LTSP goes to Manchester

July 15-16th Bridgewater hall

Bristol Wireless took its new revised LTSP suite for 2 days to the Substance Conference in Manchester. The Dell server laptop has been newly installed and the Evo T20 thin clients have been configured on the server, 7 flat screens and 3 laptops made up a suite of 10 machines: it all looks very professional.

After arriving at the venue, the suite went together in about 40 minutes and after a slight delay getting a network cable made and installed; we were running at 9am. The computers were for the delegates to use at break times and they were popular too, with a few people waiting for a machine to become vacant. Delegates used the Linux terminals to log on to Citrix and Novell systems or just checking websites and email through the browser.

The set up gathered a fair amount of interest and I ended up explaining the advantages of thin clients to a few organisations. In particular, the low power use and fan-less silent workstations making saving on air conditioning seemed to strike a chord, as did the fact that only the server needed occasional administration leaving time for ICT improvements instead of the usual constant maintenance cycle of multiple desktops.

Substance are Linux friendly. They make the most of the free tools available to make the most of web functionality. We discussed Drupal, Dapper, CiviCRM and plings, among other technologies.