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University of Michigan Linux
CosmicEntity writes "A while back there was a Slashdot article about the University of Michigan signing a huge distribution deal with Microsoft. In protest, students offered free copies of Red Hat Linux 6.1 and Star Office to people as they came to purchase the MS products. Now, it seems the university's College of Engineering is openly adopting Linux, and releasing their own version to students. They call it CAEN Linux (CAEN stands for Computer Aided Engineering Network.) It's a modified version of Red Hat, with all sorts of useful tweaks (like bug fixes and patches) and security "enhancements," to protect the new machines. It looks like there will finally be support for new students hoping to use Linux, but too unsure to just go out and do it themselves. Oh, by the way, the original name was going to be "Blue Hat Linux," but it didn't stick. " I think it'd be very interesting to see what could happen if some of the universities got together and created a University Distro - designed to handle their security needs, and a shared resource site for help on running and learning Linux - what do you folks think?
i'm glad to see that they've done their homework and are releasing it for download, along with the source. time for me to throw in another hard drive and check it out...
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1st post! maybe. . .
I'm serious.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Any step schools take twords linux are good ones. Academia is all about free thought.
alix
Like the subject says, I'm all for the Uni Distro. I work for the Engineering computing department at my school and we have mostly Sun UNIX workstations, but the labs are crowded and it would be kinda cool if more people used Linux in their dorm room and ssh'ed into the labs...
Definately a project that some people should get together on...
Well, Redhat may not be the end all to be all, but it's nice to see that someone is thinking along the right lines over there.
The same thing is starting to happen at here at NCSU, and hopefully we'll see Linux replace those darn NT machines yet. The LUG here is great about providing packages for Red Hat + NCSU-specific stuff. (well, we're sort of nearby, and whatnot.
If that isn't an option at your school, at least convince them to get some interoperability. Linux plays well with others. NT can be forced to do better if you buy the right packages. So far I'm pretty happy with what they have bought, but NT is still not that reliable (it leaks memory here, the mouse dies, etc. Solaris boxes are much better).
However, at least X-Win32 and Tera Term Secure Shell are making life easier on NT. Still not as easy as it is on my Linux box, though.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
you can't download CAEN Linux from their site - you have to be on the UMICH network. is this not a violation of the GPL?
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i read all replies to my comments
North Carolina State University has had a group of students supporting a Red Hat-based distribution called EOS Linux for some time. Just recently, the university announced that they would begin treating it as an officialy supported platform. Details are sketchy - the announcement just came out - but it's a pretty big deal for the NCSU folks. Perhaps some Eos Linux people can provide more depth.
Actually, recent versions of EOS Linux aren't distributions, but a set of rpms that you install against a specific version of Red Hat. The Eos Linux group felt it would be easier to it this way, rather than taking on all the day-to-day maintenance responsibilities of supporting a full distribution. I think this is a better model for site-specific Linuxes. It's a good discussion topic, anyway.
Last but not least - I don't know if it would be possible to build a global "University Linux" as the article suggests. The main benefit to Eos Linux, and presumably to the University of Michigan Linux as well, is that it integrates tightly with all the on-campus systems and networks. It's site-specific, and that's why you want it. It's hard to imagine how you could build a single distribution that would be site-specific at all sites.
-Graham
That's a good thing. They had to block that port at the central routers here because people left them wide open without knowing. Linuxconf is bad for your karma anyway.
Most labs are Sun here as well...would be nice to see other universities adopt this idea. Considering we currently receive free MS cow dung. (And Michigan's Sports Teams do eat cow dung)
I attend NCSU and they have a very good linux network they call EOS. It was modeled after Georgia Tech's system I think. The coolest thing about it is that you can install their version of linux on your hard drive and, if you are connected, use all of the remote apps and services made available by the university just as if you were in a lab across campus.
----(o)----
At the University of Maryland Baltimore County, we have Linux (RH6.0 with tweaks) running in all of our PC labs. We used to have an official distribution, but that sorta ran aground.
Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.
http://smokedot.org/
"Sorry, due to the restrictions placed by the
U.S. government on cryptographic software, we
cannot make this available to the general public.
You will need to be on the U-M network in order
to access the above links."
It is good to hear about a school supporting something other than Windows. I understand that from the schools point of view Windows is easy, but the lengths some places go to to make it difficult for people to use other systems is really ridiculous. Like the Hiram College, where I happen to be right now, expects you to give them the MAC address of your machine before they will activate the port in your dorm room, and they provide a detailed, illustrated text showing how to get it in Windows. But for other systems they provide virtually nothing. The people in the computer center aren't much help either.
Anyway, to keep from making this too long, I think it is great that they are providing so much support for Linux. I certainly would have it running on my machine if it were that easy.
CMU has Andrew Linux, which basically is a very modified Redhat that
looks and feels like the Unix machines in the clusters. It's got stuff like
afs, CMU zephyr, CMU kerberos, etc., which are normally non-trivial to get
(find the secret source code, compile, configure it for your system rather
than Andrew Unix, compile, realize that you got an old version that doesn't
work anymore, compile, realize that the afs kernel module doesn't match
your kernel, compile....). However, this is probably not very useful
for anyone outside of CMU.
Even if this Distro is not for everybody, I think it is really good news to hear that an entire department is taking on Linux instead of windows. There are of course the obvious technical benefits to Linux over NT. But, think about the future.
This maybe common sense, but if Linux gains strong underpinnings in academia it will gain huge amounts of support in the future. Especially if it gains support by the administration of the engineering and computer science departments. More people will be coming out college with good proficiency in Linux.
This is the place where people need to focus. Get budding developers to learn on Linux and the OS and open source will soar.
This news is very comforting amid all of the other articles about M$ taking control of academia, and universities filtering out services. We can only hope that more universities will follow suit.
Thought people might like to know this. Carnegie Mellon University has its own Linux distribution called Andrew Linux. We originally started out with RH 4.2 but have gradually made changes such that it no longer resembles it. The distro has provision for necessary CMU like Kerberos, AFS, etc built it.
Guess each college will make modifications to tailor Linux to its own needs. A common distro might just be unusable as each college has its own needs and probably a setup unique to itself.
I'm an Engineering student at U of M, and I have been running Linux almost since I got here. I works perfectly, and I can run all of the programs available on the University's Sun and HP boxes locally via SSH on my box. Sometimes the connection is a bit sluggish, but it beats spending hours in a lab.
The nice thing about "CAEN Linux" is that it allows one to mount their AFS space, and therefore eliminates the need for seperate FTP/TELNET sessions. I haven't yet tried this out, but it is something I'm looking into. I think that it's great to have your AFS space a click away anytime you need it, saves a lot of time and headaches.
A lot of students here at U of M are already running Linux, but I must say that there is almost no support for it from the University. Granted, there are some help pages available on how to set up the Ethernet in Linux and a few other things, but in general the University is prepared for Win/Mac support only. You would think that with the number of UNIX stations, as well as the size of our EECS department, there would be more Linux help available. Maybe one day...
