LTSP Client Image Maintenance: Utilising a Virtualisation Player to Support Educators to Directly Manage Classroom Applications

This paper reports on the work done in the Siyakhula Living Lab (SLL) schools, a joint project between the Universities of Rhodes and Fort Hare. The computing infrastructure in SLL is based on the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP), which allows client computers to boot from a centralised server and in some cases offload the computation to the server. Most SLL educators find it difficult to manage classroom applications using the GNU/Linux tools directly. So, educators had to rely on others to add applications for their classroom activity, reducing their sense of being in control and making processes longer and less flexible. A recent development in LTSP has introduced the possibility of setting the boot image for the clients within a virtual machine. This paper explores this option in detail and proposes that educators switch to a virtualisation player to manage applications they want to use in the classroom.