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Our company has been running LSTP on commodity hardware since 2013 for a development team, and I am truly happy with the result. For a long time, a 2013 i7 CPU

by snadal 10y ago

Our company has been running LSTP on commodity hardware since 2013 for a development team, and I am truly happy with the result. For a long time, a 2013 i7 CPU with 32 GiB RAM running LTSP over ESXi was more than enough for intensive use of 5 thin clients. We've recently switched to a more powerful server (refurbished 48 AMD cores / 256 GB RAM) running Proxmox and despite some issues that still needs minor tweaking, I am very happy with it. The only gray area, and the reason I am always looking for alternatives to LTSP (NX2Go is the strongest candidate), is the huge bandwidth used by LTSP: 8 Thin clients needs a sustained 600 Mbps. I'm afraid scaling over 10 / 15 workstations will require expensive network equipment but graphic user experience is near native in all aspects. I highly recommend to anyone that is in doubt of using LTSP or any other thin client setup in production, give it a try because it actually worth it in all aspects.

girvo 10y ago
> scaling over 10/15 will require expensive network equipment Hopefully, that won't be the case soon! [0] I've no idea how far away the tech is for production use, but I'm quite excited by it myself. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2.5GBASE-T_and_5GBASE-T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2.5GBASE-T_and_5GBASE-T
- gonzo 10y ago
  2.5gbps exists today. 10g switches are under $100/port now.
  - snadal 10y ago
    Can you point to any 10g switch on that price range? Last time I searched for there all were over $700 - $1000 USD. Alternative was to use a 4 ports NIC with bonding but 10Gb will be far more easy and stable.
    - aioprisan 10y ago
      Here's a good Reddit thread that I used in the past when I set up a 10gb switch a few years back, and it only cost me around $200: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/2s5x3s/10gb_switches/ https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/2s5x3s/10gb_switch...
rahimnathwani 10y ago
I remember using XDMCP ~20 years ago for this (underpowered machine as thin-client to beefy server, with graphical login). Does LTSP have additional features or better performance?
- snadal 10y ago
  LTSP 4 uses XDMCP as Login manager and GUI export. LTSP Clients boot with PXE and get the root filesystem via NFS, then it uses XDMCP login screen. AFAIK, LTSP 5 uses LDM instead of XDCMP.

by snadal 10y ago

girvo 10y ago

> scaling over 10/15 will require expensive network equipment Hopefully, that won't be the case soon! [0] I've no idea how far away the tech is for production use, but I'm quite excited by it myself. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2.5GBASE-T_and_5GBASE-T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2.5GBASE-T_and_5GBASE-T

gonzo 10y ago
2.5gbps exists today. 10g switches are under $100/port now.
- snadal 10y ago
  Can you point to any 10g switch on that price range? Last time I searched for there all were over $700 - $1000 USD. Alternative was to use a 4 ports NIC with bonding but 10Gb will be far more easy and stable.
  - aioprisan 10y ago
    Here's a good Reddit thread that I used in the past when I set up a 10gb switch a few years back, and it only cost me around $200: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/2s5x3s/10gb_switches/ https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/2s5x3s/10gb_switch...

rahimnathwani 10y ago

I remember using XDMCP ~20 years ago for this (underpowered machine as thin-client to beefy server, with graphical login). Does LTSP have additional features or better performance?

snadal 10y ago
LTSP 4 uses XDMCP as Login manager and GUI export. LTSP Clients boot with PXE and get the root filesystem via NFS, then it uses XDMCP login screen. AFAIK, LTSP 5 uses LDM instead of XDCMP.