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That's exactly what these guys are doing. Look at some of the case studies here and here.

That's exactly what these guys are doing. Look at some of the case studies here and here.

I'm sorry, but your BSD's are not true "thin clients." They are no different than the MS "thin clients." I'm talking about total net boot, with nothing local except PXE or a 32k flashrom in the client. There are several organizations which put out pre-set CDs for just this. Install and work. BSD could do it, more work though... Joking over. I'm not telling you to move from BSD to Linux, just that you might consider bringing your HD based clients over to totally net boot systems and save some steps (precisely, the "ls -1 | xargs pkg_upgrade"). Just a suggestion, not trying to tell you how to do your job, just you should extrapolate the benefits you see with the Win2000 server to your base system, as well. Look at K12LTSP for one of the organizations that facilitates this.

I think this would be great to replace all the Gateway's in my sons school. I have been looking into setting up a K12LTSP network, but really havent found a supply of good, cheap "dumb" terminals. This looks like a match made in heaven.

Now, all I have to do is figure out how to get the LTSP stuff to run on this terminal instead of the server. :)

Another good site for small PC's is mini-itx.com. Fun stuff.

I have to agree with you here.

Scribus looks like it could be the missing piece to my kid's school's upcoming K-12 LTSP network.
This in addition to Open office and tuxpaint covers most of what we need to replace our windows 98 network.

One school here in NZ has their mail server set up to reject all mail from .com domains. Decent spam filter, but it makes it difficult to communicate with the principal about converting it to linux and putting more effective and accurate spam filters on it!

One request I've seen is for a configuration of squid (or some other cache/proxy server) that can (a) cache a large number of pages on a certain topic (gathered by hand if necessary) and then limit the access of the students to only those pages.

Another popular item for schools is an ltsp setup . But you *have* to let them know that despite the word "terminal" in the title, these are not dumb terminals per se, but rather a thin client arrangement, more along the lines of the old diskless sun workstations! You don't want them going out and getting a bunch of old VT100's and thinking they'll be able to bring up a graphical display on them! (well, maybe if you put them in tek4014 emulation mode, but it's it's not exactly what they expect!)

At the NZ Open Source Society we're focussing on schools as a highly appropriate place to place open source deployments, on charity. Think about it. If you donate your time at market rates, you can claim it back on your taxes at a rate that's still a living wage. This is an excellent way to reduce your tax burden from a windfall in previous years, keep busy and expand your skills in a lean year, and do something good for the community--all at the same time.

A friend of mine's kid uses linux exclusively at home, and when the kids on the schoolbus found out, they backed away from her in shock and informed her that linux "was illegal" and she could be arrested "for being a hacker using that." An idea brought to a school near you by the MS FUD Factory.

This is the level of misunderstanding of open source in the schools, so it's an important mission to at least dispell some of the FUD surrounding it.

That's one of the reasons you may think we're being very quiet--we're not talking directly to you! But if you're interested in what's actually going on with open resources in education, go to any of the websites above, or to Schoolforge and look around and follow the links.

Another reason is that whenever we've submitted links about such things to /. (I asked Paul about this a minute ago, and his experience has been the same as mine) they have been rejected. If you're not interested in telling people about what's being done, don't expect them to know about it! We've stopped submitting our stories here, since they're never used. We try to use our energy more constructively now, but submitting our stories to educational journals, etc.

A lot of this is really just about having fun and seeing what you can accomplish and what you can learn. At least for me, thats what it's mostly about.

most newer machines with an on-board nic (my ecs k7s5a) support pxe boot as an option within the bios. but for older machines, net booting requires either a nic that supports net booting (should have an eeprom on the nic), which are not the cheap nics that i've always bought, or with a floppy (which can probably be burned to a cdr to make a bootable cd).

for net boot floppy images see the section "Making Boot Disks for Legacy PCs" in the k12ltsp client set-up instructions. those instructions reference the rom-o-matic website, which supplies dynamically-generated downloadable boot floppies using etherboot.

so for a small (1.44 MB) simple net boot solution for computers that don't support pxe booting, but with a floppy drive (or bootable from a cd), look at the k12ltsp instructions and visit the rom-o-matic website for a net boot floppy.

ps the images might even be on the knoppix cd as net boot floppy images are (sometimes?) distributed with ltsp, but probably not due to space constraints on the knoppix cd.

