students, 60 teachers) that would allow our students to use their own netbook/laptop in class as well as at home. Conditions are:
- no technical support for users' computers (therefore no installing individual applications, no passing out images etc.)
- must work on computers in any state, even with broken OS, browser whatever (so must allow terminal server solution as fall-back)
- plattform independent (win/mac/linux and independent of individual computer models)
- must work over WLAN
- should be available on- as well as off-site
A couple of years ago I started looking more closely into LTSP and I have set up a test lab that works just fine. Though, the local nature of that makes it less suitable to our needs. Clearly, I have studied NX and now I have followed the development of X2GO more or less closely. I feel that X2GO is the perfect candidate and I want to set up a larger-scale test network. Before doing so, however, I would like to hear other people's experience with such set-ups.
I have compiled a preliminary list of questions (s.b.). If you have any experience with larger scale X2GO set-ups, I would really appreciate your input and I think others might be interested as well. Thanks a lot for sharing your expertise! If you would like to communicate in German or French, I can cope with both.
I have only experience with small scale setups. I will answer only some questions.
Cheers! St. Müller, Switzerland
QUESTIONS (yes/no, experience?)
- Local OS: a) Copy/Paste from/to local OS
Works fine.
b) Accessing local file systems c) Support of local USB devices d) Sound e) Printing on local printer f) Printing on local network printer / on remote network printer 2) Set-Up, Administration: a) number of server / user (50, 100, 150 concurrent sessions) b) Load Balancing, Cluster c) Manageability of several parallel servers in administration d) Band with
e) Multimedia (Flash)
Little flash animations are no problem, but bigger flash like films are too slow. Flash can make a user-session very slow, when people call me about a slow desktop I ask them to close all browser windows. In most cases it was flash and the problem is gone then.
f) Compatibility with Terminal Server (LTSP) on same server or is X2GO usable also as directly as terminal server?
I expect you can use LTSP and X2go on the same server, but X2go is really different. X2go is usuable directly without LTSP.
X2go works trough SSH and don't uses a display manager (e.g. GDM).
I will advise you to install and try it. You can make a one-node installation in about 10 minutes: http://www.x2go.org/fileadmin/doc/installation_x2go_debian_en.html A one-node installation is not what you want, but you will learn a lot about how X2go works and it's very easy to install.
You could use a live-CD to test it, e.g.: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/i386/iso-cd/debian-live-504...
g) Mounting homes from data server h) Compatibility with administration servers (LDAP, ADS etc.) i) Acess protection, security
With regards, Paul van der Vlis.