- Adam
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups
I'm really impress that they got their act together and put forward something to challenge the MS invasion of their school.
But as for the suggestion of a University wide distro, I don't think it would be as easy to implement as a school specific distro. Rather than rallying for an overall solution, why not get some people together at your university and put together a distribution?
I can see it now. Please click here to download the enlightenment theme for [University]
I ate my sig.
If you were ever in doubt about our impending victory or the futility of efforts to block our path this is some evidence to help change your mind.
The way you fight a product that beats you on price, quality and hype ( the top 3 factors afecting a buying decision ) is by bribing people in positions to choose for others. I.e. I have some crap furniture to sell at inflated prices. I wouldn't go to individual clients buying for personal use. I would go to a major bureaucrat. Take her for diner and a movie. Maybe even sleep with her if she's interested. Toss a bit of money under the table to boot.
At the end of the day I will have spent $10,000 to get 2,000,000 worth of business and made a whole bunch of employees angry.
The problem MS now has is that this won't work against Linux. They don't have the budget to bribe all the decision makers in all the big organizations that could care. Most can't be bribed with personal luxury anyway. You have to ofer them subsidies on some other stuff. Deaply discounted machines to go with the software you are giving for free to make it all "competitive with Linux".
Those that do go the MS way despite the trend will have to explain the choice and they don't know how.
Why ? Because it's ok to be wrong when everybody else is wrong in exactly the same way. When it's you alone then you just look incompetent.
Worse yet Linux is "free" ( beer not speech ) so you can't claim to be "buying one thing instead of the other." After all you can buy Windows and let those who don't want it use Linux right ? No extra expense, right ? ( There is some but it won't matter when you are trying to justify the ban ).
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I hope this time it will go the right way as it should've happend with UNIX before.
May I say GPL rules?
- Back off man. I am a scientist
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You know, although I think it's good to give people copies of RedHat and StarOffice, I have to say that the MS college deal has been very useful to me. I've gotten MS Office for $5, Visual Studio for the same, and I've found them to be very good. I for one would like to thank Microsoft for giving colleges this opportunity, and giving away a high-quality office suite and reasonably good development tools to people that need them.
:)
StarOffice is a good product, but when one has the choice of getting MS Office for almost the same price, I have to say that MS wins hands down. Which is not to say I don't appreciate free software - I regularly use FreeBSD. But I think that "protesting" against a deal that benefits both students and Microsoft may be stretching things a bit.
Just my $0.02 at 3:30 am.
-lx
The policies on Linux shifted from no official regognition or support to actually producing a (RH-based) distribution. This actually makes a lot of sense and is one of Linux's prime advantages. Its a *lot* easier for them to make their own distribution than to support the myriad others. What's also great is that they are willing to make requested changes...
a) They were able to produce a CD/download that installs *preconfigured* for Stanford. This eases support headaches enourmously with tough things like AFS.
b) This gives them more indirect control over the openness of boxes running on campus (remember - no firewall). This is important because a compromised Unix box could break security on even a routed internal network (such as my dorm).
Anyway... Not all that exciting, but if you want to check out SULinux. Actually the distribution should work very well for places like MIT and Cornell too (based on AFS/Kerberos too - and a similar strain). The specific RPMs they customized are available for seperate download.
--nullity--
I am nothing
Looking at the avr. age of the Red Hat engineers we allready have an College Distro.
why not just use a normal distro so the students dont have to learn something different when they leave school? freeBSD sounds like a good candidate to me.
It appears to me that UNIX multiuser model is very well suited for school / institute / univercity environment, with users having own login, home directory and the programs installed centrally. As it is now, in the polytechnic where i studied (http://www.ketol.tokem.fi) has about 300 machines running win95. The probelms, as i percieve, are:
There was an attempt to use winnt, but it took too much memory to run so that nothing much was left for programs. Besides, separate logins weren't created which essentially nullified the benefit of having a multiuser os.
So, ability to have own homedirectory, login, and inability to screw anything up (beyound your ~/, that is) is something which is needed and that linux can provide. Sun ray 1 appears very attractive in such an environment as well.
God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ --1Thes5:9
The MIT network (Project Athena), is a Unix network. It evolved from Decs -> Suns/SGIs, to now mainly Suns (the SGIs are still around, but I don't think that they are getting new ones).
IS has supported Solaris on Sparc/UltraSparc and Irix on SGI. These platforms were supported with the Athena software, which included the OS and a lot of software.
SIPB (the Student Information Processing Board), the nerds of nerds, made a Linux distribution called Redhat-Athena, which was Redhat 4.2 (later 5.2, I remember it coming out of beta my freshman year, two years ago) with the Athena packages and AFS.
Because of the popularity of Linux (and it's growing support for the Athena applications), IS now has a version based upon 6.1.
This makes the supported MITnet systems: Athena/Sun, Athena/SGI, Athena/Linux(x86), MacOS, and Windows NT.
Windows 95/98 is quasi supported.
However, I hear rumors that MIT is working to make an Athena/Windows 2000 system that will become supported for home users AND clusters.
All in all, we're working for a very heterogenous network with support for AFS, Zephyr, etc., on all major platforms.
IIRC, the Athena stuff, like Zephyr, is available for others to get, so it's port to Win2000 and Linux are good things for all universities (or corps that want to run them).
Alex
What do you mean by "normal"? RedHat looks "normal" enough for me. It looks like they only "enhanced" it. All they did is add all bugfixes from the redhat.com so that students don't bother downloading, more secure default setup, so that newbies don't get hit by script kiddies and probably added software used for their engineering claseses, staroffice, etc.
A good deal of the faculty in the CS department at my school uses Linux. The first day here as a Freshman, our Prof told us to install Linux. A lot more people would have if he would have handed everyone a school-tailored distro.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
UCLALUG (http://www.linux.ucla.edu/) created their own distro, also. It's called Bruin Linux (for obvious reasons), and is basically Redhat + bug fixes, security advisories, and some development tools. It's also got UCLA networking stuff pre-configured. I think this is a great idea for users of big organizations where pre-configuring network stuff or custom apps is really helpful. UCLALUG also uses the distro for their install-fests - they've had a lot of sucess in that, and having everything in one easy ISO makes the install-fest a lot easier. I applaud their efforts, as they should be congratulated for what they've done. (You can find Bruin Linux here)
Yeah? Well most University of Michigan students are too stupid to understand Linux. I go here to Michigan State University, where the engineering dept. has had linux support for years. Our basketball team is better too!
Sydney University is currently using Linux (I don't know what distribution) as a teaching platform for CS students to learn OO programming. They are using BLUE with the compiler and IDE running under X to teach the basic principles. The default setup is using loadlin from a Windows desktop icon, which is a bit disgusting, but it is certainly encouraging use of an alternative language, and not just tying students to $VBC$ version of a compiler.
fsck micro$oft... thats all i have to say about it
At my College we have my own Linux distribution also.
