Feasibility of Linux for Public-Access Labs?

Benanov asks: "I'm doing a literature review on the Feasibility of Linux for a public-access lab (i.e. not Computer Science students at a university but instead the entire student body would have a login), and I haven't found any detailed studies about any places where this is actually done. If you know of any citeable sources about studies / reviews, I'd really appreciate it."

Comments

university of washington

[bigjangin]

well not linux, but unix...I believe uw uses AIX and every student has a login...works very well for the 30,000 students.

Re:university of washington

[EconomyGuy]

While its true that we have 36,000 students using AIX for e-mail and the like here at the UW, we don't actually have any labs setup with machines running *nix (there is one RedHat lab for the CS students). I've been trying to convince my boss in the UW polisci lab to run linux for a year-plus, but he won't even let me setup a linux server to run mySQL. So, even though UW is home to such greats as Pine and IMAP, I'm sad to report almost all of our labs are Mac/Windows.

Re:university of washington

[modulus]

It all depends on what you want to do...

Here at another UW (University of Wisconsin - Madison) we have quite a few Sun Rays hooked up (to a solaris machine somewhere, I imagine) in public places (Unions, etc.) with no login... they run just Netscape, I think, and are used for web browsing, web email checking, etc. They are quite handy. (Similar to the kiosks with macs inside, but much cooler.)

The same thing can be easily done with linux.

If you want more apps, as word processing, etc. then it's slightly trickier. Of course the immediate place to go is http://www.riverdale.k12.or.us/linux/ and not let it stop at grade 12...

Isn't this rather standard?

[Todd Knarr]

Isn't this basically what companies like Netcom and Compuserve did? Unix systems with large numbers of unrelated users all having logins. You'll need some sort of central directory for passwords (pam_ldap or something similar should work wonders there), but otherwise it sounds like what Unix-like systems have been doing for decades.

Re:Isn't this rather standard?

[xee]

So the computers have it down pat, but how bout the 30k people who are gonna use them? How do you secure your boxes? These are workstations, not dumb terminals. You need workstation security, not just account security. You need a friendly interface that people will not be afraid of. You dont want to scare people off by giving them a complicated, unfamiliar user interface such as anything other than windows or macos.

Re:Isn't this rather standard?

[AnyoneEB]

I don't know much about Linux, but could you make it auto-open a window manager set to look like Windows or MacOS (or close enough to them).

Re:Isn't this rather standard?

[Todd Knarr]

So set up Gnome or KDE on the workstations, no admin privileges to any user accounts of course, with the home directories Coda-mounted and with things locked down per standard for an ISP's shell machines (ie. tighter than a nervous virgin clam). Minimal services running, don't install dangerous things like nmap, and give them a desktop skin that resembles Windows and an xdm/gdm/kdm login box. You only have to assemble the workstation image once, then just clone it over onto workstations as needed. Kernel modules and DHCP are your friend here.

For extra evilness points, lock down their dot-files by making them owned by a special user and not writable by the account itself. This requires a bit of a balancing act, since some dot-files do need to be writable for storing state.

This is the same process needed to secure the workstations used by the CS classes, you're just talking about several thousand workstations instead of several hundred. There's more administrative overhead, but the actual things needed for each workstation are roughly the same. Just be sure to have a beefy enough fileserver (or spread the load over several) to handle the network-mounted home directories.

Look for overlap with LTSP studies...

[metacosm]

I have setup a general access lab using linux and LTSP, but it was only for 16 highschool students, so I am not sure how relevant to your quest. I would recommend looking for studies regarding LTSP.

Good and bad

[JanusFury]

Well, it'd definitely be easy to set up and cheap to support, but on the downside, most of the programs people are going to want to use (at least average people) are Windows, or maybe Mac, programs. I guess having a well-installed copy of Wine might help with that, but it does seem like a major problem. Also, there would be the small hurdle of the users being a little confused by Linux, but that would go away pretty quickly.

Re:Good and bad

[Omnifarious]

Or, let 'em use the Linux equivalents and be happy. I have a friend who's not much of a geek who's been using Linux for over a year now with few problems. Her biggest problem is the fact that HR departments _demand_ Word documents. :-(

Re:Good and bad

[undercanopy]

abiword

Re:Good and bad

[VoiceOfRaisin]

since you would need to install windows anyways to get these windows programs you wanted to work in wine, why not just use windows in the first place?

Re:Good and bad

[harvardian]

In my experience, most people go to the computer labs to check email, browse the web, or code. It's much more comfortable writing a paper in your room or at a library.

That said, you could do what they do at my school (where no labs are CS only) -- install Linux on 3/4 or 1/2 of the computers at the front of the lab and make the rest Windows machines. For those who want to check their email or browse the web, there's about a one-minute learning curve. For those who want to write papers, they can go to the quieter back.

Re:Good and bad

[MrResistor]

Having been responsible for a school computer lab, I say screw those users. They can use what I offer them or they can go somewhere else. I lost count of the number of times I had to re-image my relatively few machines because some idiot decided they absolutely had to have AIM (which hosed one of the math programs we used, which was the actual purpose of the lab).

What are open school labs for? Internet chat? No. Games? No. The purpose of open labs is to provide computers for people who can't afford their own so they can get their work done. That means word processing, spreadsheets, maybe some web browsing. All of those things can be done using Linux and various free packages. They need to edit or print out their MS Word document that they wrote at home? OpenOffice will do that just fine. The only problem I've ever had with it handling MS documents was some wrong background colors in an Excel spreadsheet, which is easily fixed.

As for the confusion, that's what lab assistants are for. "That icon is the web browser, that one is the word processor..." Quick and easy, and exactly the sort of brain dead stuff every lab assistant has to deal with all day, every day, regardless of Operating System.

For the few people who absolutely have to have Windows or Mac programs, have a few specialized labs set up for them. That's neither new nor different in a college environment, where just about every department has at least a small lab with some computers set up for the specific needs of the students taking those classes.

If a student wants to use a program not offered in the open lab, they can go find the department that would use that software and make an arrangement, or they can get their own damn computer.

Re:Good and bad

[modulus]

Silly ignorant person... you do not need to install windows anyway to use wine to successfully run windows apps like office, etc. Please see codeweavers, lindows, etc.

Re:Good and bad

[Omnifarious]

I know about abiword, and it wasn't good enough for what she wants to do. It may be now. I don't know.

Re:Good and bad

[mmol_6453]

A female Linux user?

Goodbye, undear 18-year-old's celibacy. Farewell, for I have entered a new age in which I shall forever be gazing into my monitor with more tenderness than usual.

Erm...

Did I say that out loud?

Re:Good and bad

[Random Feature]

Oh come on now. I've been playing with Linux since before RedHat 4.2 was released.

And I'm definitely female - I checked before I posted this just to be sure.

And haven't you heard of linuxchix.org?

Re:Good and bad

[zenyu]

I lost count of the number of times I had to re-image my relatively few machines because some idiot decided they absolutely had to have AIM (which hosed one of the math programs we used, which was the actual purpose of the lab).

I never got used to AIM, but I can image that it is a very good educational tool. I used to use finger & [y]talk all the time as an undergrad to quickly talk with friends about a project requirement, test date, etc. These days few machines allow finger and AIM has replaced it.

Couldn't you install some AIM client that doesn't screew things up and point users to it? I know there is a Java client, I can't imagine that being very evil...

Re:Good and bad

[DoctorFrog]

AIM is available for Linux. It's a bit more primitive than the latest & greatest Windoze version (no DirectConnect or BuddyIcons) but all the core functionality is there, and its those fancy DirectConnects that tend to crash systems anyway, when Jluser tries to send a copy of britannica.com over a chat connection.

Re:Good and bad

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I run a 200 person windows network and would trade it in a second for Linux. First and foremost: Windows is NOT all that easy to use. Our help desk has to do just about everything for our users from setting up printers to bailing their asses out of locked programs. People do not know Windows nearly as well as the industry would have us believe. (Or MS Office for that matter, If I get one more request for a manual I am going to scream.)

As far as programs they are going to want to use:

• Mozilla makes a great Mail and Web client. Plus the interface is wonderful, consistent, and can be upgraded over an entire network with a shell script.
• Office Applications. MS Office, while widely used, is not very well understood by the common user. As long as you can provide something that will read Office documents, print, and spell check, they will barely notice. I have all of 5 users who know how to do more than spell check in Word. 3 of them work for the Help Desk.
• Beyond that are games and annoyances like Instant Messaging and (grrr) bonsai buddy. Do you really want people tying up workstations with that?

Re:Good and bad

[einhverfr]

Absolutely agree. I will add one thing here-- the learning curve is about 1 min for common tasks if the desktop is properly configured (even with GNOME 1.0-- not picking on GNOME, but its interface came a long way).

Case in point-- my parents were lost with Windows 95. I put together a RedHat 6.1 system (now running 7.1) and they stopped calling me for tech support, and they started using their computer more :)

The point is that the users of a computer center (or my parents, for that matter) don't want to be administrators of the system, and they don't need to install much software, so the fact that Linux requires a little more knowledge to do these things minimally is not an issue.

Anyway, I know that this is not what you are looking for-- I wish you the best of luck in finding quotable studies.

Re:Good and bad

[MrResistor]

The lab I was working on was not really an open lab, it actually wasn't even primarily a computer lab, but we had some. It was a math lab, and the purpose of the computers was to run some educational programs; in particular we were experimenting with PC-based algebra classes.

We lab personel often allowed people to use the computers for other purposes such as writing papers and such, mostly because the school was actually a little short on open lab computers, and it wasn't uncommon for those labs to be full. The only people who knew about the computers in the math lab were people who used the math lab for its intended purpose, so we figured it was OK.

Allowing chat clients was way out of the scope of the lab, and given that the PC algebra coursework was supposed to be done individually, it was actually antithetical to the main purpose of those computers. Additionally, the lab had a strict policy against users installing software of any kind. I managed to get permission to install SETI@home clients on a few of them (it was a math lab, after all, and SETI is doing some pretty cool math). I couldn't get the clients to run right on those machines because they had crappy monitors that wouldn't do 800x600, and they couldn't handle it running as a background process, so it was a relatively short-lived experiment.

The fact that it wasn't installed by us was a big part of the problem. It was students who were installing it, and they wanted AIM. If we'd had aanther AIM-compatable client installed, they probably would have downloaded and installed AIM anyway. I never saw anybody using for potentially legitimate uses like you describe, but even if they were they still should have gone to an open lab and used one of those PCs rather than tying up one that somebody else needs to get their classwork done.

Also, this was in the AOL5.0 days. At that time every lab tech I knew had nightmares revolving around AOL software. It caused all kinds of problems. I don't recall there being a significant amount of alternative or compatible clients around at the time. Basically you had AIM, ICQ, or maybe IRC if you were a 1337 h4x0r, and they were pretty much discrete. (I don't mean any offense to IRC users, that's just the best description of the few people I knew that used it)

Re:Good and bad

[MrResistor]

Those students are not there for your convenience, you are there to educate them and provide help and instruction.