I personally ordered two Opteron servers this week. I plan on building an e-mail server and K12LTSP server using modified Red Hat Linux. My findings of success/failure when I figure out AMD64 Linux quirks will be posted to AMDMB.com in the coming weeks. (Also check out our Athlon Linux forum.)

From the AMD64-list discussion so far, there are only a few details:

* Kernel and all applications 64-bit compiled. This includes support for the larger memory address space and 16 registers. (SPEED!)
* AMD64 Linux *can* run 32-bit applications, unfortunately you would need 32-bit shared libraries that were not included in this technology preview. They said that they will be included in a possible future shipping distribution. I personally will try to research how to find/build these 32-bit shared libraries for myself, although I suspect it will show up on amd64-list soon enough.
* Existing 32-bit closed source programs like Macromedia Flash plugin 6.0 for Linux may work with 32-bit shared libraries, but not while running within 64-bit compiled Mozilla. You would need 32-bit compiled Mozilla. Bummer.

The guy asked a simple question: Is there anything like Citrix that runs on Linux and that is either free or cheap?

I'm not sure where in that question you get the need to know the information that the person requested. Now - if you were the consultant that was hired to handle the project, that would be a different story, but he just asked for advice.

Another user below mentioned LTSP for which more information can be found at the LTSP project's web site.

There is a K12 LTSP project as well here.

As for the KDE comment... I don't think he meant that -- on the surface -- it is ironic that the DOE was named KDE but rather that it is ironic because of the question that he is asking.

First of all, there will be the cost savings of not having to license an anti-virus suite for your email server.

Next, there is the per-seat licensing issue that will simply go away. No more $35,000 (or so) for licensing 1000 connections into an Exchange server.

Next, if you want to implement a decent campus-wide kiosk type Internet access system, there are plenty of NCD type terminals ($30.00 or so on ebay in quantity) that work remotely with XFree86. Our friends at the K-12 Linux Terminal Server Project can probably offer some advice on how to set this sort of system up.

If you need to maintain some sort of Windows compatibility (there will probably be 1 or 2 systems that must run Windows only software), our friends at the Samba Project offer an excellent Windows Networking compatibility layer.

You can also emphasize that without Windows, your computer investment won't become obsolete in 2 years.

I could probably come up with hundreds of other ideas, but this should help get things rolling.

The Multnomah County, Oregon ESD already has a Linux distribution optimized for use in public schools. Microsoft apparently didn't really check around before they threatened MESD with a MS license audit. This thoroughly upset the locals, who rallied thier support. Microsoft lost the game of chicken when they stopped smoking crack and realised threatening a broke school district kills your PR and loses customers.

-Jonathan Hughes

-Jonathan Hughes

-Jonathan Hughes

There are however some mature projects available for schools to use and these projects are really exciting because they provide school IT staff a very appealing alternative. K12LTSP is a good example of a very mature Linux in education project. Paul Nelson implemented a K12LTSP setup in the high school he works at, he says in his case study that "It's interesting to note that it took less than 3 hours to have all 4 LTSP terminal servers up and running and the better part of 3 days to get the W2K terminal server installed with software and a seemingly endless series of updates." In certain environments Linux is the best solution. We need to advocate that kind of solution and give it to people if they feel that another solution is better for there particular environment, it might just be.

