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K12Linux + LTSP = .edu Terminal Server Distro
Paul Nelson, writing "We are educators who think using open source software in public agencies is the responsible thing to do," says "We have released a turn-key terminal server distribution based on RH7 and the LTSP packages. Simply install Linux and start plugging in your diskless terminals. Very little or no configuration is required. We've included some cool educational software and have (with permission) bundled StarOffice as part of the install. To kick things off we have 1000 Intel Celeron processors to give to schools building Linux terminals. We also have some Xeon processors to help schools building servers. Our goal is to have 1000 terminals in 100 schools by one day (July 4th.) For more info including links to download the CD-Install image (650mb) head for http://www.riverdale.k12.or.us/linux/." Any parents (or other aggrieved taxpayers) out there might be interested in showing this off at a PTA meeting. You may also be interested in the Simple End User Linux and the Debian Jr. projects.
Why would I want to spend my time (and money, since time is money) setting up and having to admin a system when 99% of the students would rather use Windows or Macs? (Kind of hard to blame them, too.) Star Office? "The responsible thing to do?" Ugh.
What the hell, I'll bite.
Linux-based tech jobs may be less common, but they pay better and are easier to get (as the Truely Elite are still not easy to come by). Anyhow, Windows is easy to learn -- there are no deep skills needed for its use -- so it's better to give the kid something she can learn from and save the easy stuff for later. Hence, even if Windows were an easier OS to get a job with, it still wouldn't be as good for those whose goal is learning.
I think you're missing the point. Kid's are not forced to buy Nikes and Reeboks, but they are forced to use whatever computer is available in their school. I like the idea that students may get an opportunity to see something other than Microsoft or Apple.
Which could be a little poignant - I expect kids may do the same. However I do think that UNIX in schools is a great idea for a number of reasons.
A friend of a friend is piloting a scheme to put Linux in a local school at a fraction of the cost and with fewer restrictions than a Windows based company. When he approached the school they were very interested.
Bye.
seems the 'private' segment uses the 192.x.x.x networks range.
I thought only 192.168.x.x was non route-able. For a full class A 10.x.x.x is the choice...
maybe I'm wrong?
If you actually have some small media (even read only like a CDROM, that is dirt cheap, easy to upgrade, and drives are cheap) you have much more flexability.
Xterminals can benifit from a bit of software, like ssh encription (which isn't used for security in this case, but for it's compression abilities).
I'd definatly want to run X itself locally, not off the server, but that's only going to require Of course, your uptime for the xterminals may suffer, I don't think you can block off RAM as a replacement for a drive and not expect data corruption over a long period of time (months?), but a quick reboot once a week or so would solve that. And, what's it really matter if they need to reboot the xterminal... Really? You think a bunch of grade school kids will never hit the power button by accident anyway?
damn, my post got mangled... forgot to hit the plain text option, and quite a bit of the post is actually missing... and it's late, and I'm off to bed now... I'm sure someone will correct my comments for me soon anyway :-)
I mentioned this a week ago in the discussion on LBX and it was misunderstood. So I will try it again.
Sun has released hardware called "SunRays" which are thin clients. These thin clients have something called "Hot Desk" ability which basically allows you to leave one terminal and have your whole session show up on another terminal in exactly the same state you left it. This would be a GREAT thing to have. I am hoping to be able to set something like this up in my new house. Does anyone know how Sun is doing this? Is anyone working towards something like this for the "Opensource" world?
Of all the things I miss
There's quite a bit of work outside the US on using Linux for educational purposes; it must just be below your radar. In particular, there are thriving efforts in France, Germany, Mexico, and Columbia that I know of. Take a look at the links page and the regular Linux in education reports at SEUL/edu and you'll find out more about them. As for distros, I know of French and German ones targetted specifically at schools.
I've seen exactly this situation. My suggestion is to look for some other school or educational facility to put Linux into. If your public school won't accept it, look for a parochial school. If the parochial school won't accept it, look for a community center. What you want to do is get the first installation in somewhere where it will be accepted and used wholeheartedly. Then you can go back to the other places and point to your initial installation as an illustration of how well it works, how much money it saves, etc.
I'm doing exactly this in my hometown. I approached a local parochial school to convert a number of unused M68K Macintoshes into Debian-based XTerminals running against a PC app server. The school administration was interested, but the parent's group was loud and Windows-biased.
I thanked them for their trouble, agreed to take the Macs off their hands, and went to a community center in town with an offer of a computer lab for very low cost. We're currently in the process of putting that lab together
Then you'll never use Linux. I've talked to many educational software vendors about Linux support, and while many are interested and curious, they don't have the resources to do the ports without being guaranteed a market for the ported versions. The edusoft market is not terribly profitable. Many of these small companies are doing it for the love of education as much as to get rich. But the one thing they can't do is take a chance on products that they can't sell. And of course open source is right out.
If you're willing to accept similar functionality, you can generally find Linux equivalents to many of the programs you mention (and more are coming along daily). But if you have to have Linux versions of exactly these titles, don't hold your breath.
If you're a Linux advocate and you succeed in getting your school to run Linux, then you are. Getting Linux into the schools isn't like going on a date, it's like getting married. You have a responsibility to the people that you've convinced to use Linux to support them and help them. That's why LUGs should adopt a local school or two as long-range, ongoing projects. Besides, they'll be growing new LUG members that way!
Any class that's teaching keystrokes or mouse clicks rather than concepts is doing a disservice to its students. I wouldn't want my son learning Photoshop, I'd want him learning art. I wouldn't want him learning MS Project, I'd want him learning project management and scheduling. If you're so stuck to specific applications, you'll inevitably be left by the wayside as the environment changes away from those apps (as it always does).
It's a little late for posting to this topic, but I'll put your request in the next Linux in education report that SEUL/edu writes and we'll see what we get from that.
We're trying to do both those things at SEUL/edu. We have a listing of over 200 educational programs (I won't vouch for the quality of them all), some of which are included in the K12Linux distro. We also have an on-going effort to create documentation for non-techie educators on how to install, maintain, and use Linux in a classroom setting.
A terminal server is a box that connects serial "dumb terminals" to a network; they are also commonly used for "reverse terminal service" for a network-attached host to connect out to serial devices.
What the article describes is just a "server" or maybe a "boot server", supporting diskless clients.
I don't see anything wrong with inventing a new term for this, but please don't overload the existing term "terminal server". It will only cause confusion and keep your message from getting across.
Personally, I prefer plain text, or TeX.
Of course you're not going to start 3rd grade students at a bash prompt, any more than you'd start them at a DOS prompt under Windows.
Which is not to say that there aren't plenty of 3rd grade students smart enough to figure out how to use a command prompt effectively in either OS.
In USA, there are lots and lots of good things coming out. However, outside of USA, there seems to be nothing.
A big void seems to be accumulating in terms of open-source efforts outside of USA, particularly in the Latin American and Asia continents.
Okay, here is my question
Is there anyone out there who is interesting to role out similar effort to aid the students/schools in Asia / Latin America / Africa and elsewhere?
Or can I use the whatchamacallit (a distro?) and repackage it to suit the regional schooling systems?
I do understand that hardware - particularly if they are FREE hardwares - are hard to come by in Asia, but I'll ask anyway - Is there anyone from Intel or AMD or Compaq or IBM or Dell who are interested in sponsoring efforts in seeding the Asian / Latin American / African schools with Linux (or anyother OSS powered) computers?
If there is, maybe I will see what I can do.
Don't put too much hope though, I am just an individual, but then, everything (great or whatever) starts with one crazy guy (or gal, or whatever).
:)
Anyone interested in supplying suggestions / help / information / guidance?
Thank you all.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Thank you much for your reply, and yes, thank you for telling me 'bout the SEUL effort.
But my question remains - I am living in Asia - is there anyone (or group / organization) willing to take up the task to coordinate something much like what the (oregon?) Linux user group has done, and try to see if there is any sponsor willing to donate hardware so to see the schools / colleges with Linux (or any other OSS powered) computers?
I have high regard for the SEUL and all the other effort, but in terms of coordination outside of USA (and Europe), there seems to be none.
Not even in Japan, the world's second most wealthiest country.
Hopefully you can give me a pointer or two.