It's called Mi Linux. It's heavilly based on Debian Gnu/Linux. But it has some shell scripts that I wrote myself.
There are some people that use other types of Linux and I try not to frown them too much. After all Linux is about choices and configuration. And plus if people like the suffering that is anything except Mi Linux that's fine with me.
Mi Linux is becoming more popular among some of the people that I hang out with. They are typically windows users who are impressed by mi (currently 22 days) Linux uptimes. Also it comes with many open source tools like gcc and xemacs which just make sence.
I think it would be cool to cooperate with other Universities to develope a university version of Linux. However, it would be handy if we could both agree that debian is probably the best place to start from.
Many of the CS teachers have writeable files in their home directories on the Solaris boxes so security is not a problem at my school. But a lot of other things are probably similar.
error27
I was setting up a web server this weekend and I found it quite unsettling how much work it takes just to get a standard Red Hat 6.1 install to have decent security. When I think of all the people I know using Red Hat to connect to the labs and use X programs at home, I'm genuinely frightened by what a script-kiddie heaven this school will be. Obviously Red Hat 6.2 will solve some problems with updated packages (at least until the next round of bugs are found), but I'll be willing to bet that the same ol' Red Hat "features" will still be leaving machines wide open.
And furthermore, are they are EVER going to put
</RANT>
-W.W.
"Well it should be obvious to even the most dim-witted individual who holds an advanced degree in hyperbolic topology...
I'm a student at UCSD and consutant for their Academic Computing Services; here are some of my observations/thoughts on the matter, relating specifically to UCSD undergraduate concerns. I'll leave the consideration of other situations to those with the requisite knowledge and experiance. (So don't flame me with "what ifs") :)
:)
We use Linux (Red Hat specifically, I think) for some low-level operating systems classes, but that's about it. We get many of our engineering/cs related computer through grants, so we have labs full of brand-spanking new Sparc Ultra 10s and zippy Intel (NT) machines. Unless VA or Redhat decides to start giving us computers, this may not change much. Even so, there is a large "Linux following" within our dept and the school in general.
Remember also, that (grants aside) the purchasing decisions are generally not based upon the wishes of the students (though they do have an impact), but upon the requests of the professors and departments. Most professors are more familiar with Solaris then Linux, so that is what they teach.
Another consideration is what systems students should have experiance with when they enter the job market. AFAIK, most established cs/engineering companies use either a commercial Unix and it's accompanying development software or Windows NT and Visual C++ for their development workstations. Linux is beginng to make inroads, but is far from entrenched.
As time goes by, Linux will likely become far more widely used for class purposes because it has some very appealling qualities (low cost of software and hardware, available and modify-able source, use by students at home), but there are quite legitimate factors working against it.
Of course, I may entirely wrong and we will have new labs brimming with glittering new Linux boxen next year. I sure hope so.
The above are my own opinions and observations and do not represent the views or policies of my employers.
Any factual and/or logical errors may be blamed on Harry the Drunken Dwarf.
-- Tom Joynt
--==Hail Eris!!==--
Kinda sucks being a CS student at Unlv... *sigh* Ok.. so it's better than nothing... but then again.. Unlv isn't know for it's stellar CS program, eh? I don't live on campus... I commute... There are a few folks that go there that also belong to the local lvlug.... The rest of the campus seems dead as far as Linux is concerned. The guys in the Unix labs don't even have a clue about Linux... at least not the ones I spoke with on occasion. I've been using it for 6 years now... I love it... I recommend it when I feel it's appropriate.... I would like to be able to use it on campus computers. I'd like to run into at least ONE other person a week that runs Linux. The campus is dead. (all above statements have a modifier applied. I ama a cave dwelling computer/internet junkie. 3/4ths' of my time is spent on the internet or dinking with hardware I have on hand.)
Friends don't let friends buy Compaq's. (Dell/Gateway... same same) You want a good computer? Build it yourself.
feeling flattered by all of the "Alex" posts. They're not about you. By the way, "alix" is the name of RMS's made-up girlfriend (from Niagra Falls, I suppose).
The UCLA linux users group has had their own distro out for a while now. Members of the UCLA LUG have also pushed the physics and chemistry lab classes to accept student work in the StarOffice format, previously they only accepted word and excel documents. The UCLA distro is preconfigured to connect to the campus LANs and from home on UCLA's dialups. They throw regular install fests and have a mailing list to boot.
hmm.. instead of hosting the strong crypto-containing code onsite (like 128 bit netscape), why not utilize Fortify instead? Admitted, this has its own problems (not being in direct control over the foreign boxen, etc) but the idea is sound.. I'm not sure about the licensing behind their crypto-using software (besides SSH and netscape) such as kerberos... Regardless, I see this as a leap in the positive direction for umich. I hope they set up some public (for students) labs using this distro as well.
(insert witty quote here)
While any IT student who is serious about their profession should install Linux or a BSD on their computer, without a large committment of support resources it's not practical for a university to provide Linux (or Windows, for that matter) for their students.
Perhaps American universities have that luxury. If so, maybe I should consider a move :)
Disclaimer: speaking for me only
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Very good news indeed.
There's a strong argument for getting software in front of students. If someone learns product x at school, once they're employed, they are, in many cases, more likely to recommend any employers purchase that product in the future.
This is why all of the commercial app companies are always so desperate to get their products installed for use by students. Just look at all the educational pricing deals, etc., offered by these companies.
I will get really excited (well, as much as one can about software) when I hear of educational institutions removing Windows/Office in favour of, say, KOffice, for use by their non-geek students.
Ofcourse, with continuing budget squeezes, and the rapid improvement of various pieces of "free" (as in beer) software, it's getting to the point where the universities have to start seriously considering installing Linux and friends to keep the bottom line in the black (or to free up resources for other areas within their organisations).
It helps that Linux is such a techie orientated product - everyone knows of stories of Linux slipping in the backdoor of organisations because one of the tech staff needed something done cheap, quick, reliably, etc. From some of the other comments posted it appears as though this has been happening at a lot of uni's, and is now reaching some sort of critical mass where it is being offically acknowledged by various university administrations.
I will be _really_ suprised if we don't see announcements from the big Linux distro companies shortly regarding them offering favourable support deals to educations institutions in return for being their preferred supplier (if they haven't already made such deals).
...j
You know, I don't really think it's taken all that long for linux to be adapted at the university level; I mean, it's not really that old an operating system, and these things take time to gain acceptance (unless, of course, your os is the only thing that fits the hardware, i.e. MS/Apple in the 80's). And most college CS departments I've encountered have tended to use either a UNIX flavor or VMS; linux isn't really a quantum leap here. I also wonder how much of this is a result of college linux users graduating and moving into the technical/administrative ranks of universities...
They should look at setting up a system like autorpm (which is for registered version Redhat) at the University to make updates for things like security problems. They could put all the files locally to avoid a huge amount of downloads from redhat when the updates come out.
