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Building a Linux Computer Lab for Schools?
joseamuniz asks: "After giving Linux classes to Secondary School Teachers, I got in touch with a non-profit organization called UNETE. This association has donated 1,523 computer labs to public schools in Mexico. I told them about Linux, and they are interested in equipping a beta computer lab with this Operating System, with Intel PIII, 256 MB RAM PCs. The more they like this lab, the higher chances to include Linux in the new labs donated by this institution." What hardware configurations and software packages would you install on such a machine to show off the real power of Linux in an educational environment?
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
What educational software packages are available for Linux? Something tells me they haven't ported Oregon Trail to Linux yet.
Windows and Word on a second partition.
Since many students will be playing with the machine, what about a semi-secure desktop that can be administrated easily?
Only 256 megs of ram, so I'd stay away from the heavy guis. I'd probably use the litght weight knoppix (runs with xfce) and limit the number of applications on it. The only thing I'd add is OpenOffice. then I'd install it to the drive.
Either that or I'd run K-12 Linux terminal server project. which is a fine network absed distribution.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Firefox
Make absolutely sure that any software these schools really want to run either has a native Linux version, a practically-idential Linux version, or will run flawlessly under WINE. If the schools can't use the software they want to, it'll leave quite a bad taste in their mouths about Linux.
As much as I love my Gentoo (2 boxes + 1 server running it flawlessly) I think that the setup would be quite scary for them. Though if it was all on the same type of computer, you could make 1 setup, and just copy it from box to box.
But I think Debian or SuSe is more of what they are looking for. Any of the linuxes should be impressive, though, if they are used to Windows:-)
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
It doesn't show off the power, but remember the KDE has a set of "Edutainment" programs of varying quality.
I've personally used some of these for school, and they are quite good. For example, "Logo" is replaced with KTurtle, and there are a few maths programs (KPlot for graphs and Kig for geometry, among others). There are quite a few language tools too. There is an impressive chemistry program which lists the periodic table and information about each element, too.
So KDE includes a great base. More schools should use it (especially when combined with KOffice)
- Jax
Pick a well-known distribution, such as Red Hat or SuSE/Novell, and make all of its bundled packages available. Be sure the students can edit and rebuild the kernel; that is a great draw for future open source coders.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
Have you looked at the K-12 Linux Project yet? Seems like that would be a good place to start.
"Attitude, not aptitude, determines altitude." - Jesse Jackson
Just to preach the common trend, I would suggest Ubuntu for the distro. The base desktop install is exactly what you would need. You get Firefox, Evolution, Gaim and OpenOffice.org. It's a no hassle install, it's Debian and you can get support for it if you want. I wouldn't suggest holding off on Ubuntu until their next release, because it's pretty slick and comes out in about 2 months.
Also, you can get free CD's from them. Just request 100 or so and have them shipped to where ever that organization is. Technically you only need one, but you can give them out to the students if they like it. It comes with a livecd, so they don't have to destroy their home PC.
Well you need it to work in the real world so you need something fun interface (Ubuntu or similar). Make sure you have OpenOffice on there as well as well as Evolution. Basically I know people don't like it but you are playing catch up to MS so you have to make it compatible to some degree otherwise what use does it have in the current business world?
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I have been thinking for a few years now, that Knoppix and USB sticks would work so well in this type of environment. You can easilly roll your own distro, give every kid a 128MB stick, burn a bunch of CDs and never worry about configuration problems or viruses again. It's time to jump on that bus.
"brxref
the open cd
http://theopencd.org/
and GNUWin II
http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/en/index.html
Though the included software is all relatively recent, developement on maintaining GNUWin has halted as of Nov of last year. They are currently looking for contributors who are motivated enough to help lead and continue the project.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
Like it or not, these machines will be rooted or get seriously fouled up at some point. This is actually one area where Linux really shines. You can set up a net boot environment (or live cd) that brings the box to a known good state. Don't keep any real data on these boxes. You don't even HAVE to keep a desktop image. You can NFS mount / if you really wanted too (though it's probably better to have an OS image local that can be over written easily).
This means you'll probably need a more beefey (at least in hard drive space) server that this lab will live off of, but I assume you already knew that.
Zapman
I'm a total newbie to linux, so I'm not qualified to give detailed advice. What I will say, however, is that after playing with lots and lots of different distros, I find Mandrakelinux to be the simplest and most user-friendly introduction to linux. So I would recommend installing Mandrake to give the teachers and students a good flavour for linux with an easy transition. It comes with just about everything you need to get up and working fast.