Thank you again.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
LTSP is very impressive, on reading the docs a bit further - despite the name, it can actually support *both* local apps (running on the diskless workstation) and remote apps (server-based in Windows parlance, i.e. running on the server). The latter is the only option with Windows Terminal Server (or Citrix MetaFrame), so LTSP is much more flexible.
_ ig_v2.3-8.html for discussion of local vs. remote apps.
If you have fairly old PCs (386, 486, Pentium), just buy a modern server and run the apps there. Even old Windows boxes or Macs will be fine - they just need to run an X server. More work to set up, but worth trying if the old hardware is still reliable and can run Linux without hassles.
If you need to run more compute-intensive apps and have the budget, you can buy new diskless workstation PCs. This is probably easier to set up, too, but the key thing is you have a choice of models - and whichever model you use, the system admin load is very low, because only the server needs administering.
See http://www.ltsp.org/documentation/lts_ig_v2.3/lts
Then you dont support any teacher. EVERY teacher forces their viewpoints and beliefs upon the students. You dont find christian schools teaching evolution, nor do you find Chemistry teachers teaching that chemical companies are evil.
EVERY teacher teaches with their own bent on life. get used to it, it will be here until we get robotic teaching systems. Then we'll only produce robots.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I love it when someone that doesnt have a clue about linux speaks about it. :-)
Linux has came a long way cince 1991 when you last used it. Anyone can install it now, Gnome is preconfigured to work great, and the joke of "you cant even use the floppy without obscure commands" is even vaporous. Put a floppy in click on the desktop floppy icon and Voila you're in the floppy looking around. and anyone that has ever used a real PC (including macs) that deals with filesystems correctly will already know that you unmount it before removing it (eject does the unmount, why do you think macs dont have a floppy eject button? I wish that drive was standard on the PC's too.)
Please use linux before you bad mouth it. I use Windows products every day and have to administer them, I have the right and knowlege to bad mouth them.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Install several of these terminal servers. 1 for admin (the teachers) 2 in the library, 1 in the computer lab, and 1 more as the general student system. Now add 1 firewall/proxy, 1 web server/email server. most all apps you need for the school can be web based (tests ALA brainbench?) move the K-12 schools to where the universities have been for 3 years now.
Only problem I have is that we need some automated hack notification tools for this. Kids will be kids, and running xroach on everyone' elses terminal is fun. Or running my script nohup hackdave & that triggers when dave is online and floods him are going to happen.
(this stuff happens already in the winblows world. in my sons highschool there is a program that allows you to screw with someone by opening the cd drive, move the mouse or send keystrokes.)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Don't quote me on this.
I believe that a lot of school districts have specific laws/rules prohibiting freelance efforts / improvements on the school grounds. Even if the deans want said efforts on their behalf, they may not be able to allow it (without bending some rules).
I hope to die peacefully in my sleep like grandpa, not screaming like his passengers.
I use SOffice at home and in general I like it.
.02
WRT to compatibility, it's mostly there, but not completely there.
From my perspective, it's good enough software (my fastest machine at home is a Cyrix MII 300 and it runs fine on that. The AMD 233 is a bit slower but that's mostly related to a lack of memry.
(SO takes a minimum of 50MB.)
The biggest problems are layout/typeface issues, and views.
If I'm using Type 1 fonts on my Linux box, then move my doc to Office, the fonts probably don't translate well. Layout is affected.
If I edit a powerpoint presentation in SO, I have the same layout issues and also have things like the outline view appear different when I open it again in Powerpoint.
HOWEVER - it's good enough for schools and home! My wife uses SO exclusively for documents and presentations and finds it to be VERY helpful. If you're not bouncing back and forth between platforms it works extremely well.
If you do need to preserve layout, there's always ps2pdf which allows you to lock down the layout in pdf format.
Works for me. Just my
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
It's not that they would really even have needed to change the servers at all, as there is plenty of IPX/Novell support in modern distros of Linux. I know that all the machines I hijacked and installed Linux on(muwahahaha!) during my high school years worked flawlessly, booting from the DHCP server, proxy setup, even mounting up Netware volumes.. and thanks to a bad ghost image, the shared Windows volumes of all the workstations in the district.. even the office and teacher machines. I got pretty decent grades, thank you very much : )
Behold! The power of Linux!
"You enjoy myself!" - Trey Anastasio
I have heard this argument before and it indicates a total lack of critical thinking. By your reasoning, it was critical that 2nd graders in 1990 (who are graduating this year) use DOS 5.0 because of its market share in the business world. Guess what? DOS 5.0 skills are USELESS except in the most esoteric IS/IT jobs.
Your argument does not hold water for most elementary and secondary students. ANY particular system they learn in grade school will be obsolete and off the market (at least in the business world) before they graduate high school. This is particularly true for grade-school students, who will see at least five iterations of Moore's law (60 GB * 2^5 = 1TB; 1.4 GHz * 2^5 = 50 GHz, Win2K * 2^5 = Win64K, etc.) before they graduate high school.
Your argument might hold water for high-school juniors or seniors, if your goal is to educate them for a job that they will start immediately out of high school and if that job will require computer usage. Outside of IT, I'm not aware of any jobs for 18-year-olds that require computer skills.
However, for any students planning on ANY kind of post-secondary education, whether technical, vocational, or academic, your argument again fails.
I agree. Hiding options that haven't been used recently, so that they are unavailable unless you know how the UI works, is completely trivial.
Here's your comment:
But the differences between Win95 and Win2K are trivial, in terms of UI.
Here's my sarcastic response:
I agree. Hiding options that haven't been used recently, so that they are unavailable unless you know how the UI works, is completely trivial.
I can understand how you thought I was talking about productivity and word processors by the fact that we both spent so much time talking about them. However, I really only wanted to point out one example of a nontrivial difference between the 95 and the 2000 UIs.
Trivial for you and me, perhaps; non-trivial for ordinary users.
Consider this - the Start menu encapsulates Program Manager. Anyone who can start programs from Program Manager should be able to start programs with the Start button. Is this therefore a trivial change from the Win3.x interface? I would suggest not. 'Trivial', to me, implies that a user would find it intuitively obvious. Trivial for me is not trivial for my mother. If any training is required for the user base, then the change is not trivial. I'll grant you this...if a UI change generates calls to the help desk from the 10% of the user base that is the most stupid - and only from them - then the change is probably trivial.
I stand by my statement that the default UI in 2K has non-trivial differences from the default UI in 95. Yes, you can admin these things six ways to sunday - I can set up the equivalent of Program Manager by using windows that contain shortcuts - but that's not the point.
Also - with regard to Linux vs VB - I don't necessarily believe that Linux is the end-all be-all (yet :), or that Linux should be used exclusively in schools. Rather, I don't think any decisions on what platform to use in schools should be based on what industry is using RIGHT NOW.
I'll bet, BTW, that the Linux jobs paid better...
Take a look at my webpage (www.wirefarm.com) - I've been putting together information on how to do a SOHO network using Linux as the servers for Windows (also Mac and Linux) clients in a way that Windows people might better understand.
It describes a typical home network with a Dialup or leased-line router (old 486/66 PC) and a SAMBA server (Pentium >133) providing Windows Logon and Network Shares.
It also covers basic TCP/IP setup for a typical closed network, using 192.168.. IPs, most static, with DHCP for laptops and such.
Where possible, I've provided the configuration files, with common settings.
I'd love to get feedback.
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
I heartily agree! -
(what I meant was something that the casual user will see right away. A client program.)
Creating a viable replacement for Exchange/Outlook should be a top priority for the community, if they really want to replace NT/2000.
OpenMail from HP was getting close, I think, but not OSS and not being developed anymore - I really hope HP decides to give it to the community.
Have you tried deploying a POP3 server in your network - It has the advantage of being familiar to anyone who has a home email account, offering a range of clients, but without the scheduling and groupware features.
Maybe take a look at LDAP servers and clients - They may be more of what you need.
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
(www.wirefarm.com)
-- My Weblog.
I disagree. I think that's exactly what they should be doing on the school computers, if that's what get's them motivated.
The programs I mentioned are some of the best examples of what can be done with Linux - interoperability, usability and appeal. Why shouldn't kids see what's possible now with Linux?
Think of the technologies involved in those activities - Sure, most kids in school would use them only for their obvious purposes, trading music, - But a few of them are going to open up the source code to see what makes it tick. The possible benefits of this happening far outweigh any of the possible downsides.
If the kids have Windows in front of them, there is no source code - they will come to think of software as a commodity, not as a community.
