[Rule-list] RULE and K12LTSP

[Geoff Burling]

On Fri, 3 May 2002, Marco Fioretti wrote:

> Joachim wrote:
>
> > Of interest might be this passage: "Paul Nelson, a teacher at Riverdale, and
> > Eric Harrison with Multnomah ESD have developed a thin-client software
> > called K12LTSP that runs Linux. In the last nine months, they've distributed
> > the software to 5,000 schools."
> > Is that along the lines of what Michael and the others are trying to do?
>
> Joachim,
>
> thanks for the link.
>
> I already had it, and also have in my TODO list to contact them asap,
> to offer cooperation. However, K12LTSP and RULE are not overlapping,
> IMHO.
>
> The first is an excellent project too, but based on the assumption
> that whoever has some old PCs to resurrect ALSO has a powerful SERVER,
> a network, etc...
>
> That's OK in (most) western world schools (**), but fails when the
> 1995 Pentium/486 is the MOST powerful machine available, or in SOHO
> contexts where it's the ONLY one...

A lot more schools in the US are making do with older equipment than
you might think. It's not a nice story, & I'd rather not indulge in an
off-topic rant here.
>
> Another point that RULE addresses, and K12LTSP not (AFAICT) is the
> root of the problem: we don't say "allright, SW is bloated hence let's
> buy a new PC and connect it to the old ones", we say "let's  choose
> and repackage all and only the SW so efficient that it still works on
> an old stand alone PC".
>
> Said this, I still wish K12LTSP all the success, and do plan to contact
> them, and see what we can learn and exchange.
>
I sorta beat you to this, Marco. Eric Harrison, who is part of the K12LTSP
project, was at a presentation I gave last night about X, & I did drop a
plug for RULE during the presentation. (I would have loved to have done
it on my old 486, but I had some X issues with the machine, & not enough
time to troubleshoot it. :-(

Eric did talk about their conversation with MS about the audit, & things
have been worked out to give the NW schools a reasonable breather. At the
moment, he said the best way for everyone interested in helping with this
problem is to contribute to improving Free Software & Linux. ``Write
documentation," was one item he explicitly mentioned.

And I believe that working on RULE would definitely fit his criteria.

> At the very minimum, a RULE server should be able some day to be the
> SERVER from which thin client can boot, but one thing at a time.
>
Geoff


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