Those computers were not there for the student's convenience. It was not an open lab, it was a math lab. Those computers had specific purposes. If people wanted to do stuff like chat, there were open labs within a 10 minute walk where they could do all the chatting they wanted.

The relatively few students who were installing their own software were inconveniencing the students who needed to use those computers for their intended purpose. My job was to help them do that work (which I was very good at) and to enforce the AUP, which included a NO USER-INSTALLED SOFTWARE clause.

Even in an open lab, though I would still have the same policy against user-installed software. In an academic environment, unauthorized software causes about 80% of the problems admins have to deal with. That's why utilities such as ghost exist.

Re:Good and bad

[MrResistor]

First of all, I was a tutor, not an admin. I was given some admin duties because I had some knowledge in that area, but I did not create or implement security.

Second, these were Windows 95 boxen. The software that these computers were intended for didn't run on NT, and since this was 3 years ago, there weren't any other options, not that we had the budget to upgrade the OS even if one were available which ran our software and had any kind of security at all. The security model was an AUP posted on the wall above each computer which was enforced by tutors such as myself. The AUP was quite specific regarding user-installed software.

Third, this was a math lab, not an open lab. All the software needed to perform the intended function of those machines was provided already. It was the students who insisted on installing this crap that had no respect for the usability of the machines, since the software they installed, particularly AIM, often hosed up software people needed to do the work for which these machines were intended, which included a PC-based algebra class. I was concerned with usability for people who needed those sytems to do their classwork, not usability for some idiot chatting on AIM.

Fourth, there were open labs within a 10 minute walking distance of mine, though they they had similar AUPs. Anyone who doesn't understand why an AUP would include a clause against user-installed software, which apparently includes you, doesn't know enough about networked environments to be making judgements about the abilities of others. Since you are obviously ignorant, let me enlighten you to the basic facts relevant to our current discussion: User-installed software is responsible for the vast majority of problems, especially in an environment such as a school computer lab. Computers in those environments are there for a reason, and that reason generally does not include chat, games, pornography, etc, and if any of those activities interfere with the the intended purpose of those computers it is the duty of the staff to remedy the problem, which we did by kicking the user out and reimaging the drive.

Finally, for the record, the last time I checked my IQ was in the 150 range. Your prose style suggests that you are well below that mark. Perhaps, in keeping with your world view, you should consider irradiating yourself? You know, leadership by example and all that...

Check out UofM...

[stienman]

I don't know what research has been performed, but UofM has a huge number of dual-boot (redhat/win2k) workstations around north campus which are available for general use. Mostly used by engineering students, but I suspect they've done some research on going further. Look around their website and ask their computing services people.

-Adam

Re:Check out UofM...

[softwave]

yes, definitely moscow

now go to sleep

Re:Check out UofM...

[elmegil]

Assuming you mean U of Michigan and not Minnesota or Mississippi, it's worth noting that they used to have lots of security issues; I recall having students at Bradley University running crack against the password/shadow files from UMich way back in the day.

As far as it goes, Bradley has used Unix machines (originally AT10 years). I suppose it's possible that they stopped that practice, but I doubt it. Go poking around www.bradley.edu and look for Computer or Computing Services to find contact information, I'm sure they'd be willing to talk to you about how they deal with the issues that come up in giving shell accounts to naive users.

Re:Check out UofM...

[elmegil]

Bah, I hate HTML formatting. That parenthetical thing that says "AT10 years" was supposed to be "AT&T SVR3, then SVR4, then Solaris....I dunno if they'd have moved on to Linux by now or not) for a long time now (> 10 years)"

CMU

[Anonymous Coward]

Carnegie Mellon University has labs of Linux, NT, Apple, and Sun machines - all using the same login / password, and accessible to everyone.

"You mean...

[Jonboy X]

...I can't play minesweeper? What kind of lab is this?"

Re:"You mean...

[pete-classic]

Just play KMines. And PySol is the best solitare game EVER (and cross-platform to boot!)

-Peter

Re:"You mean...

[Mars Hill]

Yes, you can. GNU/Minesweeper

Re:It's feasible that this page is wide!

[jkatka]

Seems like the K-12 Linux project might be a place to start looking at they have been plugged on /. before. Seems that they looked at what a student in a classroom would need and there are some articles on their site about schools implementing Unix in a educational enviroment.

JK

Same as Unix labs?

[Louis_Wu]

Wouldn't this be very similar to the practice of having everyone log in on a traditional Unix, like the HP AIX we used at my university until the mid '90s? Are you talking about more than email access? Is this supposed to be a full-featured desktop for writing reports and creating presentations?

I'm intrigued by the idea, but please clarify some activities anticipated on these computers.

linux k12 project

[ohchaos]

I'd highly reccomend you look over at the linux k12 project @ http://www.riverdale.k12.or.us/linux/

DNALounge uses Linux kiosks for the public

[dzm]

Jamie Zawinski has produced a nice document describing how he did it, problems he faced, etc.

[LINK]

Re:DNALounge uses Linux kiosks for the public

[DLWormwood]

As a long time Mac user, I'm surprised this article was mentioned on this site. Towards the end, it provides a real world justification for a one-button input device.

I would think most Windows/*nix people would think of such endorsement as heresy. (-;

Re:DNALounge uses Linux kiosks for the public

[sharkey]

...one-button input device

Well, a one-button keyboard couldn't be used in the Windows world. How would you give it the 3-finger salute?

Ooohhh. One button mouse!

Re:DNALounge uses Linux kiosks for the public

[BagOBones]

"I would think most Windows/*nix people would think of such endorsement as heresy. (-;"

As far as my productivity is concerned I prefer 2 or more button mice BUT the one button mouse does make things very simple for Joe user.

Re:DNALounge uses Linux kiosks for the public

[aonaran]

Agreed, I just wish I could get all 5 buttons on my Intellimouse optical working properly in Linux.

I miss having the side buttons work independantly from the top ones. (especially for web browsing)

Purdue

[reschly]

all 30,000+ purdue students can login to a unix shell (via telnet/ssh/pc-xware), and that works without a problem. Only students in certain classes (CS courses, mainly) have access to the labs where all the Sun machines are.

Re:Purdue

[oyenstikker]

All 14,000 or so RIT students can login to a UNIX shell, and I wish it worked without a problem. I have 'echo "some@address.com" >> .forward' for more people than I can count. People don't like UNIX shells. People don't want UNIX shells. People want eye candy and web interfaces.

what applications?

[bcrowell]

What applications are going to be available? If it's just a library where people are websurfing, then I don't see what the big deal would be. If they're going to do a lot of office-type stuff, then I expect the big problem will be file formats. They're going to want to take their term paper or their lab results home and use them in Excel or Word, and even if the filters are available, they may be befuddled by it.

Redhat

[Anonymous Coward]

Any default install of Redhat on any computer with an always on connection is plenty public, i.e., anybody on the net can use them ;-)

Re:Redhat

[tempest303]

I know this was meant to be "funny" but the last few releases of RH ship with basically everything off by default except for an ssh-server. And if ya can't trust OpenSSH, what CAN you trust? :)

Re:MIT

[jcoy42]

mit uses linux and solaris and irix

Oh my!

MIT

[Anonymous Coward]

The Athena system here at MIT runs both on Sun and Linux boxes. Extensive use of certificates and kerberos here. Supposedly very secure...

TU Darmstadt

[kippy]

The Technical University of Darmstadt had quite a few dual-boot Linux/Windows machines in public labs. This was 3 years ago so I don't know if this is still the case.

Not quite linux but...

[cvanaver]

When I went to school at Indiana, they had 'public access' UNIX labs in some of the buildings around campus. Not Linux, but Solaris and IRIX. Though they were mainly geared for graphics and CS students, anyone could get an account just be applying on a web page. I think that is a good approach to getting initial interest in the Linux labs. Start small (a couple dozen machines), put productivity software, graphics and science apps on the machines. And let people begin to use them at their leisure. If your school is anything like mine was, there are always a shortage of available public PCs and you'll find that students who wouldn't normally show up at the Linux lab, will just come for the open PCs. Make sure the lab is staffed with people who can translate from Windows to Linux, and gradually you'll gain acceptance and begin to spread out the labs.

CMU

[mrdlinux]

Carnegie Mellon University's Cluster services maintains general student body access Linux and Solaris machines as well as Windows and MacOS. Don't know of any studies, offhand, but it doesn't hurt to look.

Make it user-friendly.

[generic-man]

Carnegie Mellon has a large network for about 5,000 current undergrads, 1,000 current graduate students, and hundreds of staffers (not to mention 'miscellaneous' accounts). Most people use it to log into Windows or Macintosh systems on campus, since that's what they're used to. Furthermore, the default window manager on Linux and Solaris is mwm (Motif Window Manager), which is absolutely horrible. Among other things, it completely ceases to work if NUM LOCK is on. There's been talk about switching over to GNOME as the default, but as of now people have to ask each other how to switch to Windowmaker, FVWM, or the current GNOME environment.

One time early in the academic year, I noticed a user had forgotten to log out. In the xterm that had been opened with mwm, I saw:

% netscape

% netscape

% netscape

% netscape

% aol
bash: aol: command not found
% aol
bash: aol: command not found
% aol.com
bash: aol.com: command not found
% aol.com
bash: aol.com: command not found
% netscape.com
bash: netscape.com: command not found

Make all the jokes you want about LARTing the newbies, but there were absolutely no options on screen. Furthermore, there are no solid equivalents for popular Windows or Macintosh software packages on Linux or Solaris. IE for Solaris is lackluster compared to Windows, Mozilla is still unreliable and doesn't render some sites properly (they were designed for IE; live with it), GIMP is no substitute for Photoshop, and StarOffice is still nowhere close to Microsoft Office.

Re:Make it user-friendly.

[brittm]

...no solid equivalents for popular...software packages on Linux...Mozilla is still unreliable...StarOffice is still nowhere close...

This is just plain crazy. Moz1.0 and OpenOffice1.0 are both incredibly solid, full featured, and more than acceptably compatible.

I run a team of programmers who have to submit pretty documents to a company full of folks who use nothing but MS; we run Linux for development purposes and have zero significant issues going back and forth between Word and OpenOffice1.0.

Re:Make it user-friendly.

[Cyno]

Furthermore, the default window manager on Linux and Solaris is mwm (Motif Window Manager), which is absolutely horrible. Among other things, it completely ceases to work if NUM LOCK is on. There's been talk about switching over to GNOME as the default, but as of now people have to ask each other how to switch to Windowmaker, FVWM, or the current GNOME environment.