-Jonathan Hughes
Linux In Education Portal
http://linuxineducation.org

There are however some mature projects available for schools to use and these projects are really exciting because they provide school IT staff a very appealing alternative. K12LTSP is a good example of a very mature Linux in education project. Paul Nelson implemented a K12LTSP setup in the high school he works at, he says in his case study that "It's interesting to note that it took less than 3 hours to have all 4 LTSP terminal servers up and running and the better part of 3 days to get the W2K terminal server installed with software and a seemingly endless series of updates." In certain environments Linux is the best solution. We need to advocate that kind of solution and give it to people if they feel that another solution is better for there particular environment, it might just be.

-Jonathan Hughes
Linux In Education Portal
http://linuxineducation.org

It keeps being tried every few years and keeps being rejected by corporations.
These guys seem to be having no problem with being rejected. I put together my school's lab for about the cost of two serious desktops, networking included. In fact, Jim McQuillan seems to be making a reasonable living out of selling such systems. It all depends on where you sit, and what you need, I guess.

Is it necessary?

No!

• SchoolForge.net - "A complete Listing of Open Source groups working with schools."
  
• Open Source Schools -
  for the on-line Journal of Open Source Software in schools
  
• SEUL/edu - "the discussion group for those interested in using Linux for education. This covers all aspects of educational uses of Linux, by teachers, parents, and students."
  
• K12OS.org - "Discussion forums for help, news and information related to Linux in schools"
  
• Multnomah ESD - "has successfully moved most of its core network services to Linux." The folks who built the original K12 Linx, AFAIK.
  

We had to build our own as do most schools using Linux. http://k12ltsp.org/rhs_casestudy.html

When will large vendors realize that there is a market in K12 for Linux? EVERY install I see is the result of one or two hard working teachers, often supported by local LUGs working to save $$$ and provide technology to classrooms.

It's great to see this but these teachers are the exception not the norm.

who here actually USES the client-server capabilities of X? Apart from a small bunch of people, I presume almost none.
In fact, I use it, and so do a growing number of schools and businesses as a way to recycle old hardware and limit administration headaches. IceWM on my little P133 16Mb RAM X Term takes about 10 seconds from ON to autologin... slow because it's got a 10mb NIC. It runs OO.o Moz 1.2.1 and Gimp 1.2.3, all at the speed of the server.
This makes it easy and profitable. Dropping the server client aspect of X11 would be really silly as people in your country ready themselves for a touch screen with network sound in every room.

The Skolelinux project is a major effort to provide office and other software in both versions of Norwegian as well as in the minority language of Northern Sami.

In addition it will provide a very ambitious Debian Woody based thin client school network with a lot of network services. Somewhat similar to the K12LTSP project.

There are four main uses that we have identified:

1. Collaboration - Our students use PC's for e-mail, sharing files to complete group projects, passing on links to web sites and articles from on-line databases. It's not uncommon to have two or three students working together with one serving as the "record keeper" keeping track of information which is later saved and shared electronically with the other group members. Isn't this the way you work as an adult? For our students, their /home folder becomes a virtual notebook where they organize their important stuff and the /public share becomes a means of exchange.

   Our students were quick to incorporate a networked environment into their day to day school life. They use it to get their work done and have found many ingenious social adaptations as well. As tools for collaboration, networked PC's are changing the classroom in the same ways they have changed the workplace.

2. Communication - The most used applications in our classrooms are not the flashy, multimedia based, tutorial programs that you see in the educational sections of software stores. When our students are working they use the same programs the rest of the world uses, word processing, e-mail, spreadsheets and presentation software. There is little room for the computer as tutor concept in today's busy classroom.

   Presentation software packages like PowerPoint and OO Impress are easily incorporated into networked classrooms. Teachers can use presentation software to add multimedia content to lessons. Students use these software tools as "virtual poster boards" for class reports. Some things just don't change and telling everyone what you know is still a big part of learning. Creating the presentation is still what brings it all together for many students.

   Desktop publishing is an important use of PC's in today's schools. From one page flyers to student run newspapers, PC's make it happen. This is an area where computer use has acted as an equalizer in that everyone can now publish their ideas.