Only potential problem with this is if someone breaks into the machine with the update archive--instant r00t on all the boxes.
I found it quite unsettling how much work it takes just to get a standard Red Hat 6.1 install to have decent security
/usr/local/bin in PATH</I>
t these bugs</a>? We're always glad to be told about problems so we can fix them.
This is fixed in 6.2. Have a look at the current beta. We're now disabling all questionable services by default.
Also, the servers and clients are now separate packages so you don't need to install a finger server just to do a finger @finger.kernel.org.
<I>Are they EVER going to put
Yes. 6.2. Look at the beta.
<I>some of the stuff they do is so brain-dead</I>
So why don't you <a href="http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/">repor
Especially when you can even include a fix.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
These machines are what the undergrad population are comfortable with and our computer labs staff are trained to assist with. Most lab assistants can't keep their head out of their ass or hand off of their crotch long enough to learn about Linux/X windows/Star Office, which for $6/hr is reasonable in my book.
Admittedly, I would love to see a lab of linux machines created here that do not require you to be in the engineering dept. to get accounts, or perhaps offer a VMware/dual-boot solution, but for now NT/Office/Napster/AOL_IM offers more than most users and lab staff can handle.
These are the teachings of Sadistic Yoda and may be copied freely under the Perl artistic license
Read my plan to save the Bengals
Linux and StarOffice for students is a move to be strongly applauded and supported. The hardware requirements are less therefore costs are reduced. Software costs are greatly reduced.
Those of us that had PCs on our Comp Sci course at Uni (UK circa 1988) had a choice of DOS or Minix. Other guys opted for Amiga but had problems sourcing hard drives and such.
Minix was preferred as it was a better opsys but we had very little in terms of support or applications (or cash for that matter <VBG>). Most of the time this meant using warez under DOS for graphics and word processing assignments. We spent a lot of time looking for those illusive serial number entry prompts and rejigging the JMPs in debuggers!
C.
that's why I'm a troll. Get off my bridge you fscking goat!!!!
- It is least likely to happen. This means decreasing the spendings on Iron and Software and most Computer Science Departments are very non-interested(at best). This means decreasing their budget. Forget it, they will shoot anyone that suggests it if they can. Note that the department to do it is the Engineering, not CS.
- If it will grow large enough in non-CS departments the moment it will try to go Cross-University it will be taken into the CS Dep domain and happily drowned there for same reasons.
So do not expect it to grow. Unless someone funds it with an amount of money to compensate for the losses of budget due to less software and hardware purchases.Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Well, this is already happening in some Universities. Mine certainly has
full Linux support, a pretty large mirror, Linux CDs on sale at the
Computing Services shop, a semi-official distribution,
(RedHat+Updates+Bugfixes) and, best of all, a `Thin Linux' distribution
- a centrally NFS-rooted service whereby I can stick my boot disk in any
of the University's networked computers and reboot to a fully-featured
Linux desktop. (And a nod and a wink to the one tireless and modest
guy who's put the whole lot together.)
Universities and Linux have been together for a long time. I'm glad this
is yet another area we're not going to see Microsoft squeezing us out of.
... but, alas, it seems that many universities would rather kick a "hacker" out of it than support people working on security issues.
Ahh, anyway - Linux in its best *is* an university thing.
Overhere on the Techical University of Eindhoven (The Netherlands) we have a group of students trying to do the same. All students can buy notebooks with a large discount, so pretty much every student (from the same year) has the same type notebook. This allows to completly preconfigure our (Debian based) distribution. Our goal is to make a completly handsoff network install (insert bootdisk, reboot, wait, enter root passwd). As we are using Debian we also consider creating a single configuration packages for those that want some more control over there install. For those that want to do everything by hand we are writing install guides tuned for our notebooks.
Response was huge. Within in days after telling others about our ideas dozens of people told us they wanted to try it. Interest among students is really big.
This is probably the best news I've heard all week. I think that this is an excellent idea, coupling the knowledge-base of acedamia with the Open Source model could have a really sweet outcome.
Go Blue!
Does anyone have details on where one would start to create their own distro? Like building disk images to dd onto a floppy?
OTOH a Morgan distro would be good for those who wanto to IPO, and a Hive distro would be good for security (since it already comes with a Perimeter Defense).
Are they including distributed.net as a default package? Hehe.. If it takes effort to turn the thing off, someone's keyrate would skyrocket. (or even be nice about it, and set it up with the user's own email)
In the interests of pointing out double standards wherever I find them, this sounds suspiciously like...
/.er saw that exchange, s/he wouldn't hold back on condemning Msoft for forcing upgrades on users, never fixing the current version etc. But since this is Red Hat, not doubt it's simply being repsonsive to users needs...
Q. I found it quite unsettling how much work it takes just to get a standard Windows NT4 install to have decent security
A. This is fixed in Win2K. Have a look at the current beta. We're now disabling all questionable services by default.
Q. Are they EVER to include a telnet server in Windows NT?
A. Yes - Win2K. Look at the beta.
Q. Some of the stuff they do is so brain-dead
A. So why don't you report these bugs to www.microsoft.com?
Now, if the average
At the Swiss Federal Inst. of Technology (ETHZ) in Zurich, Switzerland, the computer support group at the EE dept also distributes its own distrib called the isg-linux, which is an extension of RedHat 6.1.
While any IT student who is serious about their profession should install Linux or a BSD on their computer, without a large committment of support resources it's not practical for a university to provide Linux (or Windows, for that matter) for their students.
That's just not correct. All the support students need is freely available on the web, via IRC. Go to any irc network and join the #linux channel. Or #linuxnewbie or whatever. You only need ONE student connected to irc, via Linux, Windows, Solaris or whatever, and all the other students can get enough support to get their own machines up and connected.
The way I got my Linux configured, starting as a complete newbie, was by rebooting to Windows, going on efnet, asking stupid questions about PPP, applications availability, configuration, whatever, then rebooting to Linux and trying it.
Once you get your Linux connected to irc, things start moving faster - you don't have to reboot any more.
Linux just doesn't require the same effort to support as Windows, because there's a whole community out there ready and willing to provide the needed support for free, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
As an IS employee at a major university, I would like to point out that for most major schools one OS just does not do. Trying to force everyone at a diverse research institution to fit their application and security needs into one OS is just plain stupid. Such institutions need to adopt and support Linux, Windows, Solaris, MacOS, and Be and spend their time making them work together using standard protocols. I don't know how many times professors asked me to turn something in on diskette using Microsoft Word format, but for an OS/2 and Linux user this was a problem. Hey profs out there, make'm turn it in in HTML!
Actually it's not quite the same.
What's the last time you downloaded a free update from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000? If you need to update to Red Hat Linux 6.2, just go to ftp.redhat.com. We don't force anyone to buy anything.
Also, the issue is definitely not a bug. It's a questionable preconfiguration (enabling everything by default). How would you want to "fix" older versions? Re-Release 5.2 with a different installer?
