Comments for /* FIXME: title */ http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog Milosz Tanski: software engineer, philosopher, economist. Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:17:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 Comment on New laptop hotness by ClianKocol http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2006/06/18/new-laptop-hotness/#comment-13574 ClianKocol Sat, 09 Feb 2008 01:44:33 +0000 http://www.secs.oakland.edu/~mtanski/thoughts/2006/06/18/new-laptop-hotness/#comment-13574 I just found out that BJ Wholesale Club sells Thinkpad z61t 9440-A23 for $699 after $100 instant rebate and $80 mail-in rebate. It contains Core Duo 2 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 120 GB HDD. Definitely, I will install Ubuntu 7.10 over Windows Vista (I dislike bloating, slow Micro$oft Vista Windows) if I purchase it. Right now I use Ubuntu 7.10 in my 6.5 year old Toshiba laptop and love this operating system. I just found out that BJ Wholesale Club sells Thinkpad z61t 9440-A23 for $699 after $100 instant rebate and $80 mail-in rebate. It contains Core Duo 2 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 120 GB HDD. Definitely, I will install Ubuntu 7.10 over Windows Vista (I dislike bloating, slow Micro$oft Vista Windows) if I purchase it. Right now I use Ubuntu 7.10 in my 6.5 year old Toshiba laptop and love this operating system.

]]> Comment on LTSP ftw, SunRay ftl by Kevin Brooksby http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2007/01/29/ltsp-ftw-sunray-ftl/#comment-11884 Kevin Brooksby Fri, 04 Jan 2008 21:04:31 +0000 http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2007/01/29/ltsp-ftw-sunray-ftl/#comment-11884 One last comment I forgot to cover. LTSP does rock in terms of support and openness of course. I can't tell you how many times I had a hard time tracking down the appropriate support channel or contact in the Sun Ray world/commununity whereas in the LTSP/Linux thin client scene I can almost always find support on the web/wiki/irc dang near immediately and better documentation publicly available IMO. Also one more thing to think about is that LTSP is in general more multi-purpose thin client frinedly and again open in terms of what thin clients run on it (basically anything that supports PXE: laptops, old repurposed PC's, true thin client traditional brick style clients, etherboot, etc) and in the Sun Ray world those client DTU's are proprietary and you cannot use them on anything but a Sun Ray server (Solaris or Linux) running SRSS. Just my 2 final cents :-D on teh subject. DAMN now I really am torn haha One last comment I forgot to cover. LTSP does rock in terms of support and openness of course. I can’t tell you how many times I had a hard time tracking down the appropriate support channel or contact in the Sun Ray world/commununity whereas in the LTSP/Linux thin client scene I can almost always find support on the web/wiki/irc dang near immediately and better documentation publicly available IMO. Also one more thing to think about is that LTSP is in general more multi-purpose thin client frinedly and again open in terms of what thin clients run on it (basically anything that supports PXE: laptops, old repurposed PC’s, true thin client traditional brick style clients, etherboot, etc) and in the Sun Ray world those client DTU’s are proprietary and you cannot use them on anything but a Sun Ray server (Solaris or Linux) running SRSS. Just my 2 final cents :-D on teh subject. DAMN now I really am torn haha

