Free ltsp software for linux

TcosMonitor is a teacher management of a thin client classroom.

TcosMonitor is a pygtk app teacher tool to control a thin client classroom (PXES, LTSP, TCOS compatible) and allow to do actions on one or all thin clients like block/unblock screen, reboot/poweroff thin clients, and so many.

TCOS is a thin client implementation to build net initramfs images based on kernel, binaries and libs from debian/ubuntu, no more patched kernels and bins!!!

TCOS project is similar to PXES but work with more hardware and newer kernels.

App avalaible in spanish and english.

Debian/Ubuntu mirror:

deb http://soleup.eup.uva.es/tcos/debian unstable main

add gpg key:
# wget http://soleup.eup.uva.es/tcos/mariodebian-pub.key
# cat mariodebian-pub.key| apt-key add -

Plume is a complete set of packages to create and administrate a network of diskless computers used as X terminals. Stations root filesystem is extensively based on Debian with as few new packages as possible. It is clean and lean, as well as easy to understand and adapt if needed.

It is all about setting up easily a server with thin clients, each based on Debian. It is meant and known to be particularly light on the clients (ex.: it requires as few as 4MB RAM on a typical client) and run on commodity hardware.

Thin client [1]: A thin client is a computer (client) in client-server architecture networks which has little or no application logic, so it has to depend primarily on the central server for processing activities. The word "thin" refers to the small boot image which such clients typically require - perhaps no more than required to connect to a network and start up a graphical interface.

Plume is working fine at several places for a long time now (early year 2000), without much maintenance and without specialists needed when something is to be done. It has successfully and painlessly passed a migration from Potato to Woody on at least one server and from Woody to Sarge on at least one other server. As it is available as Debian packages (only sources on this site, though you can find binary packages on apt.bxlug.be), it should be a snap to install on any Debian machine out there.

It is meant first for schools, and as such fits well on really old PC (as little as 486 with 8MB RAM). It has been thought as a clean replacement of LTSP.


The project is currently hosted at SourceForge.net. You can find it here.

You can download the latest source release here. There are currently packages for Debian Woody, but as of now, it still works fine on Sid also. For binary releases (Debian packages) I suggest you contact us on the mailing-list(archives and more available here), you dont even have to subscribe to do it. There is even a French-speaking mailing-list dedicated to current users of Plume installations here.

PXES project is a micro Linux thin client distribution. PXES will boot a real thin client or will help to convert in minutes any compliant hardware (see list bellow) into a versatile thin client.
They will be capable of accessing any XDM server presenting the graphical login screen or any Microsoft Terminal Server through RDP protocol. The actual configuration of clients is made with an easy to use graphical configuration tool, allowing the specification of clients parameters or the server to access to.
You can recover hardware that is useless running current desktop OS or office package and give it a second chance. This thin client boots from the network with PXE (Intel Pre-Execution Environment specifications) so neither boot diskette nor boot eprom is needed.
The linux kernel and an initial root filesystem is transmitted over the network (the compressed size as of version 0.4 is about 4M).
Main features:
Supported servers and protocols
- Unix/Linux supporting XDM
- Microsoft Terminal Server using RDP
- Citrix using ICA
- VNC using TightVNC
- LOCAL local graphical session with simple desktop
- LTSP or K12LTSP
- IBM Host using 3270 or 5250 emulation (soon)
- Telnet emulating ANSI terminal
- SSH
- Tarantella using proprietary protocol
- NoMachine using NX
- Thinlinc
Boot methods
- PXE network card included in most modern PC hardware
- Etherboot to boot from diskette or EPROM
- CD-ROM
- Hard disk
- DOC DiskOnChip and DOM DiskOnModule
- USB Storage
- For Hard Disk, DOC, DOM or other flash memory installation you may also use PXES HD/DOM Installer (http://pxes.sourceforge.net/enterprise/install-dom.shtml) which is part of Enterprise Edition (http://pxes.sourceforge.net/enterprise/index.php).
- You can also see the detailed information about Boot Methods.
Hardware requirements
- Processor: x86 architecture (i486, i586, i686, VIA C3, Geode, Vortex86, Transmeta Crusoe, etc.)
- BUS: PCI recommended (although ISA works)
- RAM: 32 Mb recommended (16 Mb minimum)
- NIC: see supported network card list
- Video: see supported video card list
Local devices
- Diskette
- Hard disk
- CD-ROM
- Printers parallel, serial and USB
- Serial devices (bar code reader, etc.)
- Audio
- Flash memory / USB storage
Supported operating system
- Linux
- Solaris
- AIX
- SCO
- BSD
- HP-UX
- Microsoft Windows NT4
- Microsoft Windows 2000
- Microsoft Windows 2003
- Microsoft Windows XP
Enhancements:
- Support for different boot loaders was added.
- Support for GRUB on ISO images was added.
- A correction was made in the kernel and image path in isolinux.
- A message telling the user to run "pxesconfig --updatefstab" was added.
- updatefstab was added in post.
- Support for 2.4.32 and 2.6.15 kernels was added.
- Automated owner and permission changing on specific files was added, so now the whole pxes-base tree can be checked out as a normal user.