3. Analysis - Here's an area where computers have changed education (or should...). With spreadsheets and graphing tools now on every PC, students have the power to ask and answer "what if" questions and to make ready comparisons of data. Anyone who has used a spreadsheet to investigate something as simple as the costs of a trip to Disneyland will understand how useful these tools are in the classroom. Examples of good programming exist in things like the chart wizard in Excel and OO Calc. Preview buttons and updated wysiwyg windows make it easy for students to interact with the software and make choices. They may be using a wizard but they are still in control of what's going on.

4. Creativity - Some of our most empowered users of technology are art and music students. Our art teachers were quick to see the potential in computers. PC's are seen as creative tools by our students after taking PC art classes where before they were only seen as productivity tools.

Anyone interested in doing something along these lines, and avoiding M$'s protection racket ("y'know, for a few dollars a year per station, I could make sure that you don't get hassled by software license audits"), should check out k12ltsp.org. With corporate donation programs starting to pass along some decent hardware to schools, a kick-ass lab can be had for just the cost of the networking infrastructure.

I am a big fan of thin clients, and have administered two setups. When it is done right, the amount of administration work drops to virtually nothing. If you can set up a new company to rely on only web apps or custom jobs, the user has virtually no power to mess with anything, can only use the apps you offer them, and, if they hose their home directory, you simply copy it back from a daily backup for them. Simple and beautiful.
The administration costs on this are minimal, and hardware rarely needs to be upgraded, except to add another server to the setup.

K12 Linux terminal server.

Problem solved.

Your first stop should be Here

Your second stop should be here

Your third stop should be here

Your forth stop should be here

Your fifth stop should be here

Open Office would be my choice for an office suite (that or Star Office)

KDevelop is a decent enough development suite for use in a school, but with
this age group I would use this
project

For a good teaching language This
is a good place to start.

Hope this helps!

The Linux Terminal Server Project would be a cheap base for your plan - one central high-spec server, with a load of low-spec workstations displaying the served (remote X) terminals.

This is exactly what I wanted to suggest. It's the best solution, especially in terms of maintainance work and fault-tolerance. Make sure to see this clip (RealPlayer unfortunately) to see how adding new computers to your lab would look like if you choose the LTSP way. Take a look at this links:

• LTSP -- Linux Terminal Server Project
• K12LTSP -- Linux Terminal Server Project in Schools
• K12OS -- Open Source in Schools
• K12Linux -- Linux in Schools Project
• GNU and Education
• SEUL/edu -- Simple End User Linux/Education
• KDE Education Project
• Debian Jr. Project

Good luck!

At this point it can be argued that desktop-user=friendliness is more an issue of the distribution than the OS. Several user-friendly desktops have been developed. In at least one case, tests showed the system was easier to use for newbies than Windows.

The Multnomah Education Service District et al (including my old grade school)have been working on "K12Linux", a distribution designed (if I understand correctly) to be easy to install and use for non-techies in the K12 education environment. I read somewhere (can't find the specific article now) that in their tests students learned how to use the system in about a week, substantially sooner than with Windows.

If I read correctly, they are using a timesharing model with K12LTSP and using IceWM for its low server load, and OpenOffice.org for composing etc.

They may also be saving a lot of moolah, as MS wants them to pay licensing fees for all their computers, whether they have Windows on them or not. Read about this here.

Here is a quote from that page: " To give you an idea of the scale of the problem facing a large district like [Portland Public Schools], they have 25,000 PCs. A MS school agreement lease of software could cost the district over $1,000,000 a year. Just buying a virus package would cost $250,000 a year."

The new Riverdale High School is running entirely on Linux. Here is a draft case study for those interested. They run 35 diskless workstations assembled by parents and staff at a school computer work party!

At this point it can be argued that desktop-user=friendliness is more an issue of the distribution than the OS. Several user-friendly desktops have been developed. In at least one case, tests showed the system was easier to use for newbies than Windows.

The Multnomah Education Service District et al (including my old grade school)have been working on "K12Linux", a distribution designed (if I understand correctly) to be easy to install and use for non-techies in the K12 education environment. I read somewhere (can't find the specific article now) that in their tests students learned how to use the system in about a week, substantially sooner than with Windows.