How did you get rated so high? First you claim that thousands of people use this system at Carnegie Mellon to somehow justify it as a well designed network. Then you spout off the above load of BS. First mwm is not the default window manager on linux or solaris and hasn't been for years. Maybe back in the days of SunOS 4.x, but anything written in the last 5 years has been using CDE, Enlightenment, Windowmaker, KDE, GNOME, etc. The last two can look and feel an aweful lot like those windows and macs. And where did you come up with the NUM LOCK problem? Linux boxes are surprisingly stable and cheap and can run hundreds of users off of one box. They can remotely display their desktop to windows and macs as well as other unix boxes natively. They can share files with windows, macs and unix boxes easily from default installs and include all the software necessary to automate the process of moving and managing your data out of the box. Perhaps Carnegie Mellon and its supposed computer scientists don't know anything about computers or how to use them but that gives no excuse to your post. Please link to sites that can't be drawn by mozilla and give reasons for the problems with the Gimp, StarOffice, KDE and GNOME and why people, university students, would have trouble using said software. Oh and in the example of a nightmare user experience in mwm can you tell me why netscape was never displayed? It sounds to me like either you made all this up or nobody has administrated your unix network in the last 5 years. Since your post is about improving the usability of Linux do you have any suggestions?

Re:Make it user-friendly.

[tempest303]

Mozilla is still unreliable and doesn't render some sites properly (they were designed for IE; live with it)

This is a small minority. Are those few pages really worth keeping on the Windows upgrade treadmill?

GIMP is no substitute for Photoshop

Not for professionals, but for many people it's more than enough. So buy a few workstations with Photoshop, and let the GIMP do its thing on the rest of the machines: being "good enough" instead of a full replacement.

StarOffice is still nowhere close to Microsoft Office.

In terms of what? Have you really used the latest StarOffice/OpenOffice.org packages? Yes, MS Office does have larger feature set, but how many of those features that StarOffice doesn't have really get used?

Re:Make it user-friendly.

[generic-man]

This is a small minority. Are those few pages really worth keeping on the Windows upgrade treadmill?

Yes. Or, you could use Internet Explorer for Solaris or HP-UX. The fact remains that Internet Explorer will render all major companies' web sites, whereas Mozilla will not.

Not for professionals, but for many people it's more than enough. So buy a few workstations with Photoshop, and let the GIMP do its thing on the rest of the machines: being "good enough" instead of a full replacement.

The GIMP is installed on all Linux and Solaris machines on campus, but you'd be hard-pressed to see any substantial amount of art majors using it. In the largest fine arts building on campus, the computers are all high-end PCs running Windows and G4 towers running Mac OS 9.1 (and soon, Mac OS X). Photoshop is all around. Remember that college is preparing people for careers, so it's only fair that they learn on professional-grade software. Stating that you know Photoshop is infinitely more valuable than stating that you know the GIMP, when you're applying to professional art firms.

In terms of what? Have you really used the latest StarOffice/OpenOffice.org packages? Yes, MS Office does have larger feature set, but how many of those features that StarOffice doesn't have really get used?

"With simple files, such as lightly formatted Word documents or straightforward Excel spreadsheets, StarOffice usually performs adequately. But Writer had problems paginating a lightly formatted, although very long, Word document. Try to convert a document full of heavy formatting and styles, and StarOffice 6.0 may choke. When we used StarOffice to open Word documents with tables, charts and rigorous formatting for forms, the StarOffice version looked very different from the original. In some cases, Writer stuck blank pages into the document or truncated and displaced lines of text." -- from a ZDNet UK review of StarOffice 6.0. I wouldn't consider tables, charts, and forms to be obscure or rarely-used features. Macros are used regularly in large business's documents, and StarOffice support for converting or even creating macros is still primitive at best.

Make no mistake: Linux and Solaris are rapidly advancing their offerings of general-purpose professional software, but they're not quite caught up yet. Call me back in a year or two.

Re:Make it user-friendly.

[ealar dlanvuli]

Mozilla is still unreliable and doesn't render some sites properly (they were designed for IE; live with it),

I'm assuming you mean these w3c compliant pages?

I don't know, Mozilla seems to render them better than IE, in fact IE dosen't..

The fact that some web pages are broken is not a reason to avoid IE, it's a reason to avoid those web pages. Would you use a refrigerator that wasn't designed to store vegetables, or would you say 'wtf those engineers are idoits', I thought so.

Re:Make it user-friendly.

[irix]

Furthermore, there are no solid equivalents for popular Windows or Macintosh software packages on Linux or Solaris.

Spoken like someone who has no idea what they are talking about. I use Linux every day all day. Mozilla (Galeon) for browsing, OpenOffice for editing documents that are also edited by colleagues running MSOffice on Windows, gaim for instant messaging, samba for accessing Windows shares, Evolution for email, etc. etc.

What other applications are they likely to require again? Sure, if they need to run some specialized app that is written for Windows (and won't run under Wine) then maybe you might have a problem. Other than that, can the FUD.

Re:Make it user-friendly.

[shepd]

>Or, you could use Internet Explorer for Solaris or HP-UX.

Yes, internet explorer version 5.01. Might I also suggest they use Mosaic for maximum compatibility? ;-)

>The fact remains that Internet Explorer will render all major companies' web sites, whereas Mozilla will not.

I suppose IE 6 will render all Internet Explorer 6 documents, yes. However, IE 5 cannot properly render Internet Explorer 6 documents (a web page ceases to be so as soon as it doesn't follow web standards).

So, you may as well use Mozilla. It can render more sites/documents more faithfully than IE 5.

>Stating that you know Photoshop is infinitely more valuable than stating that you know the GIMP, when you're applying to professional art firms.

That's why you let the art students have machines with Photoshop installed. They all use Macs anyways, so what's the problem?

The rest of the students, such as Mechnical Engineers (for example) are simply not interested in working at an art firm. For these people, GIMP is better, since if they have the occasion to make a little graphic for the company, they can freely download and use the GIMP on the company's machine. Otherwise, it will cost the company many hundreds of dollars which they won't spend.

>Macros are used regularly in large business's documents,

Huh? I work at a government institution, employing hundreds of people. I remember seeing a macro once. I don't call that regular.

>I wouldn't consider tables, charts, and forms to be obscure or rarely-used features.

Then you haven't talked to the users that try them once and go insane trying to format them. For most people, they find it difficult to know what it even means when the icon on their mouse changes from an I-beam to a crop-tool, so they simply avoid these features. If they are using them, they've been trained to do so. Well, I figure, if you can learn it once, then you can learn it twice, twice as fast.

>Call me back in a year or two.

Well, as many others have experienced, we won't call you -- you'll call us. I'll enjoy my $50/hr. Linux tutoring job. And if it never materializes, or I have another job before that (very likely), I'm simply happy to know that I have 5 computers at home and that I can afford the software on all of them.

And, as we've seen, while software piracy will always be with us, its becoming an uphill struggle to even do something as simple as buy one copy of Windows XP for 5 machines, even if you'll be the only user on any of them at a time. It might technically be piracy, but I don't think anyone here would consider copying software onto multiple machines that only you use is wrong.

And no, I really don't care what software the company I work for (that is, unless I start my own business :) uses, as long as I'm not paying for it.

I went full time as a Linux user 2 months ago (up from being a part time user/sysadmin for the past 6-7 years for the linux boxes on my home network), and I've never looked back.

Re:Make it user-friendly.

[beegle]

Hi. I'm one of the support people at CMU. My specialty? Our linux distribution. Disclaimer: I'm speaking for me and me alone. I haven't cleared this with anyone. Don't assume that I'm speaking for CMU or Computing Services or anyone else.

There's no real secret about it. mwm is going away at long last. We'll be using fvwm2 in a configuration that is (hopefully) more novice-friendly without annoying power users too much (if you're interested in testing, drop me a note). For political reasons, we'll probably not change any existing accounts for a while, but we'll offer fvwm2 for new accounts.

Why are we still using mwm? We roll our own distribution. The Andrew Unix environment was conceived back in the 80s when a workstation cost $10k+ and a 100 megabyte disk drive was really quite large (and expensive). It was a way to have standard commands and hundreds of apps across whichever underlying unix flavor you had. Things like AFS came out of this project.

Since then, the goal has been standardization, not innovation. As new flavors of unix appeared, they were dissected and made to resemble the existing Andrew systems. mwm was hot stuff a decade ago, so we're still using it. Why? Mostly, it was money. Porting old stuff is easier (thus, cheaper) than testing, deploying, and supporting new stuff. Plus (and this really shouldn't be underestimated), some of the key decision-makers have been using the old system for a long time and they saw no reason to change it.

We've known that we needed a new WM for a while. Last year, we were mired in a huge and unproductive GNOME vs. KDE flame war. GNOME has awful documentation and changes a lot with each release. It's unsupportable without spending a lot more money. However, the Stallman-worshippers weren't going to tolerate KDE because it had been conceived with impure thoughts of not-sufficiently-free libraries (Guess which side of the debate I was on ;). We were finally able to reach a compromise with fvwm2, so we're testing that now and hope to inflict it on people soon.

Now, management is finally starting to realize that 1) demand for Linux is going up and 2) the version that we offer is inadequate and has been for a while.

There'll be the usual vicious politics for a while, but I'm optimistic. We might finally have support from above to make our version of Linux suck less. Failing that, maybe we can start offering limited support for Red Hat or something else.

Re:Make it user-friendly.

[Erotomek]

I usually find that mozilla doesn't render sites like that poperly because they are in fact not web sites at all.

Very true. If the W3C HTML Validator says "No errors found!" it's HTML — otherwise it's not. Unfortunately most of those clueless webmasters' bosses don't even know that there's such a thing as The World Wide Web Consortium. It's always a Good Thing to send emails to the higher management of companies with broken websites (not to their webmasters as they will probably ignore them) kindly informing that "your website is broken and however it may look good on your computer, it does't work for some people with different configuration (like myself and many of my friends) and you lose part of your customers." Speak to their wallets.

Re:Make it user-friendly.

[the_womble]

Mozilla is still unreliable and doesn't render some sites properly (they were designed for IE; live with it)

Very few - at least I have few problems with Koqueror and very few with Mozilla. I ahve had problems with IE 5 (which i sue at work) not rendering some sites properly (e.g www.w3c.org. The other browsers have advatages that more than outweigh the better testing sites get on IE - e.g. cookie management, seurity, supressing pop-ups etc.

StarOffice is still nowhere close to Microsoft Office.

Only really an issue for those doing Large spreadsheets. For wordprocessing Open Office is just as good for short documets. For long documets I find Lyx a lot better. Even for spreadsheets it is close, if not quite there.

GIMP is no substitute for Photoshop

How many people need photoshop? GIMP is more than adeqaute for most people (may be not professionals).

I use only Linux at home. I have done everying I would do in an office environemnt (excpet alrge spreadsheets. Neither I nor my wife (very much a naive user) ahve had any problems.

Having used Openoffice, Lyx, Mozilla, Konqueror fairly heavilly and a number of other programs lightly we have generally found no disadvantages over Windows. Lyx is wonderful and has definitely won me praise for good presentation on an Open University Course I am doing at the moment. There is a lot of very productive software that Linux encourages one to try even if (as in the case of Lyx) it is also avaiable for Windows.

Friends who use Windows and MacOS have had little diffculty in using Linux when visiting us

the default window manager on Linux and Solaris is mwm (Motif Window Manager), which is absolutely horrible

So your example shows that Linux and Solaris do not work when set up with an unfirendly user manger as default! How informative!

The biggest advantage is that I do not ahve to worry about all those email visuses friends who use windows keep sending me.