So imagine the kid uses Linux at school and thinks "This is great - stable, solid, open source! I should use this at home."
Then he finds out that it won't do any of the cool things that people actually use their computers for, like making and listening to MP3s.
Think of how Napster started - a college student hacking around with some well-documented protocols, cobs them together into last year's killer app and making people re-think the viability of what would seem to be an unworkable system. (Peer-to-peer, versus traditional client-server for reliable information propogation.)
A high school kid in Europe wants to watch DVDs on Linux, so he cracks CSS. A 16 year-old changes an industry...
A Finnish student wants to run Unix on his PC, so he writes Linux - need I say more?
I would not be the one to say what is worthwhile for kids in school to be doing on their computers - I say, let them do what they want - Rip CDs, trade songs, find a way to get past the firewall to playboy.com - at least they're not shooting their classmates -
and maybe one or two of these kids will be staying after school, creating a new industry.
Jim
-- My Weblog.
OK, I sorta agree, but...
.conf files in /etc.
It's changing:
Using linux, I would miss a lot of Windows apps -like Winamp, Napster, CD Rippers - Until I found XMMS, Knapster and Grip - XMMS, in particular, has 95% of Winamp's niceties.
Netscape 6 is almost as good as IE, but Star office still feels like a hack. (Sure you can read and write Word documents, but the formatting gets screwy.)
I do wish my hardware were better supported and I could get USB to work and there are things I wish were easier, like playing DVD's.
What Linux needs is something that it does BETTER than Windows - Something that the average user wants to do, but can't under windows.
If there were a program that your average 14 year old wanted to run and needed Linux to do it, you'd see a LOT more linux users in the future.
To capture a business market share, Linux could become the preferred CLIENT platform for databases. Get ODBC/JDBC to work on Linux in a manner like it does on NT - then make easier native interfaces.
Create a Rapid Application Development language that is as easy to use as VB. Make it accessible to VB developers.
Create an IDE for PERL/RUBY/Python/C++ that beats Microsoft's offerings. (KDevelop is almost there.)
Make it brain-dead easy to configure Apache. Windows converts will want an applet in the KDE control panel, not a bunch of
Something that lets you check off a box that says "Allow PHP" - "Allow PERL" - Stuff that people want to do without too much trouble.
Make SAMBA configuration look familiar to an MCSE. (Make setting usage quotas on SAMBA shares easy and you will win over a lot of NT admins.)
Make IPChains/IPTables easy and safe to configure - a Windows style wizard that asks "Allow Napster?", "Block Common Attacks?" would be great. (I spent a couple of days at my last contract trying to get IPChains running, all the time wondering how badly I was leaving the network exposed while I did it.)
Personally, I think that Single-purpose distros would get a lot of people using Linux - Remember "Internet in a Box"? (It was a $79 collection of TCP/IP shareware that was popular before Windows came with a TCP/IP stack.)
How about "Mail server in a Box"? "Router (with firewall and proxy server) in a box"?
You get the idea - Make them drool-proof to set up and maintain, even for a Windows user.
(Freesco almost has it right - the setup for the freesco single-floppy router is fantastic, but I wish it had the menu option "Install to Hard Drive" and then "Install Proxy Server" or "Install Firewall with most common options".
OK, anyway, I've gotten way off topic - You get the idea...
Cheers,
Jim
-- My Weblog.
Boy, I thought we had it tough with the pointy stick and leaf of grass (see above post:)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
You kids and your fancy CRT's and keyboards!
Why back in my day, you had to use a pointy stick to jab a hole in a leaf. We didn't even have punchcards.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
You might have been banging my sister (while I was banging your mom, son) but I guarantee she wasn't a hot chick.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Problem is, most schools got some money for a few machines (or a few donated) but never got the money for a decent admin, Linux or MicroSoft.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
X is pretty damned close.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I'm tired of this argument. I have yet to find a college that _requires_ the use of a particular OS and by the time most student have reached the business world, the computers on their desk will not bear enough resemblance to the current modern OS's that it will matter. To drive home this point, in 1995, Windows 3.1 was the de facto standard for desktop machines in business. Or at least that's the justification that was used to put them in the schools at that time. Then Win95 came out and rewrote many of the rules about how the user interacts with the machine. Now Win2000 is close at hand and that interface is quite a departure from Win98. A kid who was in 6th grade in 1995 would now be on the verge of graduating high school. By the time that kid gets through college, it will be 2005 and who knows what will be in vogue then.
In all of that time, the student has been exposed to at least 3 different variations on UI, all of which are so similar but just different enough to cause confusion, and the school has probably spent an awful lot of time and money in tech support (more than with several other platforms I can think off the top of my head). Not to mention how much the suite of software used on Windows has changed. The whole point of using a computer is to make it _do_ something, not to train the user, but that's a point that the decision-makers usually miss.
-Jennifer
People, particularly kids, do not want to run the junk (sorry, but it's true) that passes for apps on Linux. If you're looking to turn them against Linux from a very early age, you're off to a good start.
Kids are smarter and more adaptable than adults. Kids can operate the VCR, the computer and virtually every other kind of complex technical gadget in the house with a mastery their parents usually can only envy.
A typical adult has simply stopped learning -- if you learn one thing a day you're unusual. Kids learn dozens of things every day. They aren't afraid that their superiors or subordinates will see they don't know something. Kids have to be taught shame of the process of learning the way they are taught shame over their bodily processes -- neither is natural. As adults we accept not only that having knowledge is a good, but we believe that ignorance is shameful. Once you believe ignorance is shameful, then real learning stops and pretension begins.
Software marketers have latched onto this shame in adults the way they latch onto every possibility to sell to us. They have created a cult of ease. Of course there is no virtue in superflous complexity, but we have been brainwashed into making ease of use the highest and only value. It's a faustian baragin: to join the cult we have to accept disempowerment. Their vision of software is to free software what Club Med is to learning a language and spending time living in another culture.
Children are more adaptible, faster and better learners than adults, because we do not allow them to shirk discomfort, whether it is learning multiplication tables or drilling historical facts. Their minds retain flexibility because we sanctimoniously deny them membership in the cult of ease. Computers, especially equipped with free software, are particularly rewarding for children because with the exception of people and the library, they are the only educational tool that matches and rewards their intellectual flexibility.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Looks like Archie and the gang are getting some really neat toys!
Now, who do you think will be the most 'leet haxor? My guess is Jughead.
Have you looked at school materials lately? Most textbooks are rife with errors. Most schools don't have enough money and teachers regularly supplement supplies from their own pocket.
School systems sign "exclusive" contracts with the likes of Coke (so no Pepsi vending machines are on campus) and CNN (who provides "free" educational programming, but with CNN news, the CNN logo, etc.). CNN (like all major news media) is seriously biased.
Ideally, what you are stating would be great. Complete unbias and tools chosen solely on their merits. However, in the real world this almost NEVER happens.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
It is. I have two iOpeners set up this way, connected to a rather ancient (P166) server sitting under the stairs. Works like a charm. In a few weeks, some WebPlayers will arrive, also to be connected in this fashion. I set up the machines so they can run with and without a network connection (with reduced functionality in the latter case, using the available flash-disk storage and a small-sized GNU/Linux installation). For browsing, mail, music, video and other general applications this setup works and keeps on working. And, especially nice, you can just turn the thing off once you're done with it since there's no RW-mounted local storage when using the network-boot option.
--frank[at]unternet.org
You know, I started out getting upset about your response, but I have to admit that this is exactly the kind of feedback we need. Linux in the classroom is a reality. Mexico is converting wholesale, and much of the rest of the world will follow. In countries like ours, where we can afford to buy software, we assume that we should.
Your comments are fair, though skewed by a lot of advertising. I think your kids are smarter than you give them credit for (check out this article about a 16-year-old who's heavily involved in one of the most revolutionary movements in UNIX history). We can't move to using Linux in the classroom all at once, but certainly your computer courses deserve more than Microsoft Visual Studio. Linux offers 20 or so languages out-of-the-box, development tools for just about anything and the environment that businesses use.
Also, if you're going to plunk a system into the library to be nothing but a Web browser, why run anything but Linux on it? The school's fileserver can be Linux. Educational software delivered by Web browser is just as easily accessed on a Linux box as Windows or MacOS.