If I read correctly, they are using a timesharing model with K12LTSP and using IceWM for its low server load, and OpenOffice.org for composing etc.

They may also be saving a lot of moolah, as MS wants them to pay licensing fees for all their computers, whether they have Windows on them or not. Read about this here.

Here is a quote from that page: " To give you an idea of the scale of the problem facing a large district like [Portland Public Schools], they have 25,000 PCs. A MS school agreement lease of software could cost the district over $1,000,000 a year. Just buying a virus package would cost $250,000 a year."

The new Riverdale High School is running entirely on Linux. Here is a draft case study for those interested. They run 35 diskless workstations assembled by parents and staff at a school computer work party!

Teachers are paid on salary. They are already overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated. Asking one of these teachers to fight with a relatively obscure OS, and find non-existant software to say, help to teach her kids chemistry is fucking ridiculous.

It is the only approach that makes any sense.

Time will tell if other distributions will be as well managed and forward thinking but for now I don't think we should slam RH because they got off to a good start and hired some smart people. They are working hard to produce free software for us and just happen to be doing it very well.

At K12LTSP.org we base our distribution for schools on RH for all of the above and the fact that over time, it's been one of the easiest and most stable versions of Linux for us to use in schools. They have been 100% supportive of us hacking their distribution and redistributing it to schools. That's about as far from Redmond as you can get. There are some good folks there in NC! Let's give some credit where credit is due.

http://k12ltsp.org/contents.html is probably a better link. Sorry about that. Don't mod me down for being stupid. If we all moded people down for being stupid..uh...well, I guess we would all be equal.

I've set up a few machines now, each running Debian (Testing, even), that are now in use as public terminals in a university library. They have a minimum of software installed, but Mozilla and Opera for browsing, Acrobat reader and AbiWord for documents, as well as lynx, telnet, ssh, and scp available in xterms (each launched via xterm's '-e' option, so that the xterm quits when the program running in them quits). For ssh and scp, I wrote a couple of simple scripts, using 'dialog' to get input for hostname, username, etc. I'm using IceWM (no Gnome or KDE), with extremely minimal menus and no logout command; it's very fast, and has a Windows-like theme so that it looks familiar to most people. KDM handles auto-login very nicely. Automount handles floppy disks (so users can copy files to and from remote machines without having local hard disk access). Finally, since the machines have identical hardware, I built a custom kernel package for them.

For a 'guest' account, I set up a user in a unique group, and chown'ed all the files in that user's home directory to root, leaving them read-only for the guest. Problem: some programs expect to be able to write to disk, e.g., Mozilla expects to be able to make changes in $HOME/.mozilla -- so I wrote a simple script for each such program that, if the program isn't already running, will restore .mozilla (or whatever directory/file is appropriate) from a master, root-owned, read-only copy. Beyond that, to increase security on the machines, I turned off the various virtual terminals on the console, tightened up /etc/fstab (noexec in /tmp, for example), configured grub appropriately, set up ssh for remote admin (actually the only way I can get a command line on the machine), and set up some simple firewalling rules.

So far, these machines have been completely stable, and our users have been pleased, even those using it mainly to check Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. It's reasonably easy to duplicate across various machines, too -- for only a few machines, this works fine: dpkg -[get|set]-selections to save and set which packages are installed, plus save settings from /etc, scripts from /usr/local/bin, and preferences from /home/pubacc, all of which are backed up and ready for a reinstall. But, if you've got lots of machines to duplicate, there are likely more efficient methods -- like running a terminal server; see, e.g., the Linux Terminal Server Project or the K12 Linux Project.

My recommendation: it's definitely worth a try setting up Linux machines as public access terminals, especially if the programs the users need are few in number (e.g, web browser, telnet, ssh, and pdf viewer, which is all just about everyone in our library wants on a regular basis). Just be prepared to do a little fiddling or simple script-writing to handle programs that expect read-write access to the guest account's home directory, and/or provide an interface for programs that normally are run from the command line.