Vanderbilt Does This To Some Degree

[1 (smarterThanYou)]

Maybe I was a bit confused by what you are asking, but if you are talking about public computer terminals, running a *nix, where all students have the ability to login and use the computer, Vanderbilt University does this. Not only are there several Windows computers on the campus that will enable any student to login and access his or her online storage space and the internet and whatever applications are available on that particular machine, but there are several iMacs and *nix (running some gui, not sure which one or what distro) computers as well. Did I completely miss the ball on this one? I only read it briefly.

Re:MIT

[Buck2]

I ope this gets modded up because it's just the sort of tongue in cheek humor that this site needs to revive.

'Course I can't mod right now. But HEY.

Simple End User Linux

[CBNobi]

The SEUL is an organization for using Linux for education. There's even a case study section.

@ UC Irvine

[rmassa]

I used to work at UC Irvine and my group was in charge of a public access lab where we used linux machines as X-terminals so that way people could log into any machine serving X11 sessions on the campus network.
One issue that the admistration had was the users breaking into the machines. We auto-spawned X sessions and used the restrict flag in LILO (which allows no special options to be passed to the kernel at boot time e.g linux init=/bin/sh) and we never had any problems. Of course, we also patched the machines whenever there were local or remote security holes via an automated patching system.
Another good idea might be to have the machines reboot, mount a miniroot at night and copy their os partitions over from a central server, similar to what I've seen norton ghost do on windows boxen.

and of course, you can use them for the obligatory parallel computing tasks during the night :)

Project Athena

[Mauler]

What you're describing has been the way
things have worked at MIT for the last
18 years (although with various Unixi,
now including Linux) starting with Project
Athena in the early 80's. Athena is where
we get X Windows and Kerberos.

Australian National University - Redhat

[RedPhoenix]

I can't remember the exact figure, but at a recent Canberra Linux User Group, I was quite surprised at the number of Redhat boxes that a IT team member at ANU mentioned he had deployed (In the hundereds).

I suspect that with this number, things have moved beyond the computer science department.

Quote from a older article:

• "The key feature of Linux is that it is very robust as a result. This means fewer crashes and problems than most other operating systems," Mr Bob Edwards, of the Computer Science Department in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, said.

  He said the strong background in Linux at the ANU made it an ideal environment in which to become an expert programmer.

  "We provide Linux laboratories for students to work on, the staff use Linux and in 2000 we won the Gordon Bell Prize for the fastest Linux machine in the world -- Bunyip," Mr Edwards said. "

ANU - also the home of Tridge from SAMBA, and the Bunyip Beowulf project (http://tux.anu.edu.au/Projects/Beowulf/)

YOU ARE TOTALLY CRAZY LINUX WILL NEVER WORK

[EEEthan]

Just kidding...

Well, at Columbia, they have all these dumb terminals, which run Linux and an X session. They're not bad for checkin' yer mail, but they don't allow you to do much else. For some application where the types of software needed are very limited, I think that it's prolly great.

For the real computers labs, for the non-cs types, they are mostly Windows (NT or some such) or Mac. The NT machines are pretty well locked-down and something like this would be quite easy to achieve; it would probably even be more secure (well maybe) with Linux.

I guess the real thing is choosing software. OpenOffice is alright, but I don't know if random people are actually going to want to write papers with it. I mean, I have, but...well...people might have some issues with their floppies. That's probably the biggest thing. Dang floppies.

You should really use DOS and WordPerfect 5.1, maybe Lotus 1-2-3.

Re:YOU ARE TOTALLY CRAZY LINUX WILL NEVER WORK

[Anonymous Coward]

Those terminals at Columbia are actually remote boot Linux workstions, configured as public access kiosks called ColumbiaNet stations. Locked down, limited purpose, for quick access to web and email, we're running over 150 of them in high traffic locations for years with great success, high uptime, and minimal maintenane.
More info at:
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/facilities/cnet/

At Columbia, we've been running Unix lab machines for 16 years, mainly for Engineering/Science community. Similar to other postings, they are tied to campus id system, NFS mounting central file servers, etc. More info at:

http://www.columbia.edu/acis/facilities/labs/loc at ions/251mudd/

Currently built on Solaris, but prior versions were built on HP/UX, AIX, NeXTStep, BSD 2.9. Linux could be built to perform in a lab environment as long as the appropriate applications are installed to meet student needs and expectations...

Rob Cartolano
Manager, Academic Technologies
Academic Information Systems
Columbia University
rtc@columbia.edu

UTD Does It.

[saveth]

The University of Texas at Dallas does it. There is a lab full of Red Hat Linux computers and Sun Ray terminals.

Though their web site is a bit sparse on details, you could probably shoot an email to a member of the staff. They're friendly people, and I'm sure they'd be willing to help you out.

Re:UTD Does It.

[Trinity-Infinity]

Ironic, of course, that the workstations are in the Arts & Humanities building and not the CS building.

Viruses

[sheriff_p]

You have an advantage in that there are less Linux viruses for your users to inflict on the system, and less 'BonzaiCometGators' as well. This situation could well change in the near future though, as viruses like simile are now cross-platform...

Re:Viruses

[Doppler00]

'BonzaiCometGators' Those programs have been constantly installed on our computer lab systems that run Windows NT. Apparently, there is no possible way to prevent software from being installed on the local systems and starting up automatically. Even if the user does not have any admin passwords they can still install junk programs on the machines. We end up having to reimage systems all the time because of this.

Re:Viruses

[TweeKinDaBahx]

This problem was resolved in 2K. Upgrade.

Anser:

[7-Vodka]

Very feasable. My gf wanted to use my computer. I did a quick adduser and told her to log in.
She's your average windows user, don't ask her about hardware or drivers she just wants browse the web etc.
She had no trouble logging in through kdm.
she had no trouble using the default kde3 setup. All this with no help from me (i wasn't even watching)
She can check her email, browse the web, listen to music and print stuff out (thanks cups + kdeprint).

A couple of months went by, I haven't watched her use it at all...
I asked her the other day, so how do you like linux?
her answer: "It's just like using windows" and "I like the way it looks".

Seems to me unsophisticated users aren't able to set up a kde3 box but they are sure able to use one.

Re:Anser:

[ealar dlanvuli]

I did the same for my brother, he did perfectly fine for about 2 hours, when he thought he was on a windows mod.

Then he asked why his AIM client had diffrent icons. I told him he was in FreeBSD, he hasn't touched the machine since.

I'm actually kinda baffled, but there are alot of people like that. I know lots of people at school who cite reasons other than the only true reason to use windows (that being M$ office, an outstanding program for those who don't know), normally they say "You can't do X in *nix", where X is an activity I do every night.

Oh well

Illinois Institute of Technology

[Shadowhawk]

IIT did this while I was there (maybe before I signed up). Of course, it's a smaller uni, but everyone had a computer login. There were two labs for all students. One was PC, open access, connected to a Novell server. It was used mostly for typing reports. The other lab (in the basement) was direct terminals (pre-vt100) to our intranet (keep in mind, this is 10 years ago). Originally, everyone has an account for email on an acient VAX (ugh, the nightmares). However, after a few years, the bought several vt-320s and moved everyone's account to an Irix server (what a waste). Most people had a standard account name that was used for email (mostly between friends; teachers had no clue how to use it). The formula they used was first 4 characters of last name plus first 3 characters of first name. When a conflict arose, they added 1, 2, etc. I don't think I saw amything beyond 8 characters ever, but many people had shorter ids. It seemed to work well in practice.

We also had pretty fast access to the internet - no port blocking; too many Mud players (me included) and a few Muds that ran on school property (eventually went away; cool admin left). Man, those were nthe days.

Project Athena @ MIT

[ilias]

You may want to check out MIT's project Athena (Academic Computing at MIT). They have been using UNIX machines for the student-wide computing environment which includes all different kinds of applications (word processors, spreadsheets, CAD software, scientific applications, programming environments, instant messenging). There is also a Linux and a NetBSD version of the Athena environment.

I haven't been following the developments but I believe they were looking into introducing more Linux machines in the computer labs and enriching the Athena environment by adopting GNOME.

Perhaps some current MIT student can provide more information.

Here's some links:

An overview

A dated article from the MIT student newspaper.

An FTP server where you can download the Athena software (MIT license)

All of MIT's Clusters are UNIX/Linux

[jpavel]

MIT's Athena computing environment runs on Dell Linux boxes, Sun workstations, and a few IRIX machines, and accounts are granted to all students. These *nix machines, with the exception of a small media cluster, are the only public machines available.

Trust & familiarity

[s20451]

There's a small library near my office where there are four public access terminals. Historically they all ran Windows, but just for a laugh the sysadmin put Linux on one of them; and the users avoided the Linux machine like it was radioactive. They didn't seem to like the "weird" web browsers that it came with (Opera and Mozilla), and they had a hard time adapting to the application launcher, however trivially it seemed to differ from the Windows "Start" button. Non-technical people prefer familiarity and ease of use above all else when using a computer.

What's so new about ...x in public labs?

[magi]

For more than 10 years, practically all university students have gotten a UNIX login, and universities have been full of public terminals for students in labs and in hallways. In some richer universities, they have even had *oooh* X-terminals.

The machines have usually been Sun, but I don't think Linux would be overwhelmingly different from them...

So forgive me if I don't quite understand the question. UNIX has been a feasible solution for all students for years, and there's little reason to believe Linux wouldn't be.

Re:What's so new about ...x in public labs?

[plaa]

For more than 10 years, practically all university students have gotten a UNIX login, and universities have been full of public terminals for students in labs and in hallways. In some richer universities, they have even had *oooh* X-terminals.

The machines have usually been Sun, but I don't think Linux would be overwhelmingly different from them...

For example here at Helsinki University of Technology, there are a lot of UNIX workstations available (mainly Alpha, Sun, i386 on Digital UNIX, SunOS and Linux), as well as several big-iron machines (kosh.hut.fi currently has 785 users logged in). They are now starting concentrate on Linux machines to slowly replace the SunOS/Digital UNIX workstations. There are already at least 6 classrooms filled with Linux boxen, with more on the way. (These are the common rooms, the CS department has of course lots more.)

(There are, of course, also Windows classrooms, but I haven't touched one in many months.)

NMT

[TweeKinDaBahx]

The TCC (Tech Computer Center) has every workstation set up to boot into either win95 (the school has no funding to upgrade) or a semi-custom flavor of Linux. The Linux works well, except for the fact that you have to know how to use SaMBa to print from Linux...

Also, to type papers or anything office related, one has to use windows....

It works well, but would work better if anyone cared to allow easy printing under Linux...

5 Years Old and counting

[colonel]

The Carleton University EngSoc Project is a wholly student-owned and student-run UNIX network at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Once the largest Linux userbase in the world, they've provided Linux shell accounts to every undergraduate Engineering student for at least 7 years.

Since 1996, they've offered a Public Access Lab using donated hardware and space provided by the University. They started off using 486 machines that booted RedHat 3 and NFS mounted from a blazing P90. Then they moved on to using NCD X-Terms. In 1998, Corel Computer donated Netwinder systems for use as the PAL workstations. In 2000, the lab sustained water damage from construction on the roof, and the Netwinders were replaced with ThinkNIC thin clients.