]]> Comment on LTSP ftw, SunRay ftl by Kevin Brooksby http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2007/01/29/ltsp-ftw-sunray-ftl/#comment-11882 Kevin Brooksby Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:45:01 +0000 http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2007/01/29/ltsp-ftw-sunray-ftl/#comment-11882 Hmmm that's weird my Sun Ray server is VERY stable and dang near never locks up or malfunctions running under RHEL4 and using the SRSS Linux bits. Just a few days ago I did install a LTSP on debian etch and am quite impressed but I must admit although being a Linux zealot there are several shortcommings that LTSP does not fill for my needs that Sun Ray does do such as hotdesking via a smartcard w/ session mobility, integrated firmware level ipsec vpn capabilities, session resume whereas in LTSP if I yank the network cable or suffer a network outage the session has to be kicked off again, in Sun Ray architecture it just resumes where it left off running on the server), a managable thin client web interface where you can do such functions as disable usb ports/audio/etc (Sun Ray has tomcat webapp, LTSP as far as I know has nothign like this), WAN flexability is far superior inherently IMO under Sun Ray (although I know you can setup openvpn or other vpn solutions on the LTSP to accomplish this), and finally less bandwidth utilization in a Sun Ray environment as just today I tested how many packets were passed in each a Sun Ray and LTSP env to just setup the desktop login remote display session and in the Sun Ray env it passed 200-300 packets and in the LTSP env 65-70K packets. I cant wrap my head around this as Sun Ray go over Appliance Link Protocol (ALP) and LTSP over NFS (tcp). One thing I did notice though that did function better and have better performance on the LTSP compared to the Sun Ray env is better highly intensive multimedia support for high bitrate/bw video apps. As far as local device support in each environment they are about on par in my book as far as usb thumb drives/cd/dvd roms. Hmmm that’s weird my Sun Ray server is VERY stable and dang near never locks up or malfunctions running under RHEL4 and using the SRSS Linux bits. Just a few days ago I did install a LTSP on debian etch and am quite impressed but I must admit although being a Linux zealot there are several shortcommings that LTSP does not fill for my needs that Sun Ray does do such as hotdesking via a smartcard w/ session mobility, integrated firmware level ipsec vpn capabilities, session resume whereas in LTSP if I yank the network cable or suffer a network outage the session has to be kicked off again, in Sun Ray architecture it just resumes where it left off running on the server), a managable thin client web interface where you can do such functions as disable usb ports/audio/etc (Sun Ray has tomcat webapp, LTSP as far as I know has nothign like this), WAN flexability is far superior inherently IMO under Sun Ray (although I know you can setup openvpn or other vpn solutions on the LTSP to accomplish this), and finally less bandwidth utilization in a Sun Ray environment as just today I tested how many packets were passed in each a Sun Ray and LTSP env to just setup the desktop login remote display session and in the Sun Ray env it passed 200-300 packets and in the LTSP env 65-70K packets. I cant wrap my head around this as Sun Ray go over Appliance Link Protocol (ALP) and LTSP over NFS (tcp). One thing I did notice though that did function better and have better performance on the LTSP compared to the Sun Ray env is better highly intensive multimedia support for high bitrate/bw video apps. As far as local device support in each environment they are about on par in my book as far as usb thumb drives/cd/dvd roms.

]]> Comment on Gutsy and drapes by Omnisilver http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2007/09/30/gutsy-and-drapes/#comment-10916 Omnisilver Sun, 09 Dec 2007 15:51:13 +0000 http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2007/09/30/gutsy-and-drapes/#comment-10916 Thanks for Desktop Drapes, it's a usefull application ;-) I have make a french tuto to discover and use drapes : http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/drapes Omni Thanks for Desktop Drapes, it’s a usefull application ;-)

I have make a french tuto to discover and use drapes : http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/drapes

Omni

]]> Comment on Some of that special sauce by Rick Harding http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2007/10/28/some-of-that-special-sauce/#comment-8690 Rick Harding Mon, 29 Oct 2007 10:35:56 +0000 http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2007/10/28/some-of-that-special-sauce/#comment-8690 Doesn't it rock that it works now. I normally have a second battery in, but sometimes I need to swap to burn a cd or something. I found this back a little bit ago while testing Gutsy: http://mitechie.com/index.php?/archives/242-Love-it-when-stuff-works.html Doesn’t it rock that it works now. I normally have a second battery in, but sometimes I need to swap to burn a cd or something.

I found this back a little bit ago while testing Gutsy:
http://mitechie.com/index.php?/archives/242-Love-it-when-stuff-works.html

]]> Comment on I’m glad you asked by Michael K Johnson http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2007/09/30/im-glad-you-asked/#comment-7090 Michael K Johnson Mon, 01 Oct 2007 18:54:17 +0000 http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2007/09/30/im-glad-you-asked/#comment-7090 The Conary BoF session was definitely my high point for the day, too! After three and a half years, I'm still very excited to be working on Conary, which makes it great fun to talk about Conary with groups of people who grok why it's so exciting. So thanks for joining us at the BoF -- your questions and comments were a big part of making it so fun! The Conary BoF session was definitely my high point for the day, too! After three and a half years, I’m still very excited to be working on Conary, which makes it great fun to talk about Conary with groups of people who grok why it’s so exciting. So thanks for joining us at the BoF — your questions and comments were a big part of making it so fun!

]]> Comment on I’m glad you asked by Ken VanDine http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2007/09/30/im-glad-you-asked/#comment-7070 Ken VanDine Mon, 01 Oct 2007 01:43:39 +0000 http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2007/09/30/im-glad-you-asked/#comment-7070 Drapes rocks! Drapes rocks!