The biggest one I can think of is the "linux Terminal Server Project",

ltsp

Which has been adapted to public schools in the form of:

k12ltsp

The linux in education folks have tons of info on doing stuff like this and are very wise about digital divide issues.

Here are some links:

open source schools

School Forge

k12os

SEUL/Edu

Some case studies:

seul dat

There is also Simple End User Linux (SEUL)

SEUL

RedHats "Open Source Now" initiative has listings of people in the area who can help out. They also have a bunch of "why's" and "hows" on their site.

Open Source Now

I should be listed there in the Army of Friends, but have not gotten around to putting myself up. Feel free to contact me at cschwan4@attbi.com, as I am in the Seattle area.

Doing this kind of thing is a great interest of mine, and I work in education to help make these transistions.

Hope this helps.

Try the K12LTSP distro, a modified LTSP setup ready-to-install. It has Mozilla, OpenOffice, etc., and will likely be updated to GNOME2 goodness once the latest 7.4/8.0 limbo/null/whatever betas are done.

The diskless terminals boot from a floppy or NIC bootrom, with the K12LTSP server doing all of the heavy lifting. I've used Pentium 90s and worse for the terminals.

k12ltsp.org

I know a lot of guys that are doing just this, to massively drop long term costs. Minimize admin time. Keep the networks from being taken over. Do you mean that this same teacher who set up the RH DHCP server can't just go to download.com or whatever and do the same thing under Win9x?

Huh?? I believe if this author got his facts straight, Evolution is an email client.

This author doesn't know half of what Linux is, so how can he be informed on it in the desktop environment. He obviously hasn't checked out the German government or schools all over.

The explanation needs to be longer. They are only running part of their services using Linux, only the services listed. There are still file servers at other locations. Services not listed still use other software, also.

I called Eric Harrison and got the correct information. I was rushing to write my first post to the story (I should have been working for a customer.) and I made two mistakes. The correct statistic is that the administration time was cut in half. Also, they replaced other Unix software as well as Microsoft software.

Note that the people who help users are in a separate facility, and are not counted. The statistic is only for admin of their computers. Programming and other functions are not included.

Eric Harrison and Paul Nelson did the work. They are very friendly. Contact them for a better explanation. Obviously, I can't post their e-mail addresses here.

Another error: The word "insure" should have been "ensure".

The story is even better than it appears. Check out The K-12 Linux Project, also in Portland, Oregon. (Moderators: Please don't mod down people who mention this project in other contexts. Mod them up.)

Linux Terminal software is used with diskless workstations to create a 5 workstation network for under $1,000.

Here is a quote: "All applications run on the terminal server. The workstations are "thin." They have no software or hard drives. Thin clients are perfect for schools because they are easy to install and require little maintenance. They are reliable and immune to malicious tampering and viruses".

Intel is giving free processors to schools.

It's all set up and ready to go. Just download the software and follow the instructions.

"The Multnomah Education Service District [Portland, Oregon, again] has moved most of it's core network services to Linux. Linux powers DNS, DHCP, mail relays, proxy servers, web filters, and directory services for the 45,000 administrators, teachers, and students within our agency and the school districts we support . For our agency and a couple of our districts, Linux powers the web, mail, FTP, and file servers."

I was told that it took 4 full-time people to maintain the MESD system when it was using Microsoft software. Now it takes 1 person half time.

Government administrators should note that it is their duty to insure that all government work be done on completely open systems. The citizens and taxpayers of a democracy must have full access to all documents, even 40 or a hundred years from now. There is NO room in a democracy for proprietary, hidden ways of doing things.

The story is even better than it appears. Check out The K-12 Linux Project, also in Portland, Oregon. (Moderators: Please don't mod down people who mention this project in other contexts. Mod them up.)

Linux Terminal software is used with diskless workstations to create a 5 workstation network for under $1,000.