But we don't have any useful literature to provide.

Re:5 Years Old and counting

[irix]

for at least 7 years

Heh, yeah I guess so. I graduated in 1997, and I think I got my first account in the summer of 1995, between 2nd and 3rd year. A real shell account - much better than than I got from CHAT - and a SLIP dialup so I could run Mozilla from home. I even helped write some of the first FAQ - how to use passwd to change your password, etc.

Yeah!

[Mars Hill]

My university uses this already in the Agora (Lakehead U, ON). Pretty popular workstations, and very stable.

Cambridge PWF

[perky]

The University of Cambridge have a system called the public workstation facility. This is comprised of machines in many departments and colleges which can authenticate against a single database, and which provide homespace and so on. I understand that some of these machines are now dual boot between NT/win2k and a home grown linux. More infomation is here.

Tips

[BoneFlower]

1) Use Mandrake. Its the simplest install, and in an educational setup the extra apps that it has can be beneficial, also, due to the wide range of users, having all of Mandrakes bloat can help people find programs that they will find useful.

2) Use KDE/GNOME. Ideally, set it up to boot into X, have KDE/GNOME both installed and the users can select the one they want.

3) Lock down permissions tighter than a Vatican nun.

These tips will produce a perfectly usable system, fairly sturdy against morons trying to(or accidentally) screw up the system or introduce viruses or what have you. And make sure to review the logs, paying special attention to those who use the root account, either with su or by directly logging in

Re:Tips

[BoneFlower]

Sounds like the lab PCs in my A+ class. All were redone off of a ghost image of the one with the most problems(mistake one)and were set up to discard ALL changes when it is restarted. Yes, I mean all. Every time we log in, we have to run the Internet Connection Wizard. The A+ test prep software only works in administrator, and can't be "run as a different user" for some reason, even thge network admin can't get that to work reliably(or just doesn't want to be bothered I think). MS Office goes through the "first use" setup every time we start it, whether the PC was restarted or not.

They were working fine before, but the admin decided that since a porn banner came up accidentally when one of the students was surfing(which said student stood up and admitted it was him when the admin chewed us out) meant the class as a whole was guilty of surfing for porn, and he had to lock the systems down.

Oh... and we need to print out our practice test results. So, we log in as administrator to run the test program. But administrator can't print or successfuly change the permissions to print.

If this course wasn't free, I'd be having a shitfit by now...

problems?

[tps12]

I don't know, at first this seems like the perfect place for Linux. It's inexpensive, morally superior, the list goes on.

But this is a situation where Linux's power might be its undoing. In the physical presence of a Linux box, it is trivial for someone with the proper experience to boot into single-user mode, change the root password, and bam. Suddenly they are sitting in front of the most powerful hacking machine available outside the Pentagon.

Result? Linux gets to be associated even more with hacking, and the spooks start taking an interest in our favorite OS (Linux). And that is some scruteny we don't want, thanks.

In this context, I think shelling out for Windows is the best bet.

Re:problems?

[talks_to_birds]

Wow..

Score: +5 Ingenious troll

Best flawed rationalization for using Window$ I've seen in -- ten minutes?

t_t_b

Re:problems?

[ZorinLynx]

If you set a lilo password, disable booting from anything other than the hard drive, and set a bios password, users will not be able to do that.

Of course, the cracker can cut the security cable, open the box, and set the jumper to override the BIOS password, but if they can do that in a public lab and not be noticed, you have serious physical security issues and need to re-evaluate your plans.

Re:problems?

[Rolo Tomasi]

[...] and the spooks start taking an interest in our favorite OS (Linux).

Uhhh, yes, they have an interest in it, and they seem to like it also.

Re:problems?

[Rolo Tomasi]

Yeah, too bad most BIOSes have manufacturer-default master passwords, the lists of which you can find on the net. You can also invalidate the CMOS data with a five-line assembler program, and gone is your password. There are even more ways. Also, using a Keyghost on such a public computer, you could sniff the passwords of everyone logging in on that machine.

Bottom line: if the computer is physically accessible, it's easily crackable. At least have a login system using encrypted smart cards or something similar where users are required to have physical identification.

And a BIOS password is just a joke.

done and done.

[pmj]

The public computer labs in my university already do this. They dual boot windows and mandrake, but I see more people who just log into KDE rather than reboot into windows.

pmj

University of Bonn

[LatJoor]

The University of Bonn has labs full of computers running SuSE. I was there a couple of years ago. I'm not sure how the students liked it, but after a look at the setup it seemed it was probably much easier to administer. Most people only used the lab for the web.

Re:Good and bad...and the expensive

[jspaleta]

cytrix has a software package to connect to a win2k server...its basically a fancy fancy vnc server/client software set.

So the idea is you need to do productivity stuff...you fire up the virtual desktop from a central win2k server..and view it on the lab computer.

So know you only have to maintain that one central win2k server ( its 2 backups ) instead of a whole lab of windows machines.... of course the licensing issues in this are um...interesting.

-jef

U of Md

[dutky]

University of Maryland has both the WAM and GLUE systems. The WAM labs are computer labs for any student on campus, regardless of major and include a wide range of platforms both in open labs and via dialup. The unix systems arekerberized and share user directories via AFS (Andrew File System). The GLUE labs are a similar architecture but mainly for the use of engineering students. Both projects are production systems but are partially run as research projects in the Comp. Sci. or Engineering departments.

I used to work in the WAM and GLUE labs when I was an undergrad at UMCP, and the folks that managed the systems were pretty friendly, if you can get contact info for the current WAM sysadmins, they can probably give you better pointers. In the mean time, there is a page giving useage statistics for the WAM/GLUE cluster.

MIT Athena

[jaxon6]

Here at MIT, there is a system in place that allows access to any public machine for anybody with credentials. All remote software is under /mit, with homedirs being /mit/user/.../.../xxx. Authentication is Kerberos, remote filespace is AFS. It's called Athena. It's available for Solaris, Irix and Linux, with Solaris and Irix being phased out. Basically it's a RH system with a boatload of custom rpms. Some of the neater ones do auto-updating, so that you can go from a RH6.2 based Athena system to RH7.1 based overnight, no intervention required. Since all user data is remote, it works great. We(biology,biomicro,bioinformatics) are taking this system and making it more usable. A kickstart script gets the latest RH plus updates for installation. Homedirs and maintenance dirs are on nfs, and with kickstarts %postinstall section, a system can be customized perfectly right during install. I recommend this route, as you can add any rpms you want to be installed, and any scripts that you want executed.

www.k12LTSP.org

[QuantumRiff]

check out www.k12LTSP.org. these guys have been doing all sorts of labs for the Portland, OR area schools..

Re:www.k12LTSP.org

[Daengbo]

I'm a regular member of both the K12LTSP and LTSP mailing lists (and have been for over two years) and the K12LTSP.org website is THE place to go for information on this. I run a small lab, but some guys on the list are doing 300-600 clients at public high schools. We're talking productivity software, not programming classes. The distro comes standard with a RH7.3 base, LTSP pre-configured, openoffice1.0, mozilla, icewm with themes for the Windows impaired, and a rdesktop. Oh yeah -- sound and floppy support on the clients, as well, which can be fairly tricky to configure. All this for the measly price of about 50 Mb RAM / client on the server(s). OpenMosix is even an easy option with this stuff. Check out the web site

University of Zurich

[chribo]

The public Computer rooms at the University of Zurich and the e-learning facilities are controlled by Linux and - still - AIX. There are plans to migrate the whole lot to Linux (the public Computers are Mac and PC and will remain that due to the wishes of students). The main reason of still using AIX is the possiblity to index the passwd (nearly 40'000 accounts!) and the better performance of a big IBM server. But this should be managed by a Linux cluster in future.
Details:
http://www.access.unizh.ch and http://www.zi.unizh.ch
(in German but you'll find contacts there).

Re:Mod me down

[TweeKinDaBahx]

it may be a troll, but he has a damned fine point.

Observations from a place that tried this

[Anonymous Coward]

Our college computer room has mainly Windows boxes, a couple of Linux ones, and also a couple of clapped-out Suns running a tty on the console.

The geek students - generally those reading computing science, or sometimes physics, will try the Linux ones for browsing, ssh-ing to another account for email, or opening X-clients (often Matlab) from other machines, and the Suns if they only need to ssh to one other account. If all are taken, they'll open PuTTY on a Windows box.

The majority of students want to do one of three things:
(i) Read email, (ii) Browse the web, (iii) Print out reports/essays

Up till a few years ago, anyone wanting email had to get a shell account and use pine/mutt. Now there is a web-based interface (WING - yuck), and so as far as these students are concerned, (i) falls under (ii).

These students will gravitate towards the windows boxes in order to use IE (for purposes i and ii), or Word (iii). If all the windows ones are taken, they will take a look at the Linux ones - Debian running wdm. Some will not be able to operate the wdm login widget (especially if some joker has left the Action pull-down menu set to something other than Login). Those that do will be confronted by WindowMaker, and click around a bit until they find the root menu.
Those wanting to write/print essays will see the absence of Word, and so more are put off at this point. Some find WordPerfect, and discover that their files can sometimes be read, and may even be able to operate the ``Print'' button, and click ``OK'' in the resulting dialog box without trying to fiddle with the printer settings. Most are put off by the differences with Word, and never use it again.
Those wanting to browse the web/check their email will have a similarly fruitless search for IE, and go for Netscape. (The root menu has an entry labelled ``Mozilla - better Netscape'', which is ignored by all). Again, they are confused that Netscape doesn't look the same as it does under Windows, but normally manage to find their way around.
They will attempt Ctrl-Alt-Del to log out, and notice it does nothing. Some will notice the Exit option on the root menu, and successfully log out. Others will happily leave the machine logged in. (The sysadmin had to remove the wiring behind the power-switch on the front of the box to prevent idiots from rebooting when they couldn't log out, or when Netscape crashed.)

Where was I going with this? Ermm... Oh yes. People will stick to what they know, and the less the new machine is like what they know, the more likely they are to be scared off using it. Those with no computing experience (the ones that haven't been exposed to Windows - yes, there are some) would be quite happy to learn shell-commands, like they did five years ago. Those that have been brought up using Windows will not be able to cope with the slightest difference they might encounter when confronted with a Unix box, and will soon reach the decision that the box is fucked-up. Several times I have been in and used a Linux machine while people were waiting for a Windows one to become free.

Iowa State University

[luphus]

Well, at ISU, they do the Krb4/Krb5/OpenAFS/Hesiod thing, so everyone has a krb login, a home dir in afs space, and account info in hesiod. Where I worked my supervisor and myself (mostly him) set up a lab full of linux boxes that would authenticate against the krb servers (with PAM), grab AFS tokens, and the whole shebang worked pretty darn well.

