Hello, all. We have been struggling over whether we wanted to offer Ubuntu or Fedora desktops to our users via X2Go. However, as we struggle in that debate, we are unexpectedly beginning to entertain the idea of using Debian instead.
May I ask what your experiences have been? What are your preferred desktop clients and why? If Debian, is it stable + backports or testing? We are looking at supporting potentially many thousands of these desktops. Thanks - John
John A. Sullivan III schreef:
Hello, all. We have been struggling over whether we wanted to offer Ubuntu or Fedora desktops to our users via X2Go. However, as we struggle in that debate, we are unexpectedly beginning to entertain the idea of using Debian instead.
I think that's a good idea. There is much more experience with Debian then with Fedora. And about Ubuntu I would say to try this:
aptitude search '?and(~s universe,~i)'
... and you will see you are using many packages without security support. I think that's maybe sometimes OK, but not for a thinclient server.
May I ask what your experiences have been?
I have some years experiences with Debian thinclients in small organisations, and I can tell you it works fine. I have used FreeNX (with ThinStation) and now a little bit X2go.
Biggest problem was always flash, the quality of flash in a bigger format is not good enough in my opinion and it can slow-down a user session.
Another point is to connect devices to clients. That's not always easy.
What are your preferred desktop clients and why? If Debian, is it stable + backports or testing?
I have experiences with Debian stable and oldstable. I have heard X2go works fine with testing. I use sometimes backports, e.g. for OpenOffice.
Always running testing is not a good idea in my opinion, it changes to much. But you can do it for a short time.
We are looking at supporting potentially many thousands of these desktops. Thanks - John
With regards, Paul van der Vlis.
On Tue, 2010-01-05 at 09:30 +0100, Paul van der Vlis wrote:
John A. Sullivan III schreef:
Hello, all. We have been struggling over whether we wanted to offer Ubuntu or Fedora desktops to our users via X2Go. However, as we struggle in that debate, we are unexpectedly beginning to entertain the idea of using Debian instead.
I think that's a good idea. There is much more experience with Debian then with Fedora. And about Ubuntu I would say to try this:
aptitude search '?and(~s universe,~i)'
... and you will see you are using many packages without security support. I think that's maybe sometimes OK, but not for a thinclient server.
May I ask what your experiences have been?
I have some years experiences with Debian thinclients in small organisations, and I can tell you it works fine. I have used FreeNX (with ThinStation) and now a little bit X2go.
Biggest problem was always flash, the quality of flash in a bigger format is not good enough in my opinion and it can slow-down a user session.
Another point is to connect devices to clients. That's not always easy.
What are your preferred desktop clients and why? If Debian, is it stable + backports or testing?
I have experiences with Debian stable and oldstable. I have heard X2go works fine with testing. I use sometimes backports, e.g. for OpenOffice.
Always running testing is not a good idea in my opinion, it changes to much. But you can do it for a short time.
We are looking at supporting potentially many thousands of these desktops. Thanks - John
With regards, Paul van der Vlis.
Thanks, Paul. Do you or others have experience mixing stable + backports with testing using pinning? I've heard some say that is the best of all worlds and others say it is a terrible idea because testing pulls in new libraries which can badly break packages in stable. Thanks
- John
John A. Sullivan III schreef:
Thanks, Paul. Do you or others have experience mixing stable + backports with testing using pinning? I've heard some say that is the best of all worlds and others say it is a terrible idea because testing pulls in new libraries which can badly break packages in stable. Thanks
Sometimes it works, sometimes you have the problem of the new libraries. You can easy try it.
If it needs many new libraries and there is no backport available you can make your own backport. With a backport you don't need these new libraries in most cases. Download the Debian source package from testing or unstable, and build it on your system with "dpkg-buildpackage -uc -us". In many cases this works really fine.
But most of the time, I do not need to have the latest version, and I am glad to have such a stable platform with good security support.
Some organisations like X2go have their own Debian repository, then you can have the latest version direct.
For desktops, an important point is the support status for Mozilla products in Debian: http://www.debian.org/releases/lenny/i386/release-notes/ch-information.en.ht... This was the reality after the Lenny release at 14 Februari 2009: http://www.debian.org/security/2009/dsa-1753 http://www.debian.org/security/2009/dsa-1830 I think about switching to Epiphany and Evolution for this reason. But maybe it's better to be prepared and make a fast switch to a new stable version when it releases.
With regards, Paul van der Vlis.
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John A. Sullivan III -
Paul van der Vlis