For real problems (bind rootshell exploit), Red Hat has issued updated RPMs for versions down to 4.2.
As for bug reporting, nobody (including both Red Hat and Microsoft) can fix bugs/add changes they aren't aware of. Reporting a bug is always a good idea.
The difference here is that, last time I checked, Microsoft didn't even have the beginnings of a bug reporting system. That's part of why they never get some trivial bugs fixed.
Most Linux distributors do have a working bug reporting system - and most bugs reported there WILL get fixed (or at least you'll get the reasons why they won't be fixed).
I wouldn't condemn Microsoft for telling their users to report bugs (if they had a bug tracking system) - actually that would be a good idea.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Access was restricted to the UM source becuase of the crytpo resrictions. If you want a copy, send email to me hacker@umich.edu and we'll figure something out for you. -Tom
Instead of worrying about how many people are adopting it as a desktop OS, why not instead worry about it as a server OS. The real power to shape the online world is through the server so shouldn't that be where the focus is? Also rather than promoting OSS on Linux, shouldn't there be a concerted effort to promote it among Windows and Mac developers?
Anybody remember the MCC distribution, when Linux was around about version 0.9? Put together by Adrian Le Blanc at the Manchester Computer Centre in Manchester.
Well Since all the other UC's were chiming in I thought we should too. In almost all of our EE and CS labs we run dual boot systems Linux/NT. Lower division students tend to be more familure with NT and prefer it at first. Upperdivsion and grad students by far prefer any unix line varient over NT. As for classes being taught in unix all but the first intro C/C++ class is taught with gcc/ g++ / gmake / gdb in RedHat linux. Oh well I guess they teach intro to computer IE "this is a mouse" in NT but CS/EE's arent allowed to take it. On the systems staff we use a slightly modified version of Redhat 6.1 moslty to fit in with nis/nis+ better. As for real world demand, when you tell a recruiter that you know NT they smile..when you tell them you have been developing on linux the last 4 years they got about a dozen questions usally followed by a offer. Now I will admitt our program has a few wholes.. mostly the kids arnt exposed to gui programming very well..and most will give you a blank stair when you say MFC.. but if you asked for a threaded database they would be able to crank it out at light speed. To further prove how much we use linux our Operating Systems class is tought with the linux kernel. We use vmware to boot our test kernels, yes vmware running IN linux to boot linux.. as we develop in the native install. We are split. Linux was rather good on the x86 machines.. but we have moved to solaris for more stabilty/security.. yes one month uptimes werent long enough. So if you want to live between LA, San Diego, and Big Bear.. and if you want to real unix/linux platform development UCR is a good choice.
Again, the NT boxes and Unix boxes are used by almost everyone at the Univ. The stabilty of the NT boxes would be higher if there was no application that leaked memory perhaps.
Also, keep in mind that constant login and logout and clearing of temporary drive space makes NT performance lower over time. Tuning NT means getting it set up one way then leaving it alone and monitoring it. There is a vastly huge difference between a server and a workstation environment. Workstations take constant uncotrollable patterns of use/abuse. Servers run services that are known, constant, and are affected by load and have to manage resource availability.
Proper NT installation only accounts for initial use after bringing the machine on the network. Why? Because there are upgrades to applications... there are changes to profiles... modifications to security models... gosh forbid service packs... logging to non ideal locations like c:\winnt\system32 by default with no easy work around for many ill written applications that of course provide no source code to allow for conformity to a sysadmin's standards...
The only proper way I have ever seen NT run in a high churn environment is a stable build that is maintained and kiosk like features enabled only... i.e. you can only access a browser.
I am the first to say there are people that talk trash about NT installations without merit... however, in this case -- a high churn user environment -- there is simply no way to keep NT boxes stable. They will be taken offline eventually and reinstalled. Also, how many uni's do you know that can afford things like TME10 or CA unicenter to take a totalitarian control over the desktop? Isn't it easier to hire $4.50 an hour ops that can recognize NT at a distance of 30 yards?
In short... NT workstation is better than Win95/98 by a long shot... however, don't make it appear as though some "knowledgeable NT people" will ever provide the stability and avaliablility of a Linux environment in a high churn university setting.
If someone can post numbers or papers that are relevant I will retract my comments.
Latra,
Jay
http://www.mp3.com/fudge/
http://fudge.org
I'll point out that the College of Engineering has always been a big time Unix shop, so it no suprise that they adopt Linux. Now, seeing the Medical School where I work adopt Linux would be a coup! Anyone got any ideas on how to pull this one off, cuz if I have to troubleshoot another registry problem, someone's gonna have a cadaver as a cube mate.
The MasonLUG just had its first officers' meeting of the semester, and we decided that we need a GMULUG distribution. Our main concern is distribution costs of physical media. beyond that, for a redhat distro it's mostly grabbing updated RPMS and making a nice kickstart image, plus including a heaping helping of GMU specific Docs. We were hoping, however, to perhaps use Debian instead of Redhat, mostly for ease of upgrade with aptget... any ideas?/help?/thoughts? mailto:csanner@gmu.edu- --------------------
-------------------------
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
You see, without that little doohicky, the universe stops.
http://propheteer.org
"Mond Linux is designed specifically for PCs attached to the University of Cambridge's PWF networks." (Unix Support home page, University Computing Service)
It's a centrally-administerable distribution. Each workstation has a UMSDOS root (which is checksummed on boot, for security) but gets most other stuff of a central server. This means the whole thing can be upgraded without having any access to the workstations, which is important because workstations may be geographically far apart, and since most of the time they run NT it wouldn't be possible for root to log in and make changes.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Once the administration at these universities see how much Linux can do for free, and how much of the budget it can free up for their meetings, it's gonna be Linux all the way.
The admin at the local univ just complains about the huge amounts of money spent on MS licenses, we're talking most of a $million. That'll buy a lot of conferences on Sanibel Island.
Oh, the Department of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki (of all places) does have a distro of its own too. Aptly named CS Linux, based on Debian (of course), and in every way _very conservative_ and secure.
______________
______________
OTTERS RULE.
Use Putty as your ssh client. It rocks, it's free, and it is only 210 K. A SINGLE FILE -- no freakin' installers; no freakin' DLLs.
t y/
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/put
While it's been quite a few years since then, I've found the ratio to be about the same -- around 2 to 5 percent of the people I've worked with on a regular basis are really into computers. To the rest it's just a high paying job that they're not very good at. Encouraging these people to go into the field is doing everyone a disservice, so IMO giving them these development suites that do all the hard work for you is not in the best interests of the industry. Just give everyone Linux and reroute your support number to the career counceler.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Colleges and Universities were once the exclusive home of INXU. If you've never seen it spelled that way, then your too young to remember those days ; ) Then Apple made inroads in to educational institutions, with donations of systems and software. Micro$oft soon followed Apple's example. As Micro$oft gained market share, so did their presence in schools and on campus. Now we have the beginning of a return to an INXU like OS - Linux! With patience, the circle will be some day be complete!
if you look at it that way it is no big deal. windows/linux linux/windows, it will get obsolote in a couple of years. Just let the students use what they are comfortable with. Many people don't need to use linux just because it is linux and it is better for the university if they stick to one standard type of software. If anyone wants anything else they can get it themselves. Linux is free remeber
ps: so you finally changed back to threaded default.. but subject line only? why can't you ppl leave things alone?