I will be quick. What OS are they deploying now? I guess it's the one from M$. Connectiva would be OK since it's from neighboring Brazil and has strong foundations in Spanish. If multimedia with the ability of sanely playing streamed radio from the internet is ever considered, do not forget Streamtuner http://www.nongnu.org/streamtuner/. There is no sane way of playing these kinds of streams.
Freeduc is just excellent. I set up a temporary summer lab with recycled machines stateside and set the default language to Spanish. At the end of the summer the students were able to take the machines home. The families of these immigrant students were thrilled. I was thrilled with the cost, plus the fact that I don't have endless calls for help from virii, spyware, etc.
Also, you are quite possibly (probably, even?) trolling. Ah, well.
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
Im afraid most of the educational software taught at the school level is built for windows and wont support other OS's very well. So the primary thing is find out which software is needed by them and get those working on Linux. Not many school children are going to start out running command line programs, or coding in perl and C++. Most likely, they will browse, use rich text editors/spreadsheets, chat apart form educational software. Unless of course, we are talking higer grades, even then, not all of them are going to be computer professionals. -imho
~never play leapfrog with unicorns
I guess it is just me, but it seems windows and linux has started to blur into one another in the last few years.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
Don't go any farther than http://www.k12ltsp.org/. They have the best all around linux solution for k-12 schools. Period.
Should we do this? :(
Linux is still in the domain of the educated user. From what I know of secondary schools here in the states, most people that run computer labs have trouble enough configuring MS products, much less running linux.
Unless the people in the labs know what they are doing, I would stick with something simple.
Microsoft wins again
I can speak from some experience on this. At my university, they had very few Linux machines. The labs that did have them were for our calulus classes. The ran Maple under RedHat. The systems at the time were probably very close to the systems which you describe. They were a pleasure to use. I think Maple would serve to show the power of such a system.
Check out the Linux Terminal Server Project, there are a few education LTSP projects linked in there (example), I think it would make management of the computer lab much more simplier and keep the overall hardware costs down.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Thomas Jefferson High School for Sci./Tech.- this school has an entire computer systems lab with running on Debian, complete with Cray SV1 and cluster of 386's. The lab is run largely by student system administrators who know and learn much about the Linux operating system during their stay at TJ, which helps to prepare them for entry into the business world and tech industry where UNIX based operating systems are the common standard. TJ is a public school located in Fairfax County, Virginia. It also has a Wikipedia entry that goes into more detail than my post here (Sorry for lack of link, but Wikipedia seems to be running slowly for me as of late and I couldn't get the page).
As far as programs, Debian has several, but don't forget to check out Sourceforge and Freshmeat for software.
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
Open office. http://www.openoffice.org/ I use it to open one student's office files and print them (as we are a win/MAC environment), the "only" student who has loaded linux at home and seems serious about it. I have used OO at home to open my MS word docs no problems...Oh, right, I am network support at an international secondary school. IMO a good basic start.
Sig Hansen?
If it's that wide of a scale I'd get a distro with support. Red Hat, SuSe or Unbuntu are rather nice distro's of that nature. With those specs you'll want a lighter interface, XFCE would do nicely. Make sure the basic things are installed, firefox, evolution, OpenOffice.org and the like.
I had a similar setup running RedHat in a school lab. Ran well and the students migrated almost effortlessly. Tried with Debian and Fedora with the same results. It shouldn't be too difficult to show the power.
If you want to have some educational tools on there, try having a few CAD programs, maybe video editing (cinelerra) and I'd suggest Blender 3D. Blender is a big draw to people. At least it was in my lab. Rendering is faster in linux anyway (compared to windows. At least in my experience. I don't know about Mac's.)
Select "Install Everything" (or it's equivalent).
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I disagree. Why should kids use an inferior product merely because the rest of the world uses an inferior product?
Maybe after high school students start getting used to using Linux, and public schools start saving money by switching, it'll give universities an incentive switch too.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I have several people in the office I work for that use Publisher. I have yet to see anything that can even *read* these files, much less do the same thing.
:)
:/
Then again, I may not know what I'm looking for either.
BTW, Gnumeric is a great replacement for XL, but I can't get it to print to my laser printer properly.
EveryDNS. Use it. It works.
AC's need not reply
You have the classic battle between OpenOffice and Microsoft Office.
After just Linux and OpenOffice installed, it will be evident the advantages are much greater than using Microsoft products, namely because of the price. If these guys are donating thousands of computers to schools, reducing software price from $200-300 per unit to $0 is going to enable them to construct out quite a bit more labs.