I think using Macs for younger kids is great. Using Windows PCs to show people how to use office makes sense. I just don't think Linux should be excluded from the educational experience, it's too important.
Having worked for a high school-focused company, I can appreciate how much this will help. A lot of schools need help in getting the latest technology to their students.
Linux (and open source in general) is poised to do this. Schools are in need of large systems that students of all degrees of expertise can disect. What's more, a lot of students need to be given positive feedback on their work. What better feedback than having IBM ship the modification that you made to Apache or having Red Hat ship the documentation that updated for the GNOME login?
Now, even better: which platform is more likely to support the privacy rights of these kids?
You can go on and on. The only reasons schools use anything but open source software is marketing.
This is a noble effort, but the real focus of efforts should not be at administrators. As much as I like linux for my box at home, it still is not quite ready for prime time. The first time a teacher tries to plug in a new piece of hardware only to find that it isn't supported that box is heading for the closet.
The above kind of argument actually applies even more against Windows.
That's ridiculous. I wish people would keep activism out of the classroom.
Problem is that's already there, from the POV of "Must use brand X, because they are brand X".
The decision on what software/products to use should be based solely upon what is the best tool for the job.
The problem is how do we get to that point. Currently we have schools using Windows simply because it's "Microsoft".
Little consideration as to if it is a good tool. In many ways Windows is a poor choice, because of fundermental design issues. Claims of the form "it's the best because it's used in 'industry'" would be subject to critical evaluation in any other area of education. Quite possibly receiving a "so what?" response.
I wouldn't trust my children to educators who put the interests of projecting their viewpoint over the interests of the children to learn with the best tools available to use.
Maybe you are doing just that already.
Linux is extremely rare in the business place as a workstation, so I think that most parents would feel that the extra costs for microsoft would be worth it just so their kids can work in an environment more similar to those they use in a career.
Very few parents posess time machines, so they are hardly in a position to know what their kids will use in a career.
Also maybe you are actually looking at things the wrong way around, maybe they will use something similar to what they used in school in their "career". A kind of self fulfiling future...
How long can Windows survive when Microsoft intends ramping up the already high TCO?
People, particularly kids, do not want to run the junk (sorry, but it's true) that passes for apps on Linux.
What makes you think they want to run the junk which passes for applications under Windows.
or wonder why they can't use the same quality apps that they have at home on their Win/Mac machines.
How many of the "apps" which kids might be using a home have any place in school in the first place? Most of these will fit into a catagory called "games".
Using linux, I would miss a lot of Windows apps -like Winamp, Napster, CD Rippers
Whilst playing audio files may be of some relevance in a school there is no reason at all for students to be using the likes of Napster, "ripping" CD's, etc.
I took a look at the site, and while the goals are laudable, the benefits are buried several clicks through. If this is to take off they need press coverage so every PTA knows the relative cost of the systems their kids use.
They could really do with a 'press release' page, which plugs the cost angle mercilessly, since that is what this one comes down to for most schools.
These folks deserve kudos on many levels. They have the clearest, most easily understood documentation of any Linux distribution. Red Hat should hire some of these folks to edit their documentation for them!
A friend of mine was trying to do a semster project where he was going to take some of the old macs (less than 5 yrs. old) and set them back on the network running through our linux server for file sharing and internet access. (Proxy pass to the school district proxy). It got ax'd because the district had removed the macs because "they slowed down the network." It is also due to the fact that the tech-help people (teachers that get slightly more pay) don't know squat about macs.
One of the higher muckity-mucks says that he realizes that I know more about computers then he does. Sit him on anything but windows/dos and he doesn't really know what's going on. Sit me down at almost anything and I can make it work (C64/128, Mac, Linux, Windows, HP48, Asembly on Aim65, ect.). To me the school district wants *eye candy*, not functionality. (And considering one school and about five teachers got Gate Grants I really doubt they will even think about using Linux (1 yearbook server (I maintain) and a student file sharing server (Linux has quota support) are the only 2 machines running linux all the time)
I agree, writing a term paper in emacs sounds horrible enough. I would definitely use vim.
Seriously, though, I don't think that learning on Linux machines would be a big problem. It's not like the kids learn something really deep. If you put KDE on, most of them probably won't be able to tell the difference. And those that would notice will be the smarter kids, who will benefit from learning Linux anyway.
It doesn't matter which particular brand of word-processor and spreadsheet are you going to learn. The basic ideas are the same, and figuring out the location of buttons and menus is no big deal.
You described your experience from college, I am going to counter with my experince from grad school. Ohio State has pretty big math department, several hundred computers, and as far as I know, there is not a single windows computer in any of the buildings. It's all solaris and macs. I have very rarely seen students using the macs, and if they did, you could be pretty sure that they are telneting to the server, and use the mac as an expensive character cell terminal. As for the machines in prof's offices, it was about half and half macs and sparcs. In general the older profs had macs, the younger ones sparks.
My choice for writing pretty much anything, be it a paper, proposal, letter, or anything else, would be vim and raw LaTeX. In my experience it is faster and gives you better results than any wordprocessor, be it msword, star office, wordperfect or whatever else. The only remotely wordprocessor like application i am willing to tolerate is LyX. It makes much more sense. Every time I try to make decent looking numbered or bulleted lists in msword I want to scream. And don't even get me started on the equation editor!
AccountKiller
You should read some salary surveys. Unix admins are paid more than MS admins. Unless you want your kids in the secretarial pool, I wouldn't bother with Windows.
As far as Mac is concerned, March 24th puts Apple into the Unix camp so what's the difference in terms of learning Mac or Linux?
DB
There is much anger in this one B-)
Why not get the best of both worlds and just have Mac OS X? It's got Unix power and stability and nice GUI to boot. Coming March 24th, to a PPC computer near you!
DB
Nice FUD. Everybody expects the bugs to be worked out of the carbonized burner software momentarily and then be made available using iDisk (which coincidentally will shoot iDisk adoption through the roof). What other computer company gives you free disk space on their servers? With a reboot into 9.1, you can still burn disks for the few days while you are waiting for the software to be finished.
The part where you are attacking Apple for providing a user friendly transition to Unix without, for the most part, rebooting, was an especially cute bit of poison.
If it didn't run classic apps, you would complain about it. If OS X were to engulf the Mac OS 9.1 CD into its own code so they weren't seperable, you would complain (rightly) that this approach made it likely that there would be more errors generated by this unnecessary change. Take a look at the 680x0 -> PPC transition. It was the smoothest transition between chip families ever. Apple's doing it again and providing a superior transition on the OS side. Yet here you are complaining.
Bleah
DB
Actually, I'm suggesting that there are some situations where Linux is inappropriate for the classroom and that people shouldn't fib and say that a like solution is unavailable for other platforms when it is available.
A graphics class teaching photoshop can't use the linux solution. A business class using MS Project can't use Linux or Mac. Don't even think of mentioning WINE here as it's not stable enough to bet your class plan on it. In the end, an OS needs to not only be cheap, it needs to have the right applications. Macintosh happens to be my preferred middle ground (less expensive than Windows but runs most apps you might teach to in a school setting) but I could install all three solutions.
DB
While it would be a good thing to avoid specific applications for exactly those reasons there are two areas where your approach wouldn't be wise, for people who aren't going to go past high school but want to get a leg up into low level IT, learning MS-Office, Photoshop, and Quark in the 12th grade is a way to get the basic elements necessary to get hired at a starter job in 9 months. I also wouldn't handicap a teacher by saying you can't/shouldn't use windows if their lesson plans were developed around it.
DB
Actually, I was thinking about late high school. If I was concerned with elementary school stuff I would have talked about the lack of reader rabbit for Linux and, well, it escapes me what's lacking for mac in that arena but some windows head could probably come up with a title or two.
Now kids may not care about CALs but schools do and should. They are government entities and if anybody shouldn't appropriate software without paying it should be government bodies.
As for the inherent interest of one OS over the other, I would suspect that Windows would be very interesting for kids that like to make things go boom, and some of the things you can do with a mac and resedit are just downright diabolical.
DB
If you look at the parent, I was complaining that it was wrong to lie about Windows and Mac, saying you can't do thin terminal solutions with them.
Nice attempt at changing the subject to money. To say that there are areas where Linux is not appropriate is not the same as to say that Linux is never appropriate. Obviously, budget constraints are a big selling point for Linux.
