NewsForge: A Q&A with LTSP's Jim McQuillan

"Barr: Why did you start LTSP?

"McQuillan: We started LTSP to solve a problem for a customer. They wanted 35 new terminals to access an AS/400 and a SCO Unix server. We really didn't want to continue using Windows, so we decided to figure out a way to do it with Linux. We'd thought about full PCs with hard disks and CD-ROM bootable systems, then we found the netboot howto and decided that this was it. The problem was, the howto did a great job of explaining how to boot a single workstation, but didn't cover the idea of booting 35 separate workstations. That's when we got to work and created something that eventually became known as LTSP. That was back in early 1999..."

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