There are quite a few Gnome applications which would help in everyday usability. Of course, Gnome or KDE would probably be your desktop of choice, especially if the organization is coming off of Microsoft Explorer; keep it familiar to effectively show advantages.
You didn't specify what type of educational environment the labs target, but for programming Anjuta is a great alternative to Microsoft Visual C++.
A few other mentionable applications would include Mozilla Firefox (over Microsoft Internet Explorer), and The Gimp (over Photoshop).
For networking with existing Windows labs, Samba is an effective alternative.
Ok, so, Gould Academy is where I went, and they use linux for everyday use, in the labs, classrooms and even faculty offices. Mostly what students learned to use was IceWM, Konqueror as a file manager, OpenOffice, Mozilla (although Firefox might be a better choice), gAIM (not in class!), the Gimp and xpdf. /home directories would be good.
They didn't have a big budget for the computers, so they used the old 386 (true, I've used them!) and a bunch of old machines, bought a dual Xeon 733 MHz server, and ran LTSP on the whole thing. They had a special file server with a quota of about 1 Gig for students in their home directory, which was plenty, and a separate mail server.
I think that if you install those PIII with LTSP you'll be missing out on responsiveness, so instead maybe install the same distro on all of them, and use a NIS domain for login (with gdm, or even better, Entrance, which is prettier than gdm to look at!) and getting one machine with several drives to use as NFS server for the
Then if you want to start a multimedia class, it turns out a lot of people are actually thrilled when using Blender. A whole bunch of people active on Blender forums right now are not much older than 13. I've basically taught my Linux professor at Gould to use blender, and the Advanced Linux class at the same time.
I think that's plenty of things to show eye-candy and the real horse-power you can get in the managing of such a lab with linux.
Also, most of these programs have spanish localizations, iirc.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
But it seems like educators are going to associate linux with "that free software that's installed on those old free computers" or whatever.
Get 1 or 2 boxes in the lab that are relatively modern, so that they understand that the old p3 with 256M RAM is slower than the teacher's new G5 mac mostly because the old PC is, well, old?
beyond that, the software that is installed depends completely on the software they need. What do they need?
Perhaps that is true for you, but here at URI we have a lot of macs in the labs, and some of the labs have computers that will boot into linux as well as windows.
Nonsense. Computer skills taught in schools should be just that: computer skills. Not 'keyboard shortcuts for Word 97', but skills that can be applied to any computer. Let's face it, any specifics you learn in secondary school are going to be obsolete by the time you get your first job.
An example: My secondary school had a lab full of Apple IIs. By the time I needed my own computer, I bought a Macintosh. % of specifics that weren't obsolete: zero.
make sure you have enough horsepower on those machines to play BZFlag. http://bzflag.org/ Awesome game to play in the lab with friends when you are procrastinating. Trust me, my senior project consisted of many-an-hour playing BZFlag in the CS Linux lab.
Slashdot is kind of like Playboy; we aren't here to read the articles.
R, Octave, gnumeric, gnuplot, gcc, f95, TeX.
I know that Michigan State has MS labs, Solaris labs, and Mac labs. Most of their CS research was done on Solaris. Same thing at University of Michigan.
Granted, not everyone has to use the non-MS labs. But people still do.
There are enough GUI environments that mirror Windows that they won't have to "relearn" the whole OS. And OpenOffice does a good job at being very similar to Word.
If they're learning to admin systems, however, yeah, there is a world of difference...
Those who use only windows at home and at school learn just that, how to use windows.
Force them them to use something else, and they no longer just know how to use windows, but how to use a *computer*.
I've heard it said that the best way to learn how to learn language is to learn many of them. This is why we teach spanish, or why a good CS program should involve several different programming languages.
The concepts for using any OS are the same, and that's what should be taught in school, not exactly where to find what button in Word. You wouldn't say that kids should skip reading Shakespeare because every newspaper in the country is a 100% modern English shop, would you?
In a certain sense I agree with you. I want more people to use linux, and it is a disservice to those students if we force them to use linux to further our own personal opinions or political goals. Ultimately, for them to succeed in the world (at least the current world), they will need to learn MS Windows.
On the other hand, let's give students the credit they deserve. If you provide students with learning both on Windows and linux, they will have a greater skill set when they go onto university and workplace. Since linux can dual-boot, I don't see any problem with teaching them how to use different operating systems. And once they've learned two different OS+GUIs, it won't be hard for them to adapt to new technology (e.g.: they won't be intimidated by a Mac).