DB
Learning the Gimp isn't going to get you past an art director who asks you flat out, "do you know Photoshop?" at the job interview. The Gimp's a great program and is perfectly fine to teach computer art skills for K-12 but you shouldn't strangle the teacher's lesson plan because you like or don't like an OS. That's bigotry.
DB
Let's try again, industry publications pay good money to gather salary information all across the industry. The salary surveys regularly have Unix admins being paid more than Windows admins at all levels. This is objective evidence, not what you see, not what I see, what statistically valid surveys see all across the US. If you can't understand that, maybe you should stop working at CompUSA so many hours and take a statistics course.
If you actually look at the evidence, Unix knowledge gets you better pay than equivalent Windows knowledge.
DB
Thank you Mr. Exchange admin. As an MCSE, I'm quite ashamed that somebody could be so ignorant of statistics and still make it through training. Read my post again, I'm basing this on objective salary surveys that span years. Unix admins get paid more money. They always have. Linux is a good stepping stone to that highly paid Solaris, AIX, or True64 Unix job. The fact that you prefer your individual perceptions over industry salary surveys says a lot. Maybe you should go read "The Millionaire Next Door" as well. Ostentatious displays of wealth are atypical for those on the millionaire track.
DB
Funny, when I went to Eastern (bout 4 years ago) there was nothing but VAX terminals, you could dialup, but it wasn't even slip, just dialup to the VAX. I thought I was in heaven. I am suprised it has changed this much, perhaps if they even had that much then I would have finished my schooling there.
...SECURITY!
Not a bad idea, though. Good luck to the gang who came up with this, I hope it gets accepted into many schools who are tight on cash.
Ahhh... The pitter-patter of little penguin feet down our K-12 schools. *sniff*
Doh... That should be: "Ahhh... The pitter-patter of little penguin feet down the halls of our K-12 schools. *sniff*"
Ugh. Need caffeine.
It's called X11. You might have heard of it.
Not only is Citrix a cheap hack of what X11 has been doing for about a billion years. but you might want to check out this http://www.citrix.com/products/metaframe/unix/defa ult.asp
And UNIX still does it better.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
LaTeX is nice, and you can make PDF files with it. Long live Emacs.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I haven't checked recently but last time I looked in to what schools were doing with computers, the computer had replaced the TV as a place to park the students when the teacher needed a break.
If you're not interested in teaching computer related concepts and principles and just want a place to park the kids to vegitate, Windows is where it's at. You'll find lots of nice "educational" games they can play and they'll come out none the wiser for the experience.
If you want them to actually understand what they are doing when they sit down at a computer, Windows isn't your best choice for a first OS. And someone who understands what they're doing can sit down and work with a Windows based PC or a MacOS based PC because they have a good grounding in the fundamental concepts that make it all work.
Of course all that presupposes teachers who know what they're doing and a school system that won't get all hung up because all the Internet filtering programs mandated by Congress are only available on Windows. I'll leave how likely that is as an exercise for the student.
Keep in mind that I am rather biased, since my first real OS coming off the cheesy TI/99 and Commodore class machines was a Sun version of UNIX. As far as I'm concerned, Microsoft has been playing a rather poor game of catch up since then, and IBM's OS/2, while better, still didn't hold a candle to UNIX.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
That's ridiculous. I wish people would keep activism out of the classroom. The decision on what software/products to use should be based solely upon what is the best tool for the job. I'm not saying Linux is not the best tool for schools but this decision was not made on that basis.
I wouldn't trust my children to educators who put the interests of projecting their viewpoint over the interests of the children to learn with the best tools available to use.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Its all in frankfort, I work in louisville (jefferson) and its the same thing. If I want to run linux, it has to be microsoft linux. All other linux's are unsecure and may break the network that never seems to run cause of the state nt4, microsoft proxy 2 servers..rebooting all the time.
http://www.freebsd.org
15 years ago I was using WordPerfect and today I am still using it. It may have changed from DOS to windows but I can still use the same keyboard commands and the file format has not changed since version 6. My kids use it at home and when I loaded Corel WP 9 for Linux they were able to use it right away since it was alsmost identical to the windows version.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
You have to give them some credit for trying to promote Linux even though it is not making them alot of money.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
I run a system for a church and I'm getting sick of the unmanageability of Windows 98/Office 2000. If it wasn't for the fact that I've seen nothing OSS to beat Exchange Server/Outlook 2000 I would be pushing to move to Linux on every desktop because it's not that hard to retrain people (and most people make fairly poor use of their current software anyway!)
You can choose what you teach, or you can let it be taught for you -- often by commercial interests. As long as it fits within the defined curriculum, there's nothing wrong with expounding your own thoughts on things -- as long as you identify it as your own opinion and not official dogma.
I went to Junior high at a Catholic boarding school. The priests there were willing to discuss things like the gritty parts of the history of the Catholic church and creationism vs darwinism and why a literal reading of Genesis was problematic. Some of what we were taught was not completely flattering to the Catholic Church. When it diverged from the official church line, it was generally identified as such...
I'm glad that my teachers were willing to 'step out of the box'. I think that it gave us all more room to think about things for ourselves.
_____
I think that exposing students to Linux is a great thing.. At least then they know that they have a choice. What they do with that choice once they get home should be up to them.
--
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Actually, if I'm not mistaken there is Metaframe for Solaris now... I'm not sure about the Solaris version, but I know one big advantage over the Win Terminal Server is the protocol used w/ Metaframe. I use both & Metaframe has much better speed.
jred
www.cautioninc.com
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
Let them eat cake!
You are suggesting $7000 (in licensing fees alone) Citrix solutions, $129 MacOS X solutions (software alone) and $500 Microsoft office solutions (software alone) when this project is delivering workstations for $200 a seat with the servers for a few hundred more.
I would speculate that it is a GOOD THING if they can outfit an entire class lab for the same amount of money the average SlashDot user spend on the computer on which they are reading this.
MD
I detect an assumption that all schools have healthy budgets for teaching all of the skills that you and I are taking for granted at this very moment. Not to mention on the hardware we are taking for granted.
Yes, Photoshop is best taught on a high-end workstation but when a school can hardly afford that one workstation, it is a GOOD THING when the those same dollars can outfit a class lab with several Internet-equipped clients.
MD
Doug Wrote: "A graphics class teaching photoshop can't use the linux solution. A business class using MS Project can't use Linux or Mac."
Okay, assuming that a fifth grade class (this is K-12 remember) is working with MS Project, do you really think they will be using MS Project 98 when they enter the workplace?
Are you using the same software at your job that you used in third grade? Did you use any software, let alone Microsoft or Adobe software when you were in third grade? One of my summer camps had brand-new C64's.
Furthermore, a kid presented with a powerful toy will use that toy until they are bored of it and not once think for about who holds the copyrights to that software nor if the CAL's are in proper order.
Which do you think an inquisitive kid will tire of first, Windows 98 or GNU/Linux? Some of these kids are even using FreeBSD.
We must then consider which skills are more marketable, or rather, will be more marketable a decade later when they enter the workplace, group scheduling in Project 98 or Unix use and system administration? Come to think of it, had I learned Unix the day I was born, I would be using it to this day while MS Project 98 probably originated some time after I had started my company.
Granted, I might be a bit more organized if I used Project 98 around the shop but that $9 worth of manila folders and a calendar have wonders AND have been bug free. Actually, a manila folder full of client documents is an EXCELLENT tool for eliminating bugs from the system.
With spiders you can usually walk them onto the folder and escort them outside while the quicker winged ones just ask for a good whack. (My apologies to any Jains in the audience.)
MD.
Question, why the alienware boxen?...those things are pretty and typically use good componets, but my understanding that they really don't target the "value/governmental" purchaser.
Read my plan to save the Bengals
blessings,
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
The doctrinal crackdown is real. The Vatican has cracked down on theologians who continued to lobby for the ordination of women or lightening up on abortion. Ratzinger is the one in charge of the crackdown. And the order I cited is his position statement on the subject. The style is delightful if you're not under his authority.
I'd suggest grabbing "schoollinux.net" for this right now.
Most of the other obvious names seem to be warehoused by Pawel Wodnicki, who is at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. He doesn't seem to be using them. Maybe he could be induced to give some of them up.
This is such great PR for Linux that one of the Linux organizations or companies should help out. Probably tax-deductable, too.
