Thanks Alkis for this information!

Based on what I now know, I'll...
--Continue with ltsp-pnp, all clients FAT.
--Give 14.04 a try with Unity/Gnome/Gnome-flashback/Mate and do some simple
boot-time benchmarking.
--Read up on flow control and do some experiments using the Epoptes
benchmarking tool (both things of which I was unfamiliar).
--Continue to use both ff and gc (now I know why gc works better sometimes)
even though ff is my preferred as it is more open sourc-esque
--Update the 2 nic install page for 14.04

Questions:
--I could put 2 hard drives on the classroom server and install the system
on one HD and /home on another HD. Seems like that would significantly
improve performance during those times when some clients were booting and
others were logging in, but that's just an idea. Your guess/knowledge on
this?
--Any additional "suggested reading" pages? With google translate my Greek
goes from 0 to 60 in under 10 seconds ;)

Finally:
--What's a way/s I can contribute back to your/our efforts of ubuntu/ltsp
in ed? I saw this page:
https://answers.launchpad.net/sch-scripts/+question/228810 but it's not too
current. I'm doing my own bit to resist the corporate, self-labeled
"education-reform" movement whose advocates think they can ignorantly apply
simplistic free-market principles to improve education. You can imagine how
that plays out in big-district technology bureaucracies. From what I read,
this corporate ed-reform movement is world-wide. [stepping back down from
the soap box...]

BTW Here's a blog post by a Finnish guy I've followed for many years. He
has many important things to say about modern/future education and about
technology and open source as well.
http://teemuleinonen.fi/2015/06/09/why-freelibreopen-source-in-learning-is-important/

Enjoy your summer,
David G

On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 1:07 AM Alkis Georgopoulos <alk...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi David, sorry but I don't have the time to write an extensive how-to
> (I already maintain one in Greek :)), so I'll only mention a few tips:
>
> * We're still using Ubuntu 12.04.x because we have extremely varying
> hardware, so some schools need the old Xorg and kernel from 12.04.1,
> while other schools need the new ones from 12.04.5, and there were even
> schools that needed a new kernel and an old Xorg.
> That's due to unfortunate regressions of the newer software.
> We also have an issue with Ubuntu 14.04 keyboard layout not working
> properly in Unity/Gnome/Gnome-flashback, and another one with
> gnome-keyring making thousand of files with SSHFS (LP: #1321922).
> These 3 issues maybe don't affect many of the users here, so you can
> probably just go ahead and use 14.04.
>
> * I recently committed in LTSP a few fixes for Unity, so if you'll be
> using the Greek schools PPA, you can select any desktop environment that
> you want.
> Gnome-flashback and Mate are also good choices, especially if you also
> have thin clients where 3D doesn't work over the network and software
> rendering is used instead, making Unity extremely slow.
>
> * About the flow control issue (gigabit server, 100mbps clients) we've
> recently updated our /etc/network/if-up.d/sch-scripts script so that it
> works in all cases, so you can just follow this how-to I've written:
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/FlowControl
>
> * Firefox is a good browser. Sometimes a newer flash is needed though,
> so it's nice to also have google-chrome installed, which has flash
> version 18 instead of 11.
>
> * And of course I always suggest to people to follow the ltsp-pnp page,
> as it makes installation and maintenance much easier:
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/ltsp-pnp
>
> Cheers,
> Alkis
>
> On 10/06/2015 07:12 πμ, David Groos wrote:
> > I'm thinking that there are more people than just myself who would like
> > to know this info so am asking here. Right, Alkis, you are probably the
> > knowledge font here! Basically, what's the ltsp-pnp lab setup for next
> > school year in the Greek Schools?
> >
> > I'm looking for a (hopefully quick-booting) modern yet stable
> > configuration. I'll be creating the new install in a month or 6 weeks.
> > I'll be maintaining 5 classrooms including my own, each setup will use
> > the teacher computer as the ltsp-pnp server. Probably not important, but
> > I'll be using the 2 nic setup and a single gig --> (12-36 port) 100 mb
> > switch. I imagine this is already written out online but have not
> > succeeded in finding it. Each machine will have 2 gigs RAM and be maybe
> > 5-7 year old.
> >
> > Any preference for a browser or tricks to lighten the load of the image?
> >
> > Thanks for your ltsp-in-schools leadership,
> > David G
> >
> >
>
>
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