This is a vocational school (Business, mechanics, computers, and a couple other areas) where kids from other HS' spend half their day there. The computer teacher instructs them on how to program (C++, web) then going to network infrastructures, computer maintenance. He also has them setup different OS' in an "enterprise" fashion (including Linux, Windows, Unix). He then gives them a chance to do their own project. Teachers have a lot of latitude at times and can come up with some pretty cool things - even if the hardware (big cost) is not there.
:)
They did make an arcade (they even fabricated the arcade box)
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
He meant labs...but remember the US to Mexico conversion rates.
Hi,
We've been sucessfully using Linux in our computer lab for over 3 years now, and while it was a "gamble" when we first decided to go with Linux, I'm proud to say that in looking back we made the right decision.
Our lab and our staff computers run on Mandrake Linux (currently 9.1), though I am entertaining the thought of upgrading to Gentoo in the future (mainly due to the ease of updating our software via emerge).
We saved a bundle of money not only in the initial install of the new computers, but also over the years each time we've upgraded any software. The kids love Linux and I've yet seen a kid that could not use Windows because they were taught using Linux (kids are usually much brighter than we give them credit).
To look at our computer lab, swing by http://www.ghca.com/computers
Mike
So these kids learn on XP, then by the time they graduate, Microsoft switches over to the Longhorn interface. Thus, the kids have to learn an entirely new interface.
The intellegent thing to do is to teach kids using the best tools, not awful tools merely because everyone else uses them.
And let's face it, anyone proficient in Linux/KDE would have no difficulty using any version of Windows.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
that they teach the students the wonders of imagining beowulf clusters of those...
The best thing for them to do is install a K12LTSP system. Only needs one high end PC (and a bunch of PI's), and it just works out of the box. Also has a teriffic support community.
KDE gives you an easy to use environment. They also have some educational software
Firefox
is just one of the most popular browsers.OpenOffice is just a very good office suite which should be more than sufficient for almost all MS Office users.
Python is a programming language that is quite easy to use and has educational roots.
I'll recap, 00squirrel's SOLE basis to use Windows versus Linux was because everyone eles uses it. That's NOT a good reason. If everyone one else uses a knife instead of a screw driver, should I stop using a screw driver too?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
If the hardware is going to be donated, you may have a problem here.
IDK how good Linux hardware support is (especially for Pentium 3-class hardware and contemporary PCI cards). Can you expect to find Linux drivers for whatever 1999-vintage hardware you're being donated?
The local graduate school had an old lab with Pentiums and K6's running Win95 and IE3 for email/web browsing/instant messengers/word processing. Over the year's end, they decided to move on to some Linux distro with IceWM and Mozilla.
The computers are unusable.
There are three different classes of users here. Some of them just can't figure out what to do when Mozilla presents them with a "Choose User Profile" dialog, and leave in frustration. The second class can sort that dialog out, but Mozilla takes so long to load they give up before it even shows up and leave in frustration. The third class will wait until Mozilla loads, and leave soon after in frustration after the computer chokes trying to render some ordinary website -- like Slashdot.
Nevermind the fact that we don't get to use instant messengers or jot down some text. I don't blame the admins; the computers would probably catch fire trying to run Mozilla, Gaim and OOWrite at the same time.
Everyone is unhappy.
Everyone is unhappy and they all hate Linux already, and will always remember Linux as the cheap, slow, inferior solution. I'm considering leaving a few BartPE Windows liveCD's around so someone gets to do something at those computers.
I wish people would stop advocating Linux as a solution for breathing life into outdated equipment. It's not. It's VERY VERY frustrating.
Linux Terminal Server Project. Specifically the K12LTSP variety
http://www.k12ltsp.org/.
Scrounge up the dough for some decent servers and you've got a lab that easy to administer and un pieza de pan to maintain.
Parent was modded Troll, which while understandable is missing the point. He is absolutely correct. Mandrake is easily the most resource hungry distribution out there. I am still running Windows 2000 on a PII 350 with 160 MB RAM and for the most part it gets the job done fairly well. I tried Mandrake on there and it was just pathetic. I had good luck with Debian (Woody), though. Before Fedora came out I also gave Red Hat 9 a try; it was slightly less bloated than Mandrake. All the distributions which turn on all the eye candy are quite sluggish on older hardware. Windows 2000 is very responsive, even with all the features turned on. I haven't tried XP on this machine, but I find it hard to believe it would be worse than Mandrake. Even after turning many of the eye candy features off Mandrake still ran quite slow.
Don't mod somebody down because his opinion is different than yours.