I went to Junior high at a Catholic boarding school. The priests there were willing to discuss things like the gritty parts of the history of the Catholic church and creationism vs darwinism and why a literal reading of Genesis was problematic. Some of what we were taught was not completely flattering to the Catholic Church. When it diverged from the official church line, it was generally identified as such...
They're not allowed to do that any more. There's been a crackdown at the Vatican. Read On the Vocation of the Theologian, by Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. (One the official titles that goes with that job is Grand Inquisitor.) Teachers must follow the official line, or else. "The freedom of the act of faith cannot justify a right to dissent. In fact this freedom does not indicate at all freedom with regard to the truth but signifies the free self-determination of the person in conformity with his moral obligation to accept the truth". This reads like something Orwell might have written in 1984. But it is real, and is enforced against teachers employed by the Catholic church. Cardinal Ratzinger has signed excommunications based on this rule.
What school is this and where please? tia
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Reality: how comfortable are you in sending star office attachment to someone you dont know, like at another company? truth: 0% sure. A word attachment? truth: 90% sure it is ok.
Well-written valid HTML: 99.999% sure it is OK on ie, konqueror, lynx, mozilla, and opera.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Reminds me of the time i got admin access and cowed my entire college network. moooo...
By "cowed" I assume you mean "installed the distributed.net client on." But cows don't say "moo"; what they do say is closer to "nur."
Will I retire or break 10K?
but try teaching a 45 year-old english teacher Linux if all he's ever used is an old mac.
The GNOME people call this phenomenon Baby Duck Syndrome. Users believe that the first software product they use is how all software should work from then on, because like baby ducks and geese, they've "imprinted" on the first thing they saw.
Will I retire or break 10K?
If -I- had kids in school, I'd much prefer that the software used be a bit more release-ready than the word Beta seems to imply...
Releasing too early can easily scare 'em away from something good IMO.
Just my 2 centavos worth... ;-)
hahaha...don't get me wrong, i have looked at the open office project and am eager to see what they come up with.
BUT...i have also been disgruntled with that "take over the desktop" interface. i know of no windoz apps that do such a thing.
really, i have hopes for the future of SO.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
on that note, i wonder just how much Microsoft earns from all things government?
Does anyone know if they are required to split out gov. buyers from com? is this public info?
anyway, i think this is okay, as long as the kids don't suffer too much on the UI. i mean, i don't like staroffice at all, that whole "take over the screen cuz unix desktops suck" idea...kde and gnome have pretty much become the future of the unix desktop, it's just a matter of time.
hopefully SO will improve after they break all the apps out, but we all know what happened to the "new improved netscape"...
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Something to think about: cheapo Wintel boxes, like eMachines, are cheaper to buy than "cheap" X terminals; unless you want to get really basic, like an i-Opener.
Duuuuuuuuh Ignore me. Forgot that X does just that. I need a fucking beer.
Feed The Need[goatse.cx]
And when exactly will there be a *NIX equivilant to Citrix Metaframe? Then and only then would I see these diskless thingys as a serious contender.
Booting from a network server is nice and everything, but having the processing power moved from the client, and to the server, makes for dumber terminals, smarter servers, and less trips to hold the hands of the lusers.
For some odd reason, I seem to have developed a wee bit of respect for the antiquated mainframe technology of the forgone years.......
Feed The Need[goatse.cx]
Remember all that buzz about the iOpener? It was loved here on /. because it made a good X client; a computer in your kitchen!
This seems to me to be a MUCH better solution. Just set up a dedicated server in your attic running this Linux distro and buy two or three of those thin clients to put around your house. It may be marginally more expensive to do it this way, but if the server soft is as easy to use as the site proclaims, the ease of setup and use would more than make up for the price difference.
-inq
He would not know how...
One of my friends that I graduated with got a job at our old schools library and he is showing them the way of Linux by installing a server to get their Mac networks and their Windows networks to work together. So the willingness of school administrators to try out new things is there. Giving them easy access to these "new" technologies and incentive is necessary for them to make their way into the classroom.
Apple made a big push to get their systems used in schools. One way they did this was by giving away computers. Today if you go into any public school you will find Macs in greater numbers than any other type of computer even though they are not used in industry as much as other computers.
So this is a great step into getting Linux tough to students and getting more widely accepted by the majority of computer users that are not the computer elite.
-Grant
|grant.henninger.name|
I'd like to applaud your work and efforts to get this a viable solution in your schools. This took, I'm sure, a lot of planning and acting on great coordination, and I'd even like to have this in my home!
If I could make one request - It would be that I'd like to see is a list of all of the 'educational' software included. I did read the part regarding Collaboration, Communication, Analysis, and Creativity software on the http://www.riverdale.k12.or.us/linux/educational_s oftware.html web page and can imagine what is included, but a list of the exact software per workstation would just be great.
Keep up the good work, and congratulations on getting this noble project running.
Actually, it was first-century Israel. Most, if not all, of the book of Revelation occurred in the first century AD, and culminates with the destruction of the temple in AD 70 (ish).
But with the shit-for-brains education officals that we have here in Eastern Ky,getting anything but M$ is almost impossible. Personally,I wouldn't mind having a copy to check out.
Geek Hillbilly
I once had a job that required me to read a lot of bug reports. The bane of such a job is people who can't express themselves: "I did, like, you know, and it, like, didn't work." So I was always grateful to those who really tried to nail down the problem.
One day I got a bug report filed by a student at (if memory serves) High School #2 in Chengdu, a provincial capital in central China. First she apologized for her English. Then she went on to describe, clearly and concisely, a bug in our virtual reality software.
Right now my group is desperate for tech writers. If this girl were to show up, I'd hire her on the spot. Hey, like, her English is perfectly OK, you know?
__________________
Infact, it's for very few people. Although, yes, I think it is wise to encourage school children to use alternative operating systems to expand their minds, yadda yadda...
I can't but empathize for the ordinary students who are going to school to get an ordinary degree and later an ordinary job. These kids will only be retarded in their persuits if you force them to learn Linux when they will really only benefit from a Windows education in the long run.
If your budget allows, provide a box, maybe two. But not a whole lab of 10 computers over 100 schools. Don't waste your 10 computer budget on dedicated linux machines which will be used rarely by rare individuals.
At the collegiate level, I've schooled at Dartmouth College which provided a small corner of absolutely never used SGI machines and at Reed College which has a lab of LinuxPPC machines, all completely idle. The respective linux/unix machines are nice for me to dick around on, but not the average student. Additionally, that's all I do on them- dick around. I'm not about to write a term paper with Emacs when there is a Macintosh lab just down the hallway.
rumors to the contrary, it is simply not possible to be an expert in *everything*. so this is very worthwhile
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
i worry about these projects that advertise almost no cnfiguration needed, anyone running a large system should know how to configure and manage the system to be secure and efficient in their own environment. people shouldnt be lured into thinking that their system was safe bc it had a good default instalation
That's awesome.
Kick ass!!!
So what're you doing next Monday afternoon? .
Seriously, how many high schools have a dozen or two extremely linux-profficient students sitting in their basements all afternoon and night? I know I was in HS (though I'm still not a pro in Linux). How tough would it be to give these guys something to do other than hack the high school networks? Give `em a job and some great experience setting up networks in elementary, middle and high schools. Now tutoring the teachers and IS admins in the schools is another story . .
He's dead, Jim. You grab his wallet, I'll grab his tri-corder.
Really though, if Linux is to have a stronger future we have to indoctrinate more kids at younger ages, get them before they become ingrained with Windows. Then when they get a bit better at it, they can look around, decide the software is crap, and fix it! (Now who's getting ideal?) But honestly, what will it take for us to drastically improve the process for developing open-source software? There must be a demand created for it somewhere, and it's never going to even reach the chicken-egg situation, because no one wants to switch to an inferior (well, bad word, I'll say less refined for the end-user) system in the hopes that it will improve in the future, but that's what must happen for progress.
He's dead, Jim. You grab his wallet, I'll grab his tri-corder.
I'll agree the Gnome/KDE are nearing windows "quality," (for lack of a better word) but try teaching a 45 year-old english teacher Linux if all he's ever used is an old mac. (I think this has been iterated already...) I think for linux to be welcomed into a setting like a public school though, the GUI must become mac-like for the teachers. Of course, the students will still have the command line to traipse around in and play.
He's dead, Jim. You grab his wallet, I'll grab his tri-corder.
