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I don't know the exact setup of ADS, but Linux clusters do auto-image all the time. There are plenty of tools for that. SystemImager probably does what you want.

For the whole Exchange server / Sharepoint thing, you're going to pay or you're going to opt for the "free for education" Google Docs.

Open Admin is an extremely mature school management package, and SchoolTool is an up-and-coming one, but school reporting requirements are so strict that many packages won't pass muster.

This kind of migration is extremely difficult and I think you're making too light of it.

Glad to see interest in education on /. Don't forget about http://schoolforge.net./ A careful and highly skilled group working on both software and texts. We are the coalition of groups interested in FLOSS and Education and our membership is international. Here are the apps I currently see as the stack:

Server-based:

* Open Admin for Schools by Les Richardson in Canada, http://richtech.ca/ (mentioned by someone else, too.)
* KOHA, http://koha.org/, the Library OPAC/ILS from New Zealand
* Manhattan, http://manhattan.sourceforge.net/, the WebCT alternative which is a lot easier than Moodle from New England (in the U.S.)
* Moodle if you like the blog look instead.
* http://atutor.ca/ -- Just great.

We also recommend IMP/Horde and Drupal. Can't go wrong.

I recommend schools use Debian on the server and Edubuntu on the desktop. The latter comes with a great start on what you need in the classroom, including TuxPaint, TuxMath, Open Office, The GIMP, Firefox, etc. The great thing about it is that you can choose whether to set it up as a thin client or a stand-alone box and updating is easy using apt-get.

Joining Schoolforge is something anyone really interested in FLOSS/education can do to help.

--
http://iteachnet.org/

There are lots of available applications that are tailored to the individual school level, especially for small and medium size schools. This is an excellent fit for private schools, parochial schools and probably even charter schools. For example, I have been evaluating Open Administration for Schools for a local Christian school. It seems like it will be a good fit.

Now, if you are talking about software to help run an entire school district, that is a different story. In such a case, you are talking about thousands or tens of thousands of students, and probably hundreds or thousands of computers and other inventory to track. I would say that you have your work cut out for you. There have been some attempts at developing open source free/Free ERP tools. However, the market for ERP solutions is much smaller (far fewer large organizations than small and medium organizations, be they schools or otherwise). So, in the same way that you will have trouble finding open source manufacturing control software, you will have trouble finding open source software that is targeted at large organizations. It is not impossible. But as it appears you have found, it can be a daunting challenge.

'When you says availability of educational software, you mean "none"'

'everytime time I get to thinking about what software I use everyday, I realize it's just all for Windows'

If it is education related I take a look at the SEUL/Edu Application Index http://richtech.ca/seul/

Were's the vertical education apps, for all education levels?

You can start browsing here.

http://richtech.ca/seul/

Note that I'm not considering OS in this. These are general suggestions.

* Anything in the "programming game" genre. When doing this, a player designs a robot to go through some kind of puzzle or challenge (or theoretically fight, though as much of this is rather abstract, it may work under your violence issues). The original game in this genre is "Core Wars" (despite the name, if you consider this violent, I will be impressed), where little bits of code struggled desperately to try to control more memory. There are other games in this genre, like "Mindrover". I found a quick list of games in the genre here

* There are a number of simulation games that would work. Most games in the sim genre really *are* okay. The SimCities have been in the educational market forever for a good reason (makes me realize how dated my educational software knowledge is, though). For Linux, Lincity is good -- plays quite different from SimCity, with distribution of goods and power more of an emphasis than utilitiy coverage.

* Many puzzle games can be considered educational. Go to Info-Mac or another Mac software site and look under "Puzzle". I'm personally rather fond of sobokan and clones, where one pushes boxes around in a "warehouse" into proper locations. It's untimed, but fun.

* The Simple End User Linux (SEUL) project maintains a lot of links to software (including educational software) for Linux. Open source software has a way of getting ported, and I suspect you'll find that a fair amount works on OS X. Take a look here

* Ultimately, I'd say that web-browsing can be an awfully educational experience (seriously, I've learned so much of what I know from the Internet that it's nuts -- almost anything you want to know is out on the Web somewhere), more so than most "educational" games. If they have a laptop, they can browse the web, no?