Here is an experiment. Get a PC with specs similar to those in this article. Do a default install of Windows 2000 and Mandrake 10 or Windows XP and Fedora 3. Do some standard computing tasks like word processing (I guess you would need to install Office 2000 / XP for this), web browsing, file management, and maybe some light applications and games. Then come back and tell me which system was more responsive. I guarantee you that it will be Windows.
I know I will get flamed for this, but the truth speaks for itself. Try it for yourself.
For the most part, 90% of post-install Linux (this is an important distinction) is nearly identical to Windows. Point and click interfaces, office programs, web browsing and email aren't too much different when switching from Linux to Windows. The "hardest" part of most Linux distributions is installation and knowing which software packages to install (KOffice or OpenOffice or Abiword as an example, if the user even knows what they're looking for). The key point to using Linux in this situation is saving money on deployment. If Microsoft is donating copies of Windows to be used in these labs then I can see going with Windows. If using Linux would save money for the charity, then Linux all the way.
I traded all my mod points for these magic beans.
Okay, here we go.
s clone?
Libranet Linux, stripped down from install.
Install KDE and Gnome. Run the system with one of the 2, your choice.
Then, install:
KDE's educational packages
Gnome's educational packages
Abiword, Openoffice, Gnucash, Gnumeric.
Kstars also works.
Also include some games, like:
Tuxracer (if their 3d will support it)
TuxPaint
Pingus
FrozenBubble
Tetris/Tetri
whatever else seems appropriate.
Also find out from the school what kind of educational software they use and find some decent clones of what they have. Then make 1 machine, image it, and push the images to the other ones.
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
Just a fact of life folks!
Actually, you left out a bit.
Just a self-fulfilling fact of life folks!
This kind of retarded attitude discourages _computer_ literacy and distorts it into Microsoft literacy -- and often the "literacy" bit is still an overstatement.
Giving the computers in the first place is great, and in no way a disservice. Even if every single kid using them never touches Linux again, they will still be served by the exposure to variety in computing. It will help them differentiate between what a computer does and what Windows does. It helps to show that Word, IE, et al are programs, not integral parts of "the computer" in general.
There is so much more to life than basic Office functionality, as I'm sure you're already well aware. Even said basic Office awareness is aided by having a clearer understanding of the machines on which one works.
Sharpies don't just sniff themselves.
The CDs are free but shipping isn't.
My uni has 50%+ Macs in the dorm comp labs (rest was Windows) and a lot of Linux/Unix/Solaris in the various labs around campus.
In fact, every university lab that I have visited is a 100% Microsoft shop.
You havn't been to the College of Computing computer lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology then. It has about 75-100 computers and dual boots RedHat and Windows 2000. Interestingly, most of the time you will find that the students actually prefer RedHat, and if you want to boot into Windows you will have to restart. Granted, this lab is mostly used by CS majors since it is located in the College of Computing, but Linux obviously doesn't prohibit them from getting real work done at all. In fact, one of the indroductory courses (used to be called CS 2130, it has been morphed into something new now) requires the use of Linux in the lab.
http://almostsmart.com
I concur with my fellow slashdoters that LTSP or some thin client setup would be the easiest to manage. If you really need additional Windows programs, wine or crossover work beautifully. If we are geographically close to one another, I would be more than willing to help as I have done this before.
Join me in iClod. (http://www.iclod.com/)
There is in fact a debian-based linux distro being developed which is targeted directly at schools.
Take a look at the Skolelinux project at http://www.skolelinux.org/portal/index_html
Look! No sig!
What do they need to do their job of teaching?
Spreadsheet?
Word processor?
Presentation?
Graphics?
Photo editing?
Programming languages?
Internet technologies?
If you know what classes the labs are supporting, you should be able to know what you need to install. It also probably goes without saying that you need to provide good documentation (or scripts) as to how to configure the machines since you probably can't be around all the time.
That's all well and good if all they need to learn is Office or Windows security, but if you want to learn about computers, I would think Linux might be better suited. It seems that with Linux, you can interact with the computer on a more basic(excuse the pun) level.
What?
No, but remember, non-geeks just want to get work done. They don't care about Linux vs. Windows or how much more intelligent and ethical Linux users are. So if we teach students Linux in high school, great, they'll know Linux. But what happens when they get to college and can't find a single Linux computer to work on? They have to re-learn Windows and Word. Something most non-technical majors don't want, or need, to deal with.
And then guess what? They're opinion of Linux is going to be even more negative!
I really don't think this is such a big issue. Now if we're talking about something truly MS-centric, like using Visual Basic to automate something between Word and Excel, then yes, they would be better served with MS products. However since 99% of MS Office users' only use of Visual Basic is to infect their system with worms, it's not a big issue.