Agreed. However, we're talking about the "baby ducks" as yerricde mentioned, which means the people who've never used another OS or a diverse selection of software.
He's dead, Jim. You grab his wallet, I'll grab his tri-corder.
This is a great idea. But it will probably take a bunch of talented people to volunteer their time to the local school to implement it. Nice side effect though, get people involved into their school, showing they have a personal stake. Hope it sells (metaphorically speaking of course :)
BTW, where can you buy a diskless workstation with an lcd display? Kind of like an iopener, except you don't have to sign a contract for its isp service or pay $400 for one on ebay. Thanks,
Ben
Now, if I were in charge of setting up computers from scratch in this school (or any other) I would have X-terminals in each classroom for the teachers (and teach them basics, which is all they know about their Macs now), and then put in *nix boxen, PCs and Macs in Labs for other uses. Yes, I would still have non-unix boxern there, because then we could say "Look, our students get exposed to M$, *nix, and Macs!" which would do several things:
- Students would learn computer concepts by working with different UIs, thus not just learning one system (M$ Office of AppleWorks, or even StarOffice)
- The day-to day stuff would be on a secure system, and 5 min. of "Unix File Permissions" would be easy, especialy if the default setting was "only I can read."
- Students see Open Source work
- Good PR to parents about being "wired" and "high-tech" without "but that's all useless!"
I honestly think this could be a good set-up."Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
The fact that they're even running fingerd in the first place is a bad sign. And as far as the password goes, you realize you are committing a crime, right? If you are caught, and if you start using this password you will be, you will be suspended, most likely arrested, and there will be a slashdot story on how you were oppressed by the evil school administration.
How are the consultants that manage the school district's IT resources going to make a commission if the software is free?
It has nothing to do with the brand of network adapter, but rather a network protocol, BOOTP. BOOTP allows a diskless client machine to discover its own IP address, the address of a server host, and the name of a file to be loaded into memory and executed. See RFC 951 (1985) and the Diskless Nodes HOW-TO if you want to know how to implement this under Linux.
Don't have a hissy fit. The skills kids need to learn in school have nothing to do with particular brands of software. Kids take a long time to grow up and enter the workforce...ten years ago you would have been screaming for your kid to learn WordStar or WordPerfect under DOS, and look how relevant experience in those are now.
Terminal Services on Linux! No more NT Terminal Server and Citrix. This takes away the average price tag of $7000+ for software and turns it into $0. I can not imagine a better way to run apps off of a server. Plus if you run Citrix at work like I do, you know that you MUST reboot every night or suffer the next day. With Linux this should not be a problem. Thank God for open source
Hehe you post that as an anonymous coward. Somehow I think that fits for you. Metaframe lets you "publish" applications, so you can run programs that appear to be run on your workstation but are in reality run on the server using its processor and its memory.
Let's face it: if it weren't for Star Office, we wouldn't really have much of anything at all in terms of an integrated office suite for Linux. I think it's an excellent application, given it's price.
But SO falls short in many areas; one of which is the fact that it tries to mimic the Windows GUI. Really annoying.
Enter Open Office.
An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine
Microsoft's profitability makes it an ubiquitous brand name. Kids are inundated with all these brand names already. They will grow up thinking that it is how life is supposed to be. Isn't that called indoctrination?
So now some kids can enjoy learning about computers while using reliable systems that don't draw (too) much attention to their brands. That's a positive step. Our government needs to stand behind this.
If you love God, burn a church!
Ewige Blumenkraft!
Firstly, this is a great idea, and it deserves all the best. However, I see one major problem with getting it implemented - this might just be specific to .au, or smaller schools (my perspective), but I suspect not.
The PTA's and school management's techno-literacy will be a real problem. Down here, at least, it's very much a Windows world - and the people who make decisions with regard to technology aren't always the admins. People who don't understand Linux will probably prefer that their kids use Windows (and Office, and Outlook, and IE - but I digress) because that's what they know and like.
What I'd like to know is, if anyone's tried this before, have you run up against the same technophobia? And if so, any suggestions for getting around it?
That said, more power to the project - and I'm beginning to think that it could well help stop what I just described. That, and the cost savings from going to Linux are always a good thing for (generally!) cash-strapped schools.
Joshua Giersch
In my e-mail, it's not "whom", it's "hoo".
Aside from that, it'd be pretty easy: just start a local LUG to administer the Linux network in your local school district. Then start hiring HS students to run the network. You'd have to teach them how, but if you get the right students, they'd probably teach themselves. You can accomplish four goals at once:
Sounds like a winner to me.
Help find a cure for Gidget.
At my school ( http://www.emmanuelctc.org.uk ) we have just over 300 computers that are available to students. Have run off a microsoft terminal server with NT4 and the rest run the standard NT4 installation. I have attended the school for 6 years now and have only been exposed to the windows operating system. At home i am an avid linux user and feel that having the opportunity to use such a thing inside of school would be a very good thing. Not only would it give all students an insight into the options available, it would also give those students who already possess a knowledge of linux to further their own understanding. Which in my opinion, cant be a bad thing.
I agree completely...I am an Exchange admin, make 40+ dollars per hour, drive home to my nice townhouse in my new Landrover (Discovery SE II). They unix dorks around here go to their little one room apartments in their nasty-ass rusted little riceburner cars. Maybe out in California or something the scale is different, but not here.
My server network has been running redhat for years without issue (or reboots!) However, my desktops were running Winblows for using various office suite and embedded design apps.
I had resisted moving the desktops to Linux for the (irrational) fear that I'd miss something. I was a fool.
I switched over my primary design desk (Athlon 700) to RedHat 7.0. Installed Ximian Gnome and couldn't be happier. All the things I thought I might lose (ie Windows only) work fine. My DC_280 camera for article photos - works great on Linux. My TV TUner on my ATI All-in-wonder board (gotta keep up with the news! :) ) Works great with xawtv. ICQ to keep in touch with folks? GNomceICU. I can count the applications that I need to reboot for and they are dwindling fast: MS Money, and a couple of my embedded emulator applications. Thats it. Yes - I'm praying for a stable Mozilla 1.0 because it combines all teh things I like about Netscape Mail and MS Outlook into on package. But beyond that - I'm happy. Very happy and won't look back.
Why should kids care if they use Windows at school? Games? Not happening. Browsing? Netscape works fine and doesn't crash much more than IE does if installed properly. Do you really think school kids need a full blown office suite - will they used the most advanced features of MS Office? Hardly - Staroffice would do fine.
Kudos to this folks for doing this - things like this can revolutionize they way things are done. All I read about in teh paper today is how tight school budgets are. I'm sure many districts will look at the price points, what they spend on MS licenses (even at educational rates) and will jump at the chance. At the very least, they will allow them to co-exist with current MS desktops. And if they succeed, the MS desktops will fade away the next time MS releases a new OS version.
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Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Two semesters of ASCII art. Shop class to include pipes and redirection. gunnar.
After we had purchased all of the neccessary equipment, we still had about $20 000 left, so we bought a colour laser printer and two alienware DV Video Editing machines...just because we could!
I'am currently going to high school in Canada and the school i attend recently received a $700 000 grant to make our school one of the most wired school's in Canada. The entire grant was sought after by students, the buying of the computer equipment was done by the students and the networking was done by the students. We added 117 computers to our already 149 computer-strong network...all done by students. It has been probably the most enriching and meaningfull "lesson" i've ever been taught in school. From learning Solaris on our Sun boxes to mandrake on our custom boxes to win98/me/nt/2000 on our Dell and Alienware boxes and MacOS on the Imac's i have learned more than i ever thought i would. All because some students were willing to take some initiative and were willing to put the time and effort into it. Now, how this relates to the article. After we received all of our new machines we had a huge amount of old 133's gathering dust. Some local elementary schools were wanting to get some free computers so we said we would give them what we had...on one condition...we hold "computer camps" to get the kids oriented on Linux. That's right...grade 6,7 and 8 kids working on linux. It's truly amazing how quickly these kids picked it up...much quicker than anyone at our school! Anyways...i'am not sure where i'am going with this but i thought it was a cool story to share.
Well i'd love to deploy this at Newgrange but here is my delema: Students and teachers only use the machines they are comfortable with. Students and teachers mostly use Windows machines at their homes and they want the same environment at school. I can't see going through the time and effort for this and then having no one use it (besides me). Any ideas on how to break the "Chicken and Egg" cycle? -ted
Kids would definitely learn a lot more about computers from using Linux than Windows....
