Open Source Thin Clients for Libraries

Cindy Murdock
Network Administrator
Meadville Public Library & Crawford County Federated Library System

cmurdock at ccfls.org


Presentation for LITA National Forum, Oct. 2002: http://meadvillelibrary.org/os/lita-ltsp/presentation/

This handout: http://meadvillelibrary.org/os/lita-ltsp/handout.html

The original version of the article I wrote detailing my experiences with the LTSP: http://meadvillelibrary.org/os/ltsp.html

The LITA publication (Open Source Software for Libraries) containing the second version of the article: http://www.lita.org/litapubs/lg9.html

Resources

A tarball of my configuration files: http://meadvillelibrary.org/os/thin-client-files.tar.gz

See the readme in the tarball for more details. You might be able to use these to get up and running, with some customization for your particular setup.

Related Sites

LTSP: www.ltsp.org

The main page of the Linux Terminal Server Project.

Diskless Workstations: www.disklessworkstations.com

Sales of bootable network cards as well as entire diskless workstations. Owned & operated by Jim McQuillan, who founded the LTSP.

Rom-o-matic: www.rom-o-matic.net

Here you can generate disk images for network-bootable floppies.

Diediedie.tgz: www.ltsp.org/contrib/diediedie.tgz

Script to kill off extraneous Netscape processes. Could be modified to kill off other troublesome processes also, if necessary.

Icewm: www.icewm.org

Homepage of the icewm window manager.

Blackbox: www.blackbox.org

Homepage of the Blackbox window manager.

DFM: www.kaisersite.de/dfm

Desktop File Manager, a utility for adding icons to icewm's desktop (or to any other window manager without icons, for that matter)

Sites for Tweaking Netscape with .Xdefaults:

A discussion on Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/articles/00/02/23/1046243.shtml
The Public Web Browser Howto: http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Public-Web-Browser.html
Mandrake Users Organization: http://www.mandrakeuser.org/connect/cbrowse2.html
and
http://www.mandrakeuser.org/connect/cbrowse3.html

Slay: www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/admin/idle/Slay.1.2.tar.gz

A handy program for killing off a user's processes.

Other Open Source Thin Client Projects

K12LTSP: www.k12ltsp.org

A modification of the LTSP for use in schools

Netstation: http://netstation.sourceforge.net

PXES: PXES

Articles:

Can thin clients work in your library? -- Beth Mazin, Joe Mangano, and Dean Baumeister, Memorial Hall Library, Andover, Massachusetts

www.mhl.org/thin/thinclient.htm

Diskless Linux Kiosks, by Jamie Zawinski: http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/src/kiosk/

How thin clients were created for a nightclub in San Francisco.

Secretaries use Linux, Taxpayers Save Millions: http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/08/10/1441239

How the city government of Largo, Florida is using linux-based thin clients to save money.

A Good Tutorial on Setting up the LTSP: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/4472/1/

"Servers With a Smile", Fred Volgelstein, Fortune, Sept. 30, 2002, page 195

How businesses are saving money by using Linux.