Most all of the constructs between X / Windows, MS Office / Open Office, etc are similar enough that a typical person can quickly adjust between the two. In fact, the differences between OO and MS Office apps are no greater than the amount of changes a user experiences when going from an old version of MS office (say 97) to a newer version (like 2000).
My impression is that the lab would be used for educational uses, as opposed to "computer literacy" (ie How to use Microsoft Windows (c))".
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
I don't think they would have any problems learning the Windows/Office combination should that really be necessary. However I don't think I can look far enough into the future to see what will be used in colleges then (Our German University has about a 4:1 Unix:Windows Ratio in the public student access computer rooms) and neither should you. Might be Windows, might be Linux, might be Mac OS or something totally different.
Linux is not Windows
It apparently runs if buggily according to this report.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Fine, let's buy a copy of XP for each student. Then when they graduate they have to learn Longhorn's entirely new interface. What should those students do then?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
This is not news. This is a posting for a Linux help forum. There is so much going on in the technology world that I can not believe that this is the best story you could find. Intel is killing Tukwila http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/24/intel_nick s_tukwila/ and we are reading about what software we think they should load on a Linux box for an educational computer lab. The odd thing is that the people involved are not even reading this!
My sigs offend the max # of people all over the world, regardless of race, religion, color, sex or creed. It's a gift.
Make them build Linux From Scratch. They'll learn a lot that way.
Reject Fear - Embrace Hope
While I don't disagree entirely, I will say that your experience is very limited. At the school I went to there are at least 5 unix labs I can think of, several linux labs and several more labs with a mix of intel boxes (with Windows) and unix/linux boxes. As far as I can remember, the only "Windows only" lab was the library and that was limited to browsing the card catalog online.
I will disagree that teaching alternatives to Windows is an injustice. Yes it may be a little awkward but it's not that difficult for most people to go from OpenOffice back to MSOffice or vice versa. Once you understand one, you more or less understand the other until you're an "advanced" user, which most people don't ever learn to be.
Setting up a lab that has the same basic look and feel of the windows desktop (KDE for example) and using OpenOffice makes things nearly seemless for the computer illiterate. Furthermore, there are versions of OpenOffice and Firefox etc. for windows so there isn't really any confusion. The students can use the linux version at school and the windows version anywhere they need to.
bkr
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
I'm doing this exact thing in a series of labs around arizona,USA. Through years of experience I can tell you not to go with these thin desktops. Go for features, go for KDE. It'll run reasonably well on half the power you're throwing at it but even if it did lag, you'd still want it because your users are probably used to M$, and if you ever have to say "well, this system doesn't do that"........You're cooked.
These people you're selling the thing to are not slashdotters. They just want pretty.
Forget about distro arguments, forget about how cool kdeedu is, forget about how amazing (whatever, I don't use gnome, but I'm sure there is something).
Concentrate on the fact that you have slow machines running undocumented software that are being demonstrated by people who do not know the software. Every one of those issues needs to be resolved, and if you want the lab to be a real success then aim for the goal of making everything run smoothly every time.
The machines will feel slow, so you will have to work around this somehow or choose a light wm and cope with the added complexity it brings. The software is mimimally documented, and what documentation exists will need to be rewritten for your target level and language. Think howtos with step by step screenshots -- the reason cheesy computer courses use those is because they work... And the teachers need more than just a training course if you expect things to go well, they need a depth of experience.
So to start with the hardware. Linspire does not run well on a typical 500MHz machine because it needs more ram. Decide for each major choice (distro, window manager) how slow it is, and if it will feel better if you choose the fast but hard option or the slow but easy option. Generally, people who haven't used 3GHz computers cope with slowness more, so decide based on their experience rather than yours. If the machines have high ram I would go with KDE, low ram and I'd go with enlightenment or similar.
Next, concentrate on making sure every single thing these people want to do will work flawlessly first time. Make the documentation perfect. In many ways, the docs will be more important than the software.
Now you have the computer side working, concentrate on teaching the teachers to the point that they feel 100% comfortable. It is important at this point that no changes happen to the software. If the teachers just know how to do their lesson but don't feel comfortable then that discomfort will show strongly.
I hate to say it, but this sort of project is a lot of work even with awesome software running on blazingly fast machines. You're not targetting geeks who will overlook details such as user interface or docs because a program is cool. Of course, if you drop your standards and just deliver something that will appeal to geeks, well that's pretty easy with linux.