I've played w/ it some on my own time and its not terribly hard to set up the very same services on a linux box, although I can't claim to have been host to large numbers of users ;)

On a side note, I've been messing w/ a custom login authenticator plugin and a hesiod-ified NetInfo that I put togther and can do the same thing with my OS X box. One day I may even finish it... If anyone else is interested, gimme a holler and I'll work more on it - have been letting it languish for a wee bit.

cheers,
luphus

Re:Iowa State University

[luphus]

Forgot to mention this, but the student body is around 25k + faculty and staff, so their setup is fairly decently sized.

cheers,
luphus

The admin may have to keep a tight reign...

[RyanFenton]

From my distant memories of the dummy terminals at the University of North Dakota's CS department, one person starting a series of forked processes can leave a big hurt on everyone. Not that the setup would be anything like the server-terminal configuration at UND, or that there won't defenses against such problems... but users will find, either directly or indirectly, ways to at least take down individual systems down due to the freedom that such systems have to allow to be useful to a general audience.

That said, Windows and other public systems have all these problems too. If you've ever been in a general student computer lab more than a few times, there's just going to be dead systems every few dozen chairs. You're still going to want to scan any writable medium you've used on the system for malicious programs before you use it after bringing it home, and there's still just going to be problems with the configuration acting differently than even experienced users expect.

The only way I can see to truly prevent many types of problems in a public setting would be to not allow user executables, have a limited interface for most users, and logically ensure that at no path along the bootup, use, and shutdown of a system can a user do anything outside of expected things with the system. That means no boot-from-CD or disk, no systems with access to BIOS settings on bootup, etc, until after login to ensure security - which is likely not possible with most hardware.

Anyway, I have no suggested solution - just issues I see with any public system, including Linux ones. They're not big issues either, considering that most public systems now seem to work fine with their limited security. But not all the advantages touted for Linux will be automatically present in a public system!

:^)

Ryan Fenton

How much functionality do you want?

[connorbd]

As others have pointed out, for the basics it's no big deal. RTF covers a multitude of sins in the document translation world.

Where I used to live, the local library's public systems were (afaik still are) run on Win98. They were hideously unstable (Netscape had a habit of locking out input and requiring restarts). Where I live now, the libraries run Win2k; it's still Windows, but at least it works.

I suggested to the librarians a couple of times that they could run Linux, but both of the tech librarians that I knew were unfriendly and bitchy types, and one of them I got into a heated argument with over a small issue of file translation. Pretty typical of the entire fscking town, if you ask me...

/Brian

AFS or NFS

[gviamont]

The University of Notre Dame and University of Michigan both use an AFS/Kerberos set-up for large volumes of accounts.
Notre Dame offers accounts on their Solaris/SPARC machines to every student at the university. Michigan's CAEN is also an AFS/Kerberos system for the whole College of Engineering.

MIT's Athena project is pretty interesting (and also partially uses an AFS/Kerberos scheme), but it probably won't help you set up a quick public network of Linux machines since it focuses more on the research side of things (not to mention the fact that it's been actively worked on since 1983!).

In general, you will probably want to decide between an AFS/Kerberos set-up or an NFS set-up.

With AFS/Kerberos, you as the administrator would directly control a pool of servers ("Vice") which physically contain the data in every user's account. The client machines ("Venus") would get temporary "tickets" from the central Kerberos server (which you also control) to access their accounts which are stored on Vice.
In the NFS scenario, the physical location of accounts is totally decentralized and distributed across all the machines that users actually work on. This means less work for you as an administrator, but it also means less security since random users' data is actually stored on the disks of the computers in the user pool (in AFS, Vice machines are considered to be "locked in closets" to which only the administrators have physical access). It's good to remember a golden rule, "physical access to a computer always implies root access." Using a tomsrtbt disk for example, you can change the root password on just about any Linux machine with a floppy drive.

Since Vice (in the AFS scheme) computers are presumably kept behind locked doors, you avoid this type of problem. However, AFS is harder to maintain, and you probably have to pay Transarc for a commercial version.

For more info on AFS/Kerberos and NFS, I recommend surfing the ACM Digital Library, in which you can find the seminal papers on these various technologies (if you're an ACM member and have access). You may also be able to find case studies there (which I found to be surprisingly hard to find on the web).

Re:AFS or NFS

[seawall]

Just for the record: There is nothing preventing an NFS administrator from keeping all the NFS servers behind locked doors.

You can also keep the user login data off the workstations for the most part.

That said, Kerberos/AFS (or decendents like CODA) are far more secureable out-of-the-box than NFS is. Maybe more secure than NFS can be.

Re:AFS or NFS

[gviamont]

You're absolutely right. In fact, DCO (the IT administrators for the EECS department at U. of Michigan) do exactly this. As you hinted at though, this isn't as good as using the CODA extensions to AFS, which allows disconnected operations. A few weeks back, the locked up NFS server on which my account resided on here at Michigan went down for over a week, leaving me totally unable to access my files. AFS/CODA would provide disconnected operation and is perhaps more scalable in terms of distributing physical volumes over more than one server.

Re:AFS or NFS

[jeaton]

Carnegie Mellon also provides accounts to everyone on campus on their distributed AFS/Kerberos based system. In fact, AFS was developed as part of "Andrew", Carnegie Mellon's campus-wide computing system.

In the NFS scenario, the physical location of accounts is totally decentralized and distributed across all the machines that users actually work on.

This is not a requirement of NFS. In fact, I've never seen a setup like this anywhere. In every case where I've seen NFS used on a large scale, the NFS servers are kept in a central location, with physical access controlled.

However, AFS is harder to maintain, and you probably have to pay Transarc for a commercial version.

AFS is no harder to maintain in the long run than NFS. AFS generally has a steep learning curve, but once you have it set up, maintaining the system is no harder than on any other system. Also, you don't have to pay Transarc for anything. Check out the OpenAFS project for a free implementation (both client and server).

Re:AFS or NFS

[gviamont]

seawall brought up a good point, and I thought it might be helpful to clarify succinctly the pros (+'s) and cons (-'s) of choosing either AFS or NFS. I definitely would encourage anyone interested to add to these lists because I will probably leave some things out by mistake.

AFS
+ Vice (servers) accessible only by administrators.
+ Cross-cell Kerberos authentication (in theory) allows file transactions across very diverse cells (e.g. copying a file from my Notre Dame account on /afs/nd.edu/ to my Michigan account on /afs/engin.umich.edu/).
+ Optimized callback routines lighten the load on the servers (Vice).
+ Disconnected operation extensions like CODA allow client machines to continue using accounts (in theory they are periodically cached from Vice to Venus) even when the central servers go down.
+ AFS stubs and related structures (fids, volume mappings, etc.) are optimally tuned to allow account access from client machines quickly while being somewhat fault-tolerant.

- AFS server software costs money (from Transarc), though you can get linux client software for free.
- Difficult to maintain without full-time administrators.
- Difficult to install and set up (or so I've heard).

NFS
+ Easy to install, set up, and maintain.
+ FREE.
+ Can probably find more documentation related to use/experience with NFS since more people use it (it's free after all).
+ Can also set up NFS servers that are "locked away" from the general user pool (like Vice in AFS).

- Not as fault-tolerant when you have centralized servers (NFS was originally designed to be decentralized after all).
- Not very optimized in terms of network bandwidth usage and especially server load (compared to AFS).
- May lack technical support (though I'm not sure off hand how good Transarc's support is for AFS).
- May be more difficult to set up NFS/Kerberos than AFS/Kerberos (for large-scale security).

Re:AFS or NFS

[gviamont]

Good point about OpenAFS. I've heard of people having some problems on the server and client side of things with OpenAFS though. Have you heard of any comparisons (performance, usability, installation, etc.) between OpenAFS and the commercial version?

Re:AFS or NFS

[Florian Weimer]

- AFS server software costs money (from Transarc), though you can get linux client software for free.

AFAIK, OpenAFS is a complete implementation, and it is available for a couple of platforms (not just for Linux on the client, and definitely for Linux on the server).

Re:AFS or NFS

[Florian Weimer]

Notre Dame offers accounts on their Solaris/SPARC machines to every student at the university.

I hope they don't offer public console access to their SPARC boxes (Stop-A/Stop-N is your friend).

Re:AFS or NFS

[gviamont]

Heh heh, actually they DO! :)
Those machines have _definitely_ been brutalized on more than one occassion.

I asked jeaton about this... so I've heard of some people having problems with running OpenAFS (not sure if it's performance or correct functionality issues). The Stanford LUG and a couple of other groups have mentioned some of these problems. Do you happen to know how good OpenAFS is compared to the commercial version? It seems like many major institutions/companies running AFS (with the exception of Duke, as an example) use the commercial version. I'm curious how OpenAFS and the Transarc (I guess now IBM Pittsburgh Labs) version compare.

dna lounge

[gnu]

The DNA Lounge, a night club in San Francisco, uses public terminals running linux. He has his source code on the website for the club.

http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/src/kiosk/

I haven't had too many problems

[Nf1nk]

I haven't had too many problems swapping back in forth. At home I use the copy of star office that came with mandrake 8.0 and I have not had any problems with word documents, and the only excell problem I have had was with the curve fit option in calc. The curve fit thing just stopped working, but all of fields and all of my data ported back and forth between me and my lab partner without a hitch. I have heard that there are some fancy features that star office fscks up, but so far the only office file I couldn't open with Star, I couldn't open with M$ office either.

university of tuebingen(germany) uses it

[Anonymous Coward]

the university of tuebingen (germany) uses linux for their computer pools and some of their servers. They are using linux clients, with kerberos authentification and a home on an afs-server.
if you have a question i guess you could send an
email to beratungatzdv.uni-tuebingen.de.

cheers TheSegfault

Kiosks at Columbia

[alue]

Columbia has a number of "ColumbiaNet Kiosk Stations," all of which run Linux, located in the lobbies of nearly every building. The information services department (AcIS) here provides a little bit of information about the kiosks online, but it's nothing to help you get your own set of stations started.

AcIS has some info on its site regarding what software the kiosks are running (Linux 2.2.2 with XFree86 3.3.3 and Window Maker 0.52), but the interface they have isn't just regular Window Maker. They run something that looks home-made; it runs a web browser (Netscape 4.x) and lets you print to any printer on the network, but it doesn't let you access the command line. It seems pretty secure (i.e. users can't tamper with the system, aside from unplugging it), but I recall that you can still get to the console with Ctrl+Alt+Fn.

These stations are easy to use and generally stable. Most of the problems that occur with them involve hardware failures.

Re:Kiosks at Columbia

[Tazzy531]

Also they boot over the network so each that updates only have to be done on the network images rather than at the individual machines. They are very good setup for "kiosk" setup, where you would only use it to quickly check your email, print pages, and hop on AIM Express, but besides that, it's rather limited. [I mean, you probably wouldn't want to stand in front of a kiosk for too long anyways]

University of North Texas has a great kiosk setup

[GrendelT]

University of North Texas has a great kiosk setup around campus with no logins. They also have login terminals in the labs. Very kickin' setup i think.

