Do you run a network of more than few computers(educational institutions/enterprise) and wished you did not have to install OS/applications on the clients?  Have you faced hardware failure on PC, lost data or time when users sit and do nothing while the replacement PC is found? Tired of tracking various online updates, software licenses on multiple PC?

If you answered yes to most of the above, KIWI-LTSP is for you.

Install openSUSE 11.0 on one powerful PC (any PC 2Ghz and above with 2GB RAM), do a 1-click install of kiwi-ltsp-prebuilt image, if the server IP is 10.0.0.254, just run kiwi-ltsp-setup -c command as root, in few seconds your LTSP5 server is ready.

You would now be able to network boot upto 20 PC (any PXE capable PC with minimum 128M-256M RAM) without any modification or installation on the client side.

All the users that wanted to try new openSUSE 11.0 but were not ready to remove the installed OS can now just network boot to use openSUSE 11.0 and reboot normally into their installed OS without any change to their hard disk. They get to enjoy all the software goodies installed on the server. Sound, printer and scanner should work without any problem too. If they have hardware with nice open source 3D drivers get Compiz Fusion as a bonus.

As all users’ data is stored on the server, backup and restoration is much easier. Routine maintenance is required for only one PC, users can log in with their credentials from any PC on the network, they get their desktop where ever they are. (phew! that does it for market speak)

Presenting KIWI-LTSP 0.4.0

New stuff in 0.4.0 since last release:

•  openSUSE 11.0 branding to LDM thanks to Lejo
•  Much smaller image size, down to 97M now
•  Icons for plugged in USB/CD now show up even on KDE4 desktop thanks to the work by Klausade
•  All LTSP packages are updated to latest bzr snapshot
•  LDM background image can now be changed easily.

Place your background (680×480) in /srv/tftpboot/KIWI/bg.png (do not change the name)

edit /stv/tftpboot/KIWI/config.default and add this at the end of
“CONF=” line, place a comma and continue the line:

,/KIWI/bg.png;/usr/share/ldm/themes/ldm-suse-theme/bg.png;YOURSERVERIP

To make things even easier, Jan Weber is working on Easy-LTSP - LTSP GUI for the openSUSE Google Summer of Code project.  Check out the progress on the project wiki here.

Installation instructions and other details can be found on openSUSE wiki.