If you do manage to get the software, training materials and educators all working smoothly, then don't change a thing. Say openoffice 2.0 comes out and would fix a number of issues, ignore it! You can only retrain geeks fast, not people. You'd break your howto with items shifting menus or even just icons being tweaked. You'd upset your educators who don't have the depth of experience in software to cope.
Oh, and please publush everything at this point -- collaborative development doesn't just apply to software.
Good luck.
With limited RAM on the desktop machines, it might pay off to run heavy apps on dedicated servers.
Isn't it obvious? Linspire.
You're arguing that schools should stick with Windows so when they graduate they'll be able to use Windows.
BUT, Windows itself changes. Longhorn will have an eniterly different interface than XP. Thus, there is no reason to train kids on XP because Longhorn will be different.
If the kids are going to learn something different anyway after graduation, we might was well teach them on Linux as it is a HECK of a lot cheaper for our broke schools.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Software for a school lab installation's pretty similar to what you'd want in a normal business.
I used to help admin a high school windows lab, and let me say this:
1) Most edutainment software, while entertaining, is really kind of a silly use for the systems. The only place it really helps is to get little kids used to using a mouse.
2) You almost never find specialty software useful after elementary school.
A good high school workstation needs:
1) A web browser - Firefox or Konqueror
2) An office suite - OpenOffice.org
3) A graphics editor - The Gimp
4) A code editor - Take your pick. I'd say something a bit easier to use for a beginning coder/HTML writer, though
Moreover, there should be a few systems in the school with
1) A dv movie editor - no idea on linux
2) An audio editor - ditto
3) Science tools for conducting lab experiments
If someone else wants to fill in those gaps, go ahead.
These obviously go where you'd need that specialization.
That's about it. What's *more* important for a lab is a system to deal with the fact that KIDS LIKE TO MESS WITH COMPUTERS.
They will change the desktop, delete important files, install crap, put keyloggers on just to play around, etc, etc.
There are a few ways to fix this:
1) Use restricted users or special software to keep them from doing any of it.
2) Have a script to re-image the machine every night.
I strongly recommend a combination of the two, leaning toward the second one. It works a lot better, and doesn't constantly annoy the students either.
I'll leave it to the linux gurus to suggest how you actually do this in linux, but I know that it can be done reasonably, and that these are the most important aspects of a high school computer lab. I think that any install recommended for this purpose doesn't need to show any flashy about linux, or how the students can compile their own kernels (although that is fun), but how it can set up an easy to use and maintainable lab much cheaper and simpler than doing the same thing in windows.
Especially push the "no MS Audits" thing. We used to waste *SO* much time worrying about those. According to my teacher, if we got caught with one unlicensed copy of anything on a system, they were legally allowed to confiscate the entire lab (although I was never entirely clear on who "they" were). Not having to keep track of MS serials sounds like plenty of reason for a switch to me, especially since you never use any of the special capabilities of Word or excel in high school that make OpenOffice migration difficult in the business world.
Retraining workers (and admins) to use Linux is expensive. If they know Linux already then it's another story.
That web browser seemed to work well for me. I don't know much about Linux either.
God spoke to me.
Actually, even though my PC Lab is predominantly MS, I think teaching students to use just one OS is an injustice. When the kids in the early grades graduate, who knows what the predominant OS will be?
When I was in 6th Grade, TRS-80s were in my grade school. For 8th Grade "Graduation", I got my own C-64. In High School, I used TRS-80s at one school, and Apple II's at another. A friend had one of those IBM PCs; you know, a PC JR?
I know that architecture and OS's really aren't evolving as drastically as they did then, but I hope you get my point. I'm more concerned about my students learning concepts than specifics. If my goal is for them to be able to use a word processor, we use both Word and OpenOffice. If my goal is for them to be able to make a web page, we use DreamWeaver and Notepad.
It should be easy enough for non-geeks to look for a word processor or web browser icon on the desktop, if the flavor of Linux is set up properly. Taking the time to get 1 install right is worth it, when setting up a lab of identical machines. I only have 20 PCs in our biggest lab (we're a small private school), but I still make a recovery DVD that I can use to re-image a system and have it usable for a class.
Obviously, with OSS, the legal hassles that can occur with multiple PCs using the same image are minimal.
And if Windows/Office are that much easier to use, then it should be no big deal for them to learn to use them when they reach university.
Why do I use MS so much if I feel this way? Private schools are forced to choose between what is best and what the parents think is best for the students. I must balance cost-effectiveness with what parents will demand their children have access to.
openoffice and firefox
- Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
Oh yeah, sales figures are THE standard of quality. I guess by your definition the best US-built car of all time was the Ford Escort!