I never thought much of the whole brand of "educational" software. The ones that simply included some interesting facts, like Oregon Trail or Sim City, seemed to provide a relatively low amount of knowledge for the amount of effort that gets put into them. The ones that made you do math quickly to play the game just doesn't seem to help real-world math skills much. When I learned to do math rapidly in my head, it was not using a video game.

The Web is a fantastic research tool -- boy, it's irritating when teachers try to discourage students from using any Web sources. As a matter of fact, I'd consider having a web browser always available to be one of the most valuable educational resources available. When I didn't know what a word meant, my mother always tried to train me and my siblings to go find a dictionary and look it up. The problem is that it's a real pain in the ass to do so, especially if I'm comfortably reading a book. If I have a nice, fast, stable-and-not-swapping system with a web browser up that doesn't need to run through a modem (most people used to get this in university for the first time), I'd very inclined to look up words and concepts that I'm interested about. Just recently, I read an article on "The Onion", a decidedly non-educational piece of satire that alluded to the Dauphin, some sort of French nobility. I got curious. I never, ever would have done this if I had to use paper encyclopedias, because of the effort involved, but I read up on the Dauphin, and ended up reading for much of the day about French political and military history.

There's some really old prior art (remember B.C.?)

Linked in the article is this.

Very sneaky of them to hide it there...

It all comes down to what the kids and teachers are using the computers for. I'm a teacher at a small charter school. We house about 250-300 students between the middle and high school grades. We have a lab for the middle school and a lab for the high school. Each teacher has a computer in the room. All of the computers in the building are WinXP, including the servers. The majority of the time kids are in the lab they are using either MS Office or the Internet. We have some educational software, but not a lot. That is a lot of tech money wasted in my eyes.

I set up a K12LTSP server in my classroom with a total of 8 terminals. Although the kids spend some time crying about it. (This is an old computer, this isn't MS blah, etc), once they say that it did the same things -- No more crying. If fact many kids have come to use my computer instead using the ones in the lab.

It really just comes down to what you use it for. If the teacher's/students are not using a lot of the special software, why pay all the extra cash. Why not set up 1 lab with Windows/Mac for the software and one with K12LTSP for Internet, Office apps, etc. You just saved yourself 50% of your budget.

P.S. - Linux does have some great ed games and apps (see the Seul/Edu Application Index. They are just a little harder to find then"Mathblaser"

If you're interested in Linux educational software, look at the SEUL/edu Educational Applications Index. There are over 500 applications listed there. They're not all ready for scholastic use, but many are. Your perception that there's little in the way of enterprise educational software is a misperception, I'm afraid.

Linux works fine as a home OS, unless you try to make it be Windows -- which it isn't, and by and large isn't trying to be. It has its own educational apps (though mostly not of the same caliber), and a whole lot of childrens' apps are web-based and so should work just fine out of the box. Look at the native software available -- sure, it's not as pretty, but kids were using computers long before 256-color graphics (or even GUIs at all) were available. See a list of the educational games included in the the SEUL/edu (Simple End User Linux/Educational) project's index.

That said, if you still want to run your Windows-based apps, my vote is for Win4Lin -- it's cheaper than a new windows install (or running a separate machine), more reliable than WINE and will work with your existing win98 media and license. If it's strictly for your kids, you can call them and ask about an educational discount -- they've had those in the past, to about $40 or $50.

Finally, if you haven't used Linux before, go into this expecting an educational experience for yourself as well!

Seul/Edu Educational Application Index
Suel.org Home Page
Dmoz.org Linux: Projects: Education
tux4kids

There's really quite a bit of educational software out there. Take a look at the Seul/Edu Educational Application Index for a listing of over 440 educational apps. We're in the early planning stages of creating an ISO of selected educational software to make it as easy as possible to get Linux systems up and running in schools. If you'd like to help, go to the SEUL/edu home page and subscribe to the mailing list.

• 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.
  
  

several case studdies