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
I think that one of the most valuable places for Linux to continue to grow is the academic setting. Not in terms of profesors, but in terms of students using it - beyond the CS/Eng. departments. With distributions like the U-M of one, and it sounds like other unis are doing it as well, we can make our case clear to the general population. Linux is more stable, faster, and does everything that you need. With easy-to-setup packages for students, students don't have to muck with areas they don't know about, schools can admin networks more easily. The older generation is pretty set in with Windows - let's co-opt the younger entirely.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
I am a Freshman at NC State University, and our College Of Engineering has done the same thing. It has been around since last year, I believe. It is called EOS Linux, and it emulates the SunOS terminals in the labs. Very nice distribution, also a tweaked - up version of RedHat.
Regarding School and Linux, if I am not wrong, back in the old days when Linux was still _very_ young, there was a university in Florida which roll their own version of Linux.
Let me first state that my memory _may_ be incorrect, but in the remote possibility that I am right, can anyone tell me what has happened to that Florida university's version of Linux?
In the same School and Linux vein, there is a group of people actively developing and grouping GPLed school-related softwares that primarily run on Linux, their location is at www.seul.org.
If you are interested in academia and Linux, please check them out !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
To Red Hat?
How?
It's perfect!
The school is wrong!
THe University of Michigan Sucks!! Go Spartans!!! Jamal Crawford and all his little friends can go to hell!!!
We're working on just this at Boston University. Our original plan, as reflected on the BU Linux web site was to base our distro on Bastille Linux -- that was back when Bastille was in super-early development and was planned as an actual distribution. They've gone the route of a hardening script, something we'd like to avoid. (We'd like all of our changes to be to RPMs, rather than pasted on afterward, for better system upgradability and managability.)
So, we're starting work on a distro of our own, integrating ideas from Bastille with Red Hat, and adding things we need like Kerberos IV, AFS (Arla, probably), Amanda, etc. If this sounds like what you're doing, please contact me at mattdm@bu.edu . It seems worthwhile to at least share ideas, even if we don't end up combining our work.
--
Oh, yeah, professors are all about free thought... as long as it agrees with them completely.
Go Blue! GO BLUE! GO BLUE! GO BLUE! GO BLUE! GO BLUE! GO BLUE! GO BLUE! Beat Microsoft! Yeah! (how's that for a cheer folks)
In the field I'm currently in (advertising), it's hard to convince people that Microsoft Word is not what was used to write the ten commandments, and that when the ancient Greeks did mathematics, they didn't store the results in an Excel file.
It may seem tangential to the larger issue of free/Free software, but the thing that most excites me about campus-linux distribs (or as the case may be, a set of patches which to most students would seem like the same thing, but I don't need any "technical error" flames;) ) is the way they poke users in the eye with the fact that files and file compatibility are just as important as individual applications they might use to manipulate those files.
It seems I spent a total of many hours as an undergraduate in those horrible classes that require "groupwork" trying to convince the others in my group of the benefit of using plain text or other low-level formats for exchanging information. Usual response: blank stares, slack jaws, and "... but don't you have Word?" And yes -- some of that time I did (the dreaded cheap campus software giveaways), but I still thought it was a bad idea.
If it's accepted that people will be using different OSes as it suits their needs, the advantages of file agnosticism should become better understood.
just thoughts,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Or at least PDF.
But the really cool thing is that MIT has started putting Linux machines in the Athena clusters to complement the SGI O2/Indy and Sun sparc/Ultrasparc workstations that are already there.
Very cool indeed.
It seems that more and more universities are buying new computers running Linux. A university distro can then be used on these machines and problems and enhancements can all be done with the help of the students.
Offering the same distro to the students will provide confidence in Linux knowing that they are running the same OS as in their computer lab.
This will lead to students becoming experienced resulting in improved acceptance for Linux as an alternative to MS Windows.
The distro has been available for a while, but only as a downloadable package. As for Linux use at U of M, well, /everyone/ uses Linux in their departments. From mail servers for the Chem department to VR system controllers. When we did Linux Day at U of M, we (computer geeks that worked for U of M, for the most part) were trying to spread Linux to the students. We recieved so much support from U of M because of how much they use Linux for everything. On a related note, Linux Day was an unqualified sucess; we gave out a few thousand copies of red hat, star office, and many other CDs and stickers and such.
-Ryan
i'd like to see more schools adopting linux. i am personally attending a private middle/highschool with a lot of computers(every student has a laptop), and huge(to me) bandwidth(a T1). Unfortunately, it is NT. I am the only one with linux, but i get by. i'd like too see our server run apache. the school's page is here
What everyone seems to forget is that the University paid BIG BUCKS for this deal. As I recall, the University paid out a low 7-figure dollar amount.
The benefit to Microsoft: No need to police software licences, since they've already been paid.
The benefit to the University: Microsoft won't be sending in the gestapo to crack down on unlicenced software, possibly shutting down research and computer labs in the process.
You have microsoft to thank for trying to keep postscript off of Windows machines... but hey, you get MS word files, whoopee!
RTF isn't too bad... word 97 uses rtf, oddly enough, but calls it "Microsoft 97 file format".
Boy, after reading through the posts "rpm this, rpm that" it seems that Red Hat is becoming the defacto standard among linux users. Why not base a university distro on Debian?
Actually, I think it would be a good idea for colleges to come up with something like this. A standard configuration for distribution to staff and students. Once the early adopters get the kinks out, I think having such a distribution available could make adoption by less technically adventurous schools much more likely.
"Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority"
Logic ... merely enables one to be wrong with authority. -- Doctor Who
Crimson Fedora Linux.
BTW, CAEN already runs Solaris and HP-UX in its huge computer labs in addition to Windows, so the only reason their providing Linux is as an educational tool, most likely. They probably don't care to use or need to use it as the core unix system on their network. They already have something better.
----
Lyell E. Haynes
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Linux has been here at U of M for quite a long time. It had been used experimentally for quite awhile and it has started to become mainstream (www.eecs.umich.edu is debian).
On the subject of CAEN Linux. It was in development and use long before the MS License came about. No conspiricy here. Sorry folks. It isn't distributatly outside the U because of some of the encryption hacks (kerberos) and AFS daemons.
If you want something really exciting for mainstream linux at at least this University, LSA (note, not CoE) is working on a synctree for linux (based on RedHat 6.0ish). I havn't gotten an update recently but I think it is almost done. Both good and bad, it at least means an end (ok, sorry. Its academia, lets be honest here, a slight decrease) to the rampant security holes from poorly (to nonexistantly ) administered boxes in the largest college.