University of Delaware

[pcmacman]

Everyone here has login access. Mainly because you can get your email through pine, but everyone sets it up through outlook anyways. The only problem with letting everyone have access to the sun machines is that when it comes time for them to actually have to login, many of them have forgotten their passwords, and have no clue on how to use a non graphical interface. One of my roomates had this problem this past year, but had to get onto the system to get his phyc. study schedule. I think that giving everyone access is a good idea, and it also forces people to learn how to use linux.

A few notes

[cly]

- The project started at 1983, probably the earliest among similar projects
- http://web.mit.edu/olh/Welcome/intro.html gives a good description of the history and the system itself

UNIX for the masses

[STeiNBJa]

We use a UNIX based method of accessing the email system here at St. Louis University as well as a web based interface. Although most tend to enjoy the web interface more, almost all are able to utilize the UNIX interface and call up pine to read their mail. Not many seem to mind too much.

LBR/Linux at Vienna University of Technology

[aoe]

As has been pointed out, there are many successful projects using remotely-booted or individually installed computers, a pro-bono student project is now obsolete, but it probably contributed its share in establishing acceptance for free software at TU Wien: the project substituting it (LIZ) is a linux-only solution, it is now impossible to boot windows - compatibility for the terminally addicted is provided via a Citrix Metaframe server farm.

Re:LBR/Linux at Vienna University of Technology

[aoe]

Aargh. This was a long rant about Yet Another Linux Lab from 1996 till now, except the interesting parts in the middle somehow vanished. "I should have used the preview button again" ;-)

Too tired now, most of the links are still there ... 50 ramdisk/nfsroot-clients off p200, 200 off dual-p3 yadda yadda ...

Penn State

[AaronPSU79]

Right now the public computer labs here are W2K and Mac's with a few public unix labs. No one uses the unix labs except engineers and cs guys. Most people don't use the Mac's unless all the windows machines are occupied. So I think among the general student population you're gonna have a hard time getting people using Linux unless a) they are forced to or b) you provide training to incoming students on how to use it and see thats its incorporated into classes.

NC State University

[Cool E]

We use RedHat Linux + openafs and some configuration changes. Our packages are available at kickstart.linux.ncsu.edu . All of our beowolf clusters are running Scyld Linux, which is based off of RedHat Linux.

Western Michigan University

[eadier]

Every student that registers has a account that works on WMUs vms, unix cluster, and public solaris machines. This is a seperate network from the computer science department. It is great going to any lab and being able to use my favorite OS.

If you REALLY want to give access...

[crovira]

If you're really serious about this, try this hole in the wall

You might want to configure a wiki to give people a persistent platform on which to post their views and organize their information.

phpwiki can even organize wiki pages into community calendars.

Go for it!

I run my own community wiki as my part for defeating the bandwidth whores and content killing IP pimps at their own game.

"ghost" & Linux?

[my1wong]

I think one of the most important thing is to have tools cloning PCs (whatever OS). Whoever managing the Lab will not want to do *real* setup for tens of PCs.

I donno, does Ghost work with Linux?
If there exists such kind of tools, then the "implementation feasibility" is good.

Open Office

[Edward Teach]

It rocks and is very MS compatible.

the answer is right here

[onShore_Jake]

have you considered unbreakable linux

There's your answer fishbulb

Anectodal evidence but...

[Random Feature]

it's interesting.

We moved our 15 year old son to a SuSE distribution last year. He had issues because he wasn't sure how to get to his network drives and couldn't get Starcraft running, but after a couple months he was able to install Wine and get Warcraft going (didn't get Starcraft going, much to his dismay).

Four months ago we moved our 8 year old daughter to the same SuSE distro - took away her Windows 98 and made her quit cold turkey. We configured KMail and let her go. She's had NO help and she can create documents, print web pages, browse, and runs some of the KDE games. No complaints from her at all.

So can people get used to it? Even non-geeks? Sure. If an 8-year old child can do it, I would think a college student, regardless of their general computer competency, should be able to do it as well.

Re:Anectodal evidence but...

[ctid]

Nice story.

I've been repeating myself about this for a couple of years now, but I could have predicted that your eight year old would take to it quicker than your fifteen year old. Any person who is given a set of SW to run and who is not in the habit of changing very much on the setup will happily adapt to Linux (or anything else for that matter). For such people (and there are a lot of them in businesses), what OS is run on the desktop will become a matter of cost and reliability. And we all know who will win in the x86 market.

As a general rule, up until you reach the true geek category, the more sophisticated a user, the *more* difficulty they will have switching to Linux.

Re:Anectodal evidence but...

[Random Feature]

You've got a good point there. It took me longer to make the switch because I got frustrated easily. Suddenly, I didn't know how to do X and Y, even though under Windows/DOS I could do it without thinking.

Makes it harder to switch - and stay switched. I've got a friend who's extremely competent in the Windows world. He's planning on switching to Linux in the next few months. It'll be interesting to see how he handles the move. He's just tired of Microsoft and instability, he says. So I'll have to watch and see how he makes the move - could be an interesting documentary, 'cause he's planning on migrating his primary work machine - a laptop.

What are open labs for? Lots of change...

[billstewart]

I'll admit that student computing environments have changed since I was an undergrad - one of the geek fraternities had their own keypunch, but everybody else had to come up to campus to access computers. :-)
Not every college student has a computer, and not every computer is a laptop, and not every laptop has a wireless LAN card (though the latter's become affordable, if the college has the access points). The jobs of an open lab have changed a lot from the days when most work was on terminals connected to a big shared machine, and they'll keep changing as technology changes the affordability and portability of the average student's computing resources, and y'all in the academic-staff business will have to keep hopping, reinventing yourselves, and getting new budgets approved.

So what are they for now?

• Computing with lab assistants, whether they're class-specific TAs or computing-center assistants.
• Collaborative work! Once you've finished Programming 100 and maybe Data Structures 200, much of the important classwork isn't individual - it's either explicitly collaborative projects, or at least study-groups working together on homework, and until everybody's got a wireless laptop, open labs are the most convenient place to do that. Also, if your project involves doing major changes to a machine's operating system, you're not going to do that on your main PC, you're going to do it on a lab machine which can be wiped and rewritten, or at very least on a removable drive.
• Computing near classes - most universities are large enough that dorms aren't right next to classrooms, and campuses are large enough that academic buildings aren't all within a 5-minute walk of each other.
• High-speed network access - many campuses have ethernets or dsl or similar LANs in their dorms, but many don't, and many students don't live in dorms, especially non-freshmen.
• Specialized resources - unlike a few years ago, most interesting projects really _can_ be done with an individual's PC with a fast net connection to appropriate local file servers, but there really are still projects that need larger machines, or special hardware.

UT Dallas

[LinuxInDallas]

UT Dallas has had Redhat machines running in one of their labs for a while now. I only use them when I need to get to a floppy drive though. Damn Sun Rays don't have floppy drives :(

Northern Illinois University

[mythr]

Northern Illinois University was considering implementing Linux in its computer labs. It even got to the point that they hired a specialist to start working on implementing it. Unfortunately, there were some problems with the highers-up, and the project got axed.

Now they're moving to XP, but sticking with Novell for logins and application distribution. Considering the fiasco they had involving Novell's ZenWorks during the Spring semester, I'm not quite sure which part of that combination is the weakest link.

Re:Northern Illinois University

[CromeDome]

Note: this will quickly go OT ;)

Having attended NIU for a semester, I'm not surprised ;) Heaven forbid that they actually within a decade of what's current.

I was enrolled in their CS program for all of a semester. . . at that time (1996), you never did anything related to PCs until late in your third year. Everything else was MVS (not even Unix!!!). Are things still that antiquated?

CromeDome

Re:Northern Illinois University

[mythr]

They finally did get rid of COBOL as a mandatory course, and they're finally offering C++ now. The mainframe stuff is mostly for graduates now. I'm not extremely impressed with the Computer Science department here, but hey, at least you can supplement it with other things. (Unlike, say, DeVry, where I was unfortunate enough to attend for a sem^H^H^H^H trimester)

I'm currently triple-majoring in Computer Science, Physics, and Math. NIU isn't really that bad if you're a masochist like me.

University of Southern California

[Gaurang]

Since there were no mails regarding USC, I thought I would just add one.
Here at USC, the public labs here are filled with three kinds of computers - Win2k, MacOS (sadly no OS X), and Solaris (sadly no Linux).
The sad thing about this all is that except for assignments, everybody uses Win2k/MacOS for regular work. This is sad, and nobody tries using Solaris. They have no other window managers installed also, except CDE. And CDE is not that easy to use for newbies which keeps them away from it.
The ppl who use linux have their own laptops/desktops, and use it from home.
Of course, there are people who are always found on Solaris machines even for regular work! Ppl like me :)

Shouldn't be too hard

[Dynedain]

My university provides every single one of the 30000 students as well as faculty with a single logon that works on WinNT/2k, Mac, and Sun Sparc Stations.

In fact, there are several Sparc stations in each lab and I use them for browsing and email while waiting for a windows machine for 3D Studio.

They're pretty easy to use, and everything that a non-comp sci major would not need is not prominent. Email, Web Browsing, Text editing are all simple prominent buttons. Even changing your personal preferences, backgrounds, etc. is simple.

UNICAMP(Brazil)

[k-s]

Here in Brazil, our best Computer Science University uses Linux Red Hat (6.2,7.0 and 7.2) and Windows NT4 in labs. The servers are SunOS with NFS, YPserver, Samba, SSH and others. It runs well and almost 50% use Linux for non-programming things like surf the web, etc...

They've recently changed the libraries machines OS from Windows to Linux (Autologin and Netscape). Most of people don't care (I think that was because the browser was always Netscape).

Aside of that, If you want it to work fine and people use it, use something that will NOT SHOCK THEM, like KDE3, Gnome or IceWM(if you don't have a good computer) and pre-configure it in a cool way: a menu with things that matter first, desktop icons and some explanation of the basic programs(like mozilla, kmail, evolution, konqueror, galeon).
If you have some processing power, get some cool theme, like Liquid for KDE3(the best), Acqua or Luna (looks like WinXP).

I recommend you to introduce Evolution, Nautilus, Galeon, Kmail, Konqueror and Mozilla first, they're all easy to use.

The server could handle it using NFS and ypserver.

Re:This has been done for years.

[kris0r]

The labs at RPI are now largely Windows; this was a hotly contested issue here about two years ago. However, everyone still has UNIX logins (the RCS servers are mostly either Sun or AIX). There are still a few SGI machines scattered around, and of course the CS department labs all still run Solaris.

In any case, RPI's setup (the core being *nix based) works pretty seamlessly with Win32 terminals and *nix terminals alike.

From Dual-Boot to Linux only

[spiney75]

The Technical University of Vienna switched from dual-boot (Linux/Windows) to Linux only installations in all their computer labs.

One of the reasons for this (apart from costs) was that current Windows versions are obviously not suitable for diskless workstations.

Beware, above links lead to pages in German.

if instant messaging is absolutely necessary...

[squidinkcalligraphy]

... then install jabber; that way u get all IM services, not just AIM.

Keep maintenance scalable

[SgtChaireBourne]

Seems to me unsophisticated users aren't able to set up a kde3 box but they are sure able to use one.