]]> Comment on New laptop hotness by other_z61t_owner http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2006/06/18/new-laptop-hotness/#comment-5069 other_z61t_owner Thu, 09 Aug 2007 17:10:22 +0000 http://www.secs.oakland.edu/~mtanski/thoughts/2006/06/18/new-laptop-hotness/#comment-5069 I gotta say I totally disagree with this review. The laptop is OK... A pretty standard bunch of features for the price point. Believe it or not you can actually get better laptops with more features at the pp. But the worst thing about this laptop is the battery. It is a total piece of crap. Maybe manages to last an hour with Vista, and a little longer if you use Linux or a Hacked copy of OS X, which I ran initially on it. Windows XP manages to squeeze about 80 minutes out of the batter after 6 months of use. Totally pathetic. My girlfriend who has a G4 Powerbook running OS X has a battery running time of 3 hours to my 60 minutes. Unf-ing believable. And OS X seems to run faster than Vista or XP on this titanium brick. Not that it is that heavy, but lets be honest if you don't have the battery time, that is all a laptop is really good for.... I gotta say I totally disagree with this review. The laptop is OK… A pretty standard bunch of features for the price point. Believe it or not you can actually get better laptops with more features at the pp. But the worst thing about this laptop is the battery. It is a total piece of crap. Maybe manages to last an hour with Vista, and a little longer if you use Linux or a Hacked copy of OS X, which I ran initially on it. Windows XP manages to squeeze about 80 minutes out of the batter after 6 months of use. Totally pathetic. My girlfriend who has a G4 Powerbook running OS X has a battery running time of 3 hours to my 60 minutes. Unf-ing believable. And OS X seems to run faster than Vista or XP on this titanium brick. Not that it is that heavy, but lets be honest if you don’t have the battery time, that is all a laptop is really good for….

]]> Comment on LTSP & Load balancing by Ingrid http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2007/04/30/ltsp/#comment-4826 Ingrid Fri, 03 Aug 2007 13:29:04 +0000 http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2007/04/30/ltsp/#comment-4826 Hi, I would also really appreciate it if you could put together a how-to doc. I am in South Africa and we would like to be able to re-use oldish desktop computers as thin client cluster ltsp servers. The idea is that instead of schools having to buy a big expensive server, we could use cheaper or second desktop computers in an ltsp cluster for their thin clients. So I would really love to see what you have done. cheers, Ingrid Siebörger Rhodes University Hi,

I would also really appreciate it if you could put together a how-to doc. I am in South Africa and we would like to be able to re-use oldish desktop computers as thin client cluster ltsp servers. The idea is that instead of schools having to buy a big expensive server, we could use cheaper or second desktop computers in an ltsp cluster for their thin clients. So I would really love to see what you have done.

cheers,

Ingrid Siebörger
Rhodes University

]]> Comment on LTSP & Load balancing by Amos Batto http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2007/04/30/ltsp/#comment-3974 Amos Batto Mon, 25 Jun 2007 22:35:11 +0000 http://www.mindtouchsoftware.com/blog/2007/04/30/ltsp/#comment-3974 Hi, If you have time, I would greatly appreciate it if you could write an LTSP load balancing HOW-TO doc. (or if you could point me to an already existing one.) I'm currently writing a paper on Thin Client Computing for a project to reduce electronic waste (ewaste) in Latin America. I've already writen 100 pages and figure that I have about 30 more pages to write. The goal is to teach people how to use their old computers for longer periods, since throwing away old computers creates toxic waste which isn't properly recycled in Latin America or many other parts of the world. In addition reusing old computers avoids buying a new computer, and 81% of the total energy used by a computer lies in the original manufacturing. I am trying to recommend free or open source software solutions so that people don't have to violate software licenses. For that reason, I would be very interested in finding a load balancing solution that I can recommend in my paper. Sincerely, Amos Batto amosbatto AT yahoo DOT com http://www.ciber-runa.net/serendipity Hi,
If you have time, I would greatly appreciate it if you could write an LTSP load balancing HOW-TO doc. (or if you could point me to an already existing one.)

I’m currently writing a paper on Thin Client Computing for a project to reduce electronic waste (ewaste) in Latin America. I’ve already writen 100 pages and figure that I have about 30 more pages to write. The goal is to teach people how to use their old computers for longer periods, since throwing away old computers creates toxic waste which isn’t properly recycled in Latin America or many other parts of the world. In addition reusing old computers avoids buying a new computer, and 81% of the total energy used by a computer lies in the original manufacturing. I am trying to recommend free or open source software solutions so that people don’t have to violate software licenses. For that reason, I would be very interested in finding a load balancing solution that I can recommend in my paper.

Sincerely,
Amos Batto
amosbatto AT yahoo DOT com
http://www.ciber-runa.net/serendipity

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