When I was about 7 I had a C128 (pretty much the same as a C64), and that thing taught me a lot about computers, since as soon as you turned it on you were at the BASIC interpreter, and you HAD to learn at least some of the language (LOAD "*",8,1) to even use the programs you had on the 5.25" disks....
The problem is that the admins in most schools don't know anything.... I am pretty sure that the admin at my school has never touched anything outside of Windows or Mac, and I know for a fact (from finger) that he has never used his username on the school's FreeBSD firewall.
The security is a joke, he has it set so you automatically log on to the network with the same username and password that you use to log on to windows... including his own account, and a quick search for "PWL crack" on Google got me his password so I now have as much control over the network as him without even having to learn the first thing about Netware....
This guy would not be able to set up anything Linux. Once he saw me telnet'ing to my home computer and it was obvious on his face that he had no idea what I was doing...
I think that most of the admins who are good are going to end up working at a company and not a school...
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Linux may be open-source and therefore a wonderful education in computer science. But most classes are not about computer science. They're about math, language, history, art, science, etc.
Windows may be the current commercial standard for office software, but again, most classes are not about keyboarding, word processing, and other office skills.
Macintosh may be offered at deep discounts to schools, but that too is a lousy reason to choose a platform.
All that's required of a computer platform in a school is that it supports the educational objectives of the students and their teachers. At best, it should be flexible and configurable to demonstrate / simulate the lessons being taught. At worst, it should at least not get in the way (like both Linux and Windows all too often do.)
It's time to stop teaching kids ABOUT computers and start using them as mind-extending tools to learn about everything else.
Forgive me if this has been discussed already - but how do the clients boot? Is it with PIIXE ethernet cards? If so that is really quite cool.
reading the manual is not very difficult. a society built on eye candy and the grabbag box will not find linux very appealing. it is because of the clear fact that maybe communities in education wants something they can trust.
if they have never used linux then it is more the case of fear. teach people that computers are nothing to be afraid of and they are boundless to the blindfolds of any corporate gimme-gimme.
my sympathies.
Back in my day we had to chew binary in rock, then run the program in our heads.
P.S. Once you get the basic principles of using a computer across to kids they won't really have any problems transfering their skills to other platforms. Ever noticed how kids always figure out how to use the new TV/Video before their parents do?
Having come out of high school recently (two years) I can understand you're point of view. However, I pose the question this way: Is it better for a child to learn one point-and-click interface where a textbook shows them the button and exactly where that button is on the toolbar or to learn the general concepts and HOW to find the command that they are looking for? Personally, having used WP5.1 - 2000 and Word 95 - 2000, I don't remember where one button is on this interface and that interface and oh yea I forgot that one too.. but I remember that the general concepts for commands are the same. Let's say you're looking for margins... Page Setup, or Format Page are the two best guesses. It doesn't take an Expert system to teach that. I sincerely think children are spoon-fed too much interface and not enough concept. What happens when you upgrade to the next-latest-and-greatest and the toolbar changes? You adapt, plain and simple. But by learning the concept and having a good set of heuristics to "search" for your features from the start and you don't have to adapt, you just continue working. I'm not saying that it wouldn't take time to learn, because everyone has that urge to be able to just grab that button without looking... but it is a good first step.
In my first semester in college there was a business course required of all College of Business majors to take. It was the classic example of interface instruction. I didn't know it all, but then again who'd want to know every widget in Excel?, but I knew more than enough to fly through every assignment. There were two problems, however, one: we were graded on specificity to a given template(not all computers were identically installed in the lab, so almost impossible to have a match to the source doc) and the necessity to know in what menu a given command was in... that included submenus... now for a standard Word 2000 install that is very easy, however, when used to Publisher and PageMaker (I hardly ever use a standard word processor anymore) you tend to just slide through the menus and you get where you're going... but to test over that material is ludicrous. I'll end my rant with this question, How can one be classified as computer literate when they must be extensively retrained on the latest version of a piece of software when only a couple widgets have moved?
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I think I'll call this one Bob.
Live with Love for Love is Life. --mine.
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I think I'll call this one Bob.
Live with Love for Love is Life. --mine.
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It's probably true that most school admins aren't the best in the buisness, but at my school, the administrator is a very open-minded guy. I told him about linux, and he was very enthusiastic and even let me install it on some of the schools computers. I will be very happy to tell him about this project.
1) it purports to being a system which the students can't crack. This seems like a good thing.
2) it purports to being cheap. This seems like a good thing.
3) But.... what software will it run? Your average third grader has about zero use for Star Office running in the basic Linux Distro. On the other hand there is tons of commercial quality educational software out there for windows and mac.
4) Who is going to support this in the long run?
"Here you go Mr/Mrs school board member, your very own highly reliable linux network and its free! BTW you need to hire/train a full time professional to very efficiently run this network since it uses a new technology. It only took you 15 years to get the hang of running your own PCs, so you might want to hurry up and start reworking your processes to deal with this new system."
Hmmmmm....
Have a NICE day.
This is a noble effort, but the real focus of efforts should not be at administrators. As much as I like linux for my box at home, it still is not quite ready for prime time. The first time a teacher tries to plug in a new piece of hardware only to find that it isn't supported that box is heading for the closet.
Moreover, my biggest gripe about computers/internet in the classroom is that these poor educators have no training and no resources to help them deal with this stuff. We need more than access to linux. We need access to good quality educational software and resources to help train the teachers on how to incorporate the stuff into real learning experiences. It is bad enough that we expect people to deal with 30 kids and low pay; we also expect them to be able to redesign the curriculum in their spare time and use technology that they were never trained to use! (Some of you might be surprised to learn that for some folks this stuff is not intuitively obvious.)
I've checked things out over at sourceforge and there are some good projects going on. It is very difficult to sort them all out, and there is little or no help for teachers trying to incorporate these things into the curriculum.
Phew... I've become a real crab. Now where did I put that sliderule...
As a parent, I am always encourage when I hear about this type of program.
I have a 12 year old daughter who has shown an interest in computers, and thanks to the efforts of a businessman who is a memeber of the local rotary, her school was recently able to aquire fifteen used computers, most of them Athlons. I was especially excited to learn that eight of them had Red Had Linux installed.
One of the teachers at her school is also a long time Linux administrator and user, and it's simply amazing the progress and learning that she is making. Admittedly, I am far from an expert, but she has already passed me by!
I want to encourage anyone who is considering donating computers to a school to please do so. They very much do make a difference in some of the technologically inclined children's education.
"The night is long that never finds the day." -- William Shakespeare
People, particularly kids, do not want to run the junk (sorry, but it's true) that passes for apps on Linux. If you're looking to turn them against Linux from a very early age, you're off to a good start. Just wait until they see the apps that their friends get to use at other schools, or wonder why they can't use the same quality apps that they have at home on their Win/Mac machines.
... as, in their appeal, they could use things like this to claim that they DON'T have a monopoly.
After all, if public school teachers can now use Linux, than anyone can!
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I am not a lawyer but my sister is, so don't mess with me
You know who could get behind this project and have a Windows Killer?
Coca Cola. Nike. Levis. Adidas.
Those large companies are ALWAYS looking for ways to market to the school crowd. Hell, I'd let my kid look at a Coke logo as his desktop background if it meant having the commercial interest behind entrenching linux in the educational system.
-db
I want my kid growing up using Linux and Star Office, then the day they start their first job and their boss shows them to their MS Windows/Ms Office box they say "Whats that?". If 90% of the desktop world is using MS Windows & MS Office then surely they are the skills that my child needs to learn!
Reminds me of the time i got admin access and cowed my entire college network. moooo...
What was the revolutionary part here?
Does anyone have any sizing info on X in a multi-user environment?
You need a killer app for them.
...to the techno-crack that is Microsoft is a worthy goal. If children learn early on about the benefits of open source software, it is more likely they will go on to contribute -rather than patent- ideas to society.
[Insert the usual disclaimer here]
StarOffice? Make 'em learn it properly from the beginning. Nothing but text mode console, vi, elm, and sc. When I was your age, we had to walk uphill in three feet of snow to write BASIC on an Apple II!
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Gui Mac X Linux *nix Windose mainframe terminal NetBSD network Linus Torvalds qzip spaceman Citrix Metaframe Winframe Server workstation.