I used to be the Unix admin for the U of M's Space Research building. CAEN had several machines in my building and we had a joint support agreement.
CAEN has been supporting Solaris and HPUX for years and, until a few years ago, supported Digital Unix. (before DEC was pronounced Compaq) However, engineering departments are not required to use CAEN supported machines. They can use use any version of Unix, or other OS, they like. They are required to use Solaris, HPUX and now Linux only if they want CAEN support and standard loads. They just have to support it locally if they choose to use another Unix...hence my job. (I had 9 different flavors of Unix to support, including Red Hat Linux and NeXt.)
Anyway, while the fact that CAEN is supporting a particular build of Linux is interesting, it's not going to fortell sweeping changes on the campus. If an engineer thinks he needs it, he'll get it. If he thinks he needs NT on a DEC Alpha (don't laugh...I had to support three of them) then that's what he'll get.
Due to the overwhelming success of the Linux Propaganda Event (as posted in December on Slashdot), the organizers of the event (myself, Andrew, and a few others) have started a Linux User's Group here at the university. If you are interested in joining (you do NOT have to be a University student to join), please email umlug-subscribe@umich.edu. If you are a University member who needs help with Linux, please e-mail your questions to umlug-support@umich.edu.
I am proud to be attending North Carolina State University and studying computer science here. Why? This college supports Open Source. We have our own linux distribution called EOS Linux that has tools for connecting to the campus AFS and Kerberos network. Most all of the computer labs are Solaris, Of course, we do have a few NT labs. C++ is taught with GNU tools. In one of my programming classes we were told that if we wanted to work at home on our own computer to install linux.
I really could not ask for a better computing environment.
Jack Neely
Pennstate-wb, only has windows NT4 running on all their computers. I only wish that there were people here that use linux, because it seems like I am all alone. These people dont even know there is such a thing as linux, you think that maybe pennstate-wb would have a few linux ran computers to help teach some of their compsc students that there isnt just windows, and that they have more options. What do you expect from a college where a student asks in compsc class that she cant load her program into "that windowsNT text editor thing," painstakingly I was the one who broke it to her about what windowsNT4 is. Our school has a software deal with microsoft, maybe I should go in the same direction that the Michigan students went in. eh?
I have been using Mandrake for a couple of releases now... Mandrake does everything RH does, only it does those things better. Additionally, Mandrake has some very nice gui configuration tools that really work well!
They do have one, they just seem to move the pages every now and then. (Why MS reorganizes its website so often I don't know.) Do a search on "bug report" from the home page and you'll get a list of bug report forms for various products. I've reported several bugs to MS. Some have even been fixed. (Sadly, the most annoying one hasn't, but it's an interaction between MSIE and the Chime plug-in that neither side seems to want to take responsibility for.)
Eric
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
You aren't paying $5. Student fees/computer fees/tuition/and maybe even tax dollars pay for the university wide liscence. Your $5 only lets you get a copy for your personal use. It's the same at my university. If your machine is on the network you can install and use any of the software that's in the computer labs. You just have to run the keyclient. If you're not on the network you can get a CD for a small fee. But we pay $100 a semester in computer fees and even more in other student fees. They (and other software companies) do offer eductional discounts on software purchased through the university book store, but nothing is $5.
Beauty is truly in the eye of the tiger
Will we see any "I didn't get MS Office, but $80 of my tuition went to subsidize this guy's copy" posts in response?
It's a beautiful setup for Microsoft. Lower the apparant price, and you reduce people's incentive not to buy MS software. But you've got a deal with the school, so you get paid for all that software anyway. Everybody wins, except for those people who still don't buy MS products.
In the College of Engineering at my university (Rutgers) it is forbidden to use linux on the network. "Multi-user systems are not permitted on the network since they are a security risk for the university and Computing Services can not possibly administer and support each system." They then told me that Solaris was OK to use, if and only if I gave them a root account. I wish they would take a similar approach/attitude.
Beauty is truly in the eye of the tiger
The above is the best post in the thread. These stunts really are "microsoft tring to create a microsoft tax which you must pay to go to collage." I have seen very little discussion about this and people need to know what is really happening, so moderate the above post up.
from any good drug dealer :) then you come back, and back . . .
There's lots of companies that give it away to college students. The first I remember was MS in the late 80's, with an "academic" version of word--the regular disk for about $30, but no documentation. At that stage it wasn't to hook you, but because they figured you'd steal it anyway.
Look at apple's distribution of computers to schools. It's not due to their concerns about education.
THe real biggie is Lexis & WesLaw at law schools--get you hooked for free, and then it's a couple of hundred an hour in the real world after law school . . .
what's the point? there are already too many, which cause a diffusion in the field, blurring the diff between systems so that you can't just sit down on a 'linux box' and know which files are where, what to poke when things need doing, etc.
I've been a longtime linux user (since the 1.1 kernel days) and I have to say, all this distro scattering is enough to drive me to FreeBSD. I'm serious - they (*bsd) have it right - one distro, a clean pkg system and a clean ports system. like irix 'inst' but done right ;-)
so what was so lacking in redhat or debian (the 2 primary US-based distros) that they had to roll their own? pride? ok - I understand that. I see the fun in rolling your own. but not at the university level. is it because they wanted to be neutral between distros, not showing favoritism? well that argument went to hell when they chose M$ and stood that party line (exclusively) for quite a while.
if they need local customizations, have them create tarballs or rpm files (or deb files, etc) that layer their own localizations on top of an already established distro. that would suit their needs just fine. but when you fork from a mainline, you have support costs, separate bugfixes and security checks to track; in short, its unjustified overhead - just for ego's sake.
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Could you elabortate on why that's a bad thing? Conventional wisdom is that turning off unnecessary services increases security and stability.
Barbarians comment is more than correct. It is a proactive vision of the level of action that must be taken to prevent linux's security reputation from trashed like MS's. Just because you like Linux...dosen't mean your little brother does. "once again they came a tapping, this time more insistent rapping..looking for that open door."
GO BUCKS!
I think it's unfair to keep non U of M personel from using CAEN 'Blue Hat' Linux. If enough people are interested, I might be able to pull off mirroring CAEN's files. If U of M took a big enough hit, they might complain, but otherwise I think it'd be cool. I wonder if the slashdot effect follows comments as well as articles... Let me know folks at agentkhaki@umich.edu .
At Michigan Tech in the early 90's we had
copies of all sorts of engineering software
that the school got really cheap, just to
get the students hooked on it.
How many engineering grads have gotten
out to the real world, to find out that
Matlab, Pspice, and Cadence design software
are common, but not always at their new
place of employment? How many more have
gotten the employers to buy the software
for them? Count me in both groups.