Quite true. I helped get someone else started with Linux-based library and high school labs last year. KDE was more popular than MS-Windows in the labs that still had a MS-Windows machine or two.

Even relatively unsophisticated users can help out with routine maintenance. Plan to be able to allow an automated method (net or CD) to restore default files and configurations or to do a fresh install. This allows people with relatively few technical skills to restore machines or put the icons back.

Don't forget to put a password on the bootloader and / or BIOS so that it's less easy to fiddle with the machine. You want it to boot up normally from the HD or net each time, but not allow custom kernel parameters or booting from the CD, floppy, or unintended places on the net. You may also want to mount some or all of the local file systems read only, to slow the rate of decay. Suse, RedHat, and Mandrake are better each time, but all still have a lot of extra (troublesome) packages mixed in with the default installation. Keep user profiles and home directories on the file server(s).

Find out what the students will be doing and pick relevant packages (Mozilla, Opera, XMMS, xpdf) and be sure to pick out relevant default settings. A lot of the principles listed on Jakob Nielsens's web site are relevant for a desktop as well.

One university I saw last fall in Norway had all of their "MS-Windows" machines running Linux with Metaframe or Wine or something, so that's a good work around for legacy apps like MS-Excel. The University of Michigan has one of the better computing environments I've seen.

Eat this...

[PigleT]

A month or so back I had the unenviable joy of being stuck in Brighton Hospital for a while... Discovered they have machines advertising "www.pienetworks.com" in their cafe area, running Galeon, fvwm{2,95}, just one mouse button, C-A-f1 disabled... the works. Nice to see non-windoze OSs making it into public access terminals.

Of course .....

[HexaHurri]

We had our own computer centre (for non CS students) at IIT Kanpur since a long-long time. They run mostly NFS with HP-UX an Solaris servers. It's really cool to have 24-hour on-campus access to a place running Linux isnt it ;-) ? IMHO , public access linux centres help to create more *nix awareness in the community, and aid tremendously in open source development by non-CS hackers.

In our library

[Puh_der_Baer]

University of Münster, Germany:
Some time ago I went into our library in search for a specific book.
I did not find it, so I went to one of those computers that are in there to use the web-search (www.uni-muenster.de/ulb).
I sat down at one computer and noticed a *really* ugly user interface. Everything in gray, a really ugly task panel at the bottom.
"Typical Windows 95 crap. God, I love my KDE desktop", I thought.
Netscape was running.
I navigated to the search site, typed in the title and the author of the book, clicked "Search" and... woh. Netscape not responding. Freeze.
"Windoze sucks", I thought and hit CTRL-ALT-DEL.
Nothing happened.
"Shit. Windoze _really_ sucks". I clicked "Start" and then "Programs", but the only application listed was Netscape (the computers there are meant to be only for internet search).
No chance to get an explorer window, a task manager, or something else.
I thought: "How nice would it be if this were a Unix box. I would hit CTRL-ALT-ESC and kill netscape and everything would be fine. But this fucking windoze...".
My finger already was on the way to the power button when I noticed something strange...

... Doesnt Windows have a WHITE mouse cursor?
This one was black, just like on my Linux box.
I had a deeper look at the Start button.
Mmhhh. Somehow this Start button was looking wierd, strange. The proportions just seemed not right.
Another deeper look at the window decorations. Looked almost like Windows, but "almost only".
I got this strange feeling that I was being fooled... :-)
I hit CTRL-ALT-ESC. The mouse cursor turned into a death head. I clicked on the netscape window, killed it, clicked Start->Programs->Netscape, and everything was fine again.
That "fucking windoze box" in fact was a Linux box, running fvwm95 or something like that (icewm perhaps?).
And I, using Linux everyday at home, did not notice... :-)

Sun Ray?

[christophersaul]

If you're looking for something that's low cost to admin, have you looked at Sun Ray?

There are numerous Universities out there using Sun Ray.

Linux Kiosks at the Franklin Institute

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I run the network at the Franklin Institute Science Museum. One item we have to contend with is the rather destructive nature of computer users in a public access setting.

We are in the process of replacing Windows bases kiosks with Linux. We were finding it is far too easy to destroy a windows installation, even when locked down to the point of being unusable. (We even went so far as to fabricate a plexiglas cover to block the control keys, f keys, and number pad.) We have not had a single problem with the Linux machines. We even had one set up as a survey kiosk, with a standard unprotected keyboard.

The main difference is that everything in Linux must be turned on, from Ctrl-Alt-Delete on up. Also, at least with RedHat, anything that requires mucking with the system through the X interface also requires the Root password.

If you are looking for some tips on how to set up a lab, and what sort of policies to enforce, the Unix System Administrator's Handbook is chock full of really nifty practical tips and anecdotes. I use my copy daily.

Ideal for open access

[BeCre8iv]

At uni (UK) we use win98% for open areas and 2K for hardcore stuff (gfx/MM etc). Its a nightmare. 1 in 5 98 boxes in the library are down at any one time, the others are full of crap downloads, dodgy wares and the inevitable virus or two. not to mention M$OUTLOOK!! doh Unless you have root you cant trash a linux installation with a few keystrokes. This Virus hoax caused havok http://forum.channel4.com/forums/forum.cgi?forum=c 4news&action=article&topic=1023273859a19320&articl e=1023273859a19320&offset=0 as did registry access via the old-style Morpheus client. A UNIs bandwith is like a hacker magnet. surely Linux is better siuted to this unpredictable environment than 98. As for compatability. What is to stop a uni burning CDs with openOffice, gimp etc for Win32 to distribute at enrolment. Better than the bizzarre mix of pirate or old versions of MSoffice or whatever else students may have and hoping for compatability. and avoiding the macro virus issue. the Linux UI is 100% confugurable, but if its not configured its a nightmare. It would require some time and testing but its not hard to beat a GUI that makes you press the START button to turn the computer off - thus the unevitable problems from users hitting the power button, then the next user skipping scandisk Another consideration is wether your hardware will run post 2000 versions of windows? If not, when 98/ME stops shipping you will have to live without updates, security fixes, drivers and support from whoever you pay to install the machines. If the machine wont run XP, the boxes in your lab are scrap or Linux boxes. As for other examples of large scale linux implimentation you may wish to look to Brazil, Germany or Peru for established state research - or Mexico as how not to do it. http://pimientolinux.com/peru2ms/

Centralized Linux dist maintenance

[peterjhill2002]

As mentioned above, CMU does have a single cross platform logon across campus. One of the nice things they have done with Linux is develop "Andrew Linux" which can be installed over the network with a floppy disk. Once installed, the user does not have to worry about patches, as the Computing Services department has professionals which maintain the software. The workstations run some programs, pckg and depot, or something like that, which do the updates. Users can even set up prefs to determine which apps are stored locally, and which are run over the network. fvwm is in beta testing now, but that doesn't keep people from using wmaker or sawfish or whatever they want. It won't work in the public labs though (afaik). We struggle pretty hard to support alot of different OS's, and I think we do it fairly well.

Who Cares About Windows

[bdoga]

People Use windows apps because that is what they are given in their "labs" or at their home, if the University makes the change they will all eventually just learn to use the applications on the computers on the labs or they will be forced to drive to their homes and use their own windows boxes. Besides that It has been well proven that You can get many of your windows apps to run under linux just fine only using the wine libraries.

Browsing, Browsing, Nothing but Browsing.

[bdoga]

I agree that most people that use the labs mainly browse the web. having at least half of the lab running linux with something like KDE 3.0 and using Konqueror for the browser would be a sinch for anyone to figure out and then you would have greater security and protection from all of the web, viruses and such.

IT Would Work.

Re:Good and bad...and the expensive

[TeaDaemon]

Licencing issues are actually quite easy, each connected client will require a client access licence and an Office licence at the very least, then you need to sort out the Citrix licencing. Even if you use VNC instead of Citrix you still have to pay Microsoft plenty.

This is a good idea for many reasons, but it won't be cheap and still involves using large amounts of M$ second-rate crudware.

Office APPS

[bdoga]

In the first place, Who in the world acutally uses all of the features in MS Office, 1% of the US populace, 99% are either Just using it to View Documents or using the very basic features, ie... Bold Underline Italics etc... as long at the app will open a word or excell or powerpoint document and then allow them to edit it, you are just fine.

Better than windows

[bluGill]

Linux is better than windows. It was designed for multiuser from the ground up. You log in, and you have access to your files, and only your files (with permissions you can modify this, but most lab users won't need to share files anyway). With windows you log in, and you get access to all locally stored programes and files. Want to mess up the comptuer, guess what, Windows give you the rope to hang everyone. Linux only gives root enough rope to hang everyone.

If you have kids, then linux is all the more important. Adults will mostly just use the comptuer for what they want to do. kids will often do their best to destroy the computer. Linux gives you enough protection that kids generally can't destroy the comptuer (if they get good, then openBSD is an option)

I remember high school. Kids all over doing their best to ruin the comptuer system. There was always someone wanting to do a format of whatever disk could be found. Always someone trying to delete critical applications.

Windows is based on a trust model. Macs are the same (I've not worked with OSX though) Linux is assumes that you don't trust yourself. Linux is the only way to go for public machines.

MIT uses Linux terminals

[cananian]

MIT has started using RedHat-based Intel boxes for the public-access terminals (i.e. where people go to check mail and such). They still have a lot of old Suns and SGI boxes lying around, and such, but there are now quite a few Linux terminals, too. The user interface is consistent across architectures, and is nowadays built on GNOME.

schools use unix even if the are using windows

[tymausity_autrocity]

Im a computer science major at the University of Southern Mississippi (yes we have computers here ;) , and a lot of the students here use linux and unix machines all the time. The thing is they use a windows box to ssh or telnet (god forbid) into a *nix machine and then do their work, check email, submit homework, etc. Most of them don't even know that there are graphical interfaces for *nix. You might consider using vnc to let the students get used to an X environment before you switch them over. Or use something like plex86, wine, vmware, etc to supplement windows addictions.

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN!

[1 (smarterThanYou)]

Hmm...if you knew anything about college football you would know that the SEC shares all its earnings from bowl and television appearances evenly among all teams. Vandy raked in about 9.5 million for football alone. Oh, I almost forgot. Considering right now Vanderbilt has the highest single donation record for a major institution from Martha Ingram (several hundred million dollars) and that they charge 35,000 plus per undergrad, I think you would find it hard to argue that they are financially unable to build a computer network.

It definitely can be done

[sparty]

My high school, where I have also taught summer classes, switched to primarily using Linux for school-owned, student-accessed computers. It's been working pretty well, and it's been a definite success in terms of using older hardware; check out the partial documentation, which includes contact info for the admin. In short, my experience was that new students (who arrived for the summer) found what they expected--email and wordprocessing--and were only stumped by the lack of a way to use floppies (which, in the opinion of myself and the admins, was a Good Thing--the danged things are obsolete and a PITA anyhow). The lab uptime was much better, as well. The returning (regular-year) students complained a bit more, but I saw that more as being unhappy with change and a result of not being able to download and play Windows games anymore.