Here is a quote: "All applications run on the terminal server. The workstations are "thin." They have no software or hard drives. Thin clients are perfect for schools because they are easy to install and require little maintenance. They are reliable and immune to malicious tampering and viruses".

Intel is giving free processors to schools.

It's all set up and ready to go. Just download the software and follow the instructions.

"The Multnomah Education Service District [Portland, Oregon, again] has moved most of it's core network services to Linux. Linux powers DNS, DHCP, mail relays, proxy servers, web filters, and directory services for the 45,000 administrators, teachers, and students within our agency and the school districts we support . For our agency and a couple of our districts, Linux powers the web, mail, FTP, and file servers."

I was told that it took 4 full-time people to maintain the MESD system when it was using Microsoft software. Now it takes 1 person half time.

Government administrators should note that it is their duty to insure that all government work be done on completely open systems. The citizens and taxpayers of a democracy must have full access to all documents, even 40 or a hundred years from now. There is NO room in a democracy for proprietary, hidden ways of doing things.

The story is even better than it appears. Check out The K-12 Linux Project, also in Portland, Oregon. (Moderators: Please don't mod down people who mention this project in other contexts. Mod them up.)

Linux Terminal software is used with diskless workstations to create a 5 workstation network for under $1,000.

Here is a quote: "All applications run on the terminal server. The workstations are "thin." They have no software or hard drives. Thin clients are perfect for schools because they are easy to install and require little maintenance. They are reliable and immune to malicious tampering and viruses".

Intel is giving free processors to schools.

It's all set up and ready to go. Just download the software and follow the instructions.

"The Multnomah Education Service District [Portland, Oregon, again] has moved most of it's core network services to Linux. Linux powers DNS, DHCP, mail relays, proxy servers, web filters, and directory services for the 45,000 administrators, teachers, and students within our agency and the school districts we support . For our agency and a couple of our districts, Linux powers the web, mail, FTP, and file servers."

I was told that it took 4 full-time people to maintain the MESD system when it was using Microsoft software. Now it takes 1 person half time.

Government administrators should note that it is their duty to insure that all government work be done on completely open systems. The citizens and taxpayers of a democracy must have full access to all documents, even 40 or a hundred years from now. There is NO room in a democracy for proprietary, hidden ways of doing things.

It said "Linux-terminal" computer labs, so it sounds like everyone doesn't have a full blown computer. So hardware could be much less than $800. I think more details are needed on this.

Also check out this recent newsforge article on this same project.

Take a look at www.k12ltsp.org - those guys do amazing things with Linux driving small, cheap, quiet thin clients. Think about it - only one server to maintain! You may even have some time left for retraining people to use StarOffice.

At some point, Scribus will be ready to do serious desktop publishing. StarOffice/OpenOffice (see the OpenOffice marketing brochure here) can do PowerPoint. What exactly do 'yall use Access for? (we've got very good databases, but the Access-like DB frontends I've seen just aren't end-user ready IMHO).

Also, you should find lots of useful school-targeted Linux resources here.

• Places to start:
• The K12 Linux in Schools Project has some links and a client/server package of their own.
  
  
• Some of theKDE Edutainment software looks promising.
  
  
• Open Source Schools carries some in depth discussions of educational software. (Scroll Down and you'll currently see a review of Zope used as a gradebook.)
  
  
• The Simple End User Linux people have a large collection of nifty educational applications, and they are currently putting together an iso.
  
  
• Schoolforge keeps a small list of educational software. Follow the links there to find things like:
  
  
• Blue Linux, a distro that specializes in educational software.
  
  

ltsp.org
k12 ltsp

the k12 set up has a really easy install, complete with redhat 7.2

check out qvwm (windows style window manager) and codeweavers (Realplayer, Quicktime, etc. plugins for linux browsers)

It may be hard to get all the windows games you want but there are some that ive seen work. Go to linuxGames.com for info on setting up games with linux. I know they have a tutorial for getting Starvraft working with wine.