So how many Linux distributions we have to date? 10? 20? Well, it happened to UNIX once before and looks like it is happening again. 30 years ago it was given to the universities and even now, after 30 years, applications has to be *ported* from one UNIX to another. I wish they made every distribution to comply with X-Open UNIX standards or some other standard. Unfortunately, it is not going to happen. It would be a real shame to see "#ifdef LINUX_UMICH" in the code in 10 years...
Because the CS department admins had tired of
repeated breakins to unsecured Linux machines,
they created a modified RedHat version which
turned off most of the daemons, and included
new rpms for common security tools.
As far as I know, though, they don't have a
snappy name for the "new" distribution.
I work at a uninversity that embraces any sort of propriatary software. They love MS exchange even though they spend several hours a day fixing it.
It would be great if there were linux distros specifically for universities. It might break the cycle of propriatry-only attitudes.
However such a distrobution would have to be geared for people who don't know that much about linux. Including support for windows based modems (I huge problem I've had w/ linux) and easy to use graphical setup programs
The Anti-Blog
This is all very exciting-- I'm sure a University distro would appeal to a lot of schools...
Charlie Reis
SU Linux has been around for a while, probably about a year. Again, it's just a tweaked version of redhat, but it's nice to let the university people deal with making sure it works on our systems. I'll try to dig up more info about it for later, but I'd assume that we aren't alone in doing this.
I think that these brainiacs came up with a bright idea! I'm going to UI-Urbana (same place Mosaic came from) and I'm going to try to pull of the same thing.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
> you can't download CAEN Linux from their site - you have to be on the UMICH network. is this not a
x port/6.0/noSRPMS/
> violation of the GPL?
We couldn't put CAEN Linux up for public access because of the U.S. government restrictions on crypto software. Without Kerberos and ssh, however, CAEN Linux would have been useless.
With the recent changes in U.S. policy, it may be possible for us to make it available for public downloading in the future.
The source code minus the cryptographic sources was always available, you can find it at:
http://www.engin.umich.edu/caen/systems/Linux/e
-Chris Wing
wingc@engin.umich.edu
Stanford University has also been working on a RedHat-based distro -- in fact, it's basically RedHat plus three packages: one to access the campus Kerberos authentication infrastructure, one to access the campus AFS filesystem, and one to plug the security holes that come in RH6 by default.
So it basically comes down to a local mirror of the OS plus software to access campus systems. I think it's a wonderful idea as long as it doesn't stray too far from the primary distro.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
We Chinese like the fact that you Linux users have understood the values of Marxistic ideas. Keep on the good work!
Here at Cornell we use Kerberos for authentication for virtually every network service. We've haven't really ever been able to maintain *nix support as well as Windows and Mac, which the majority of users have. We've sort of left the Linux bunch out in the dark because there are only kludgy Kerberos implementations for *nix. It would be great if there was an effort to create a standard University distro, catering to the more idiosynchratic university needs.
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I'm an engineering student at U of M and have been asking about this for a long time. If you goand ask anyone in CAEN about this you get the run around. I finally got to the bottom of it when taking to some of the higher ups.
CAEN loves suns and hps. They believed that there would be a greater response to the "blue hat linux" release. since there wasn't any great thing about it they probably won't continue. So much for a major university supporting Linux. BTW as of now CAEN sees no place for Linux in their labs.
This is what i have heard from CAEN
I can see it now. Come get your free copy of our customized Red Hat Linux! Complete with a napster client and automatic random proxy selection...
;)
Where did you find the numbers you site? While I'm not saying that you are wrong you're obviously very anti-microsoft and could be misinterpeting the numbers or just plain lying.
Universities who have rolled their own Linux distros, and those who are looking to, may be well-served to take a glance at http://www.bastille-linux.org, which is designed to be a more secure, out-of-the-box, linux workstation installation.
I interviewed there, and they said that the university was going to charge them $1000/yr to let them hang solaris boxes off the university network. The dept solution, buy macs, and if given, PC's.
Told them at $1K a machine, they'd better have a lot of support, and that I couldn't figure out why they charge so much since the admins wouldn't have to leave thier desks to maintain the machines.
I'm going to have to disagree, for several reasons:
While integrating Linux (and students running Linux boxen) into CS courses is, IMHO, a very good idea, it needs to be thought about carefully, and properly resourced. An ad-hoc approach, handing out a few RedHat CD's without any backup, just won't work.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The popularity of the Winbloat line of products is appropriate for America's GREAT NEXT University. Mediocrity in everything, including computer resources. I don't know about you, but I have to use Win95 at work and look forward to the end of the day when I can use a real operating system and applications that WORK!
The reason non-UofM people can't get at _some_ of the source is because it is totally UofM specific. Stuff that has to deal with our student id nums being out of range, for example, and other patches that make life better for UofM students who want to login to UofM computers. If you don't have a CAEN account, why do you want the patches that let you login to CAEN computers???
HTML? Is that a joke? If I could write articles with decent formatting & dynamic supra and infra references in the footnotes & the occassional graphic in anything except MSWord, I would never boot-crash-reboot Win95 (I actually crashed writing this comment!). I'm not arguing that MSWord is what I want to use, but I haven't found anything else that gets the job done, let alone with ease and speed. Please, make my day! I'm dowloading AbiWord in the background, but after reading the features list, I'm not too optimistic.
The idea of university support and choice, however, is fabulous! If Yale provided any linux support, I probably wouldn't have toasted my video card installing Linux the first time.
Here at TAMU, it seems as though the math department has standardized on Linux. All computer labs run Linux and KDE. After about five minutes to get used to KDE, any student can use it. The learning curve is extremely shallow. The TAs never get bothered about it because, like I said, the students have no problems with it.
All in all, it seems to be a great success.
~Chris
They should have called it Linux II
I still have my two floppy distribution of .9x Linux produced by Manchester University here in Britain, some far sighted education establishments have not only been producing distros but have been doing it for a long time!
There is a lot of Linux at Rutgers. Many students run RedHat in their dorms. There are at least two Beowulf clusters that I know of. At least one very large lab full of X display servers will be moving to commodity hardware running Linux. Central computing services recognizes RedHat, Debian, and SuSE as supported platforms. (It's what the "supported" means that still isn't clear.)
I'll be emailing the man from Boston University doing something similar tomorrow when I'm at my desk.
It is a great time to be a UNIX hacker.
(jfm3)
The best argument I have heard for this comes from Eric Raymond (this is by no means a quote, but my interpretation of what ER was saying) -- that organizations should follow the scientific method when evaluating software product choices and open up the process to peer review -- as in other areas of science, and not position themselves to be at the wrong end of a monopoly.
I feel very sorry for the students at Michigan who want to do things that may be very hard or expensive in their environment ... especially computer science students who maay want to look under the hood of their progams and look at other peoples code... and applaud the students who had the nerve to develop this distribution. I hope other schools look at this before making such decisions.
NC State has it's own distro too. Link is: http://www.linux.ncsu.edu/eos-linux Glad to see Linux permeating life:-)