Linux is better because it is cheaper, which is important for our broke and nearly broke school. Anything you can do in Windows you can do in Linux. And schools would not have to worry about viruses and spyware.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Teach them Logo! I started out with Logo back in 82, so if was goo enough for me, it is good enough for them! PU PD!
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
his non-xwin education served him well I see.
Check out Skolelinux (Distrowatch page) (Linux for schools, Norwegian name). Made to work perfectly with LTSP, and based on debian stable. On the install cd you can choose to install the Skolelinux server or thin clients, or a standalone install. Plenty of educational software availible. The thin client install runs fine on older hardware. Give it a try.
Gentoo Linux with portage on a central network shared partition. Also, compile packages/kernels on one machine, distribute them across the network.
Keep in mind that the most valuable source of information about what your users want is the users themselves.
./ could provide a good starting point, but an iterative feedback and update process is essential to developing a great product.
Advice from
If the developer has a good eye, sometimes he can provide feedback to himself on his own work. But often we become to familiar with our own work to see it as would the average user. Furthermore, your own background may be too dissimilar from that Mexican teachers and school child to judge on their behalf what constitues a good user experience.
Give students and teachers something, ask them what is working, what's not, what do they need that is not provided. Fix it. Repeat.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
And what do they do when (pick your favorite Linux UI) changes? Geez! That's the stupidest argument I've ever heard!
It might be interesting to show people a dual-boot system with Windows XP, so when they complain about Linux loading slowly, they can eat it. Especially P3s with 256MB RAM.
I would use Ubuntu. Based on Debian, and easy to use out of the box. I have an unsettled grudge with them, but they're the most viable option I've used. I haven't used Libranet. I would avoid RPMs.
Gnome is great with its desktop and ability to automount drives, extensive plugins and easy themeability.
XFCE4 is very lightweight and well-integrated. If not, a well-configured ROX environment running on a WM that integrates well (like PekWM, Openbox) would be sufficient.
Openoffice is bulky, but it's parallel to MS Office. I would use it.
Firefox. Maybe there are lighter weight browsers, I just like firefox. Java VM and Flash install are all but required for modern browsing.
Evolution is a snazzy mail-client, but I think it might be better to go a lighter weight route. Thunderbird is great.
The GIMP
Inkscape
Please stop stalking me, bro.
ChemTool ( available from http://ruby.chemie.uni-freiburg.de/~martin/chemtoo l/) is a good one to have for educational purposes; it should be installed by default, but also make sure kalzium is available...
RW
If you have control over what kind of computers (new ones) go in you can run them as thin clients. Control of the hardware platform makes it very easy to build a network-boot kind of system - using PXE boot and diskless clients.
But it looks like you have a plethora of computers, donated by a large group of donors. In other words: different kinds of computers with different hardware installed, etc. In this case especially you will be able to benefit from what others have done before you. Look for instance at some of the Linux distros like knoppix. These simply work out-of-the-box on a whole slew of computers and are well tested by thousands of volunteers.
You will need to decide many things:
- Does a centrally managed lab work for you? (i.e. not too many one-offs)
- Do you need local disk? Can you use network disk instead?
- do you need NFS (auto)mounted home directories?
- Can your machines boot from the network using BIOS settings?
- Else, can they boot from the network after booting from some kind of local storage (USB key, local disk)
Good luck!Second, the best distro would likely be Fedora Core or SuSE, as these are "friendly" and geared towards the non-technical folk. Maintenance is relatively easy, stability is generally good and security seems to be fairly well taken care of.
Third, you absolutely, definitely, without question need software that can interact with Windows software and systems. That means you want Samba installed (probably as server as well as client), Open Office, Terminal Services, Evolution and readers for the various Microsoft codecs. If you want a lot of web-based activity, you'll want to make sure browsers support PDF, Flash, Shockwave and preferaby JScript.
Depending on the age-range of the student, and the activities they'll be wanting to use the computer for, you will likely want to install software developed by a variety of Universities, research laboratories and scientific institutions. What you ideally want to do is ensure the students come away with the feeling that Real Stuff can be done on any home computer, even if it is slower than NASA's latest supercomputer.
(This is vital. The biggest single turn-off in education is to come across as irrelevent factoid-pumping or useless trivia. It doesn't matter if the students end up using the programs in class or afterwards, what matters is that they don't feel they're wasting their time learning about - or with - computers.)
If you get the chance, I'd suggest installing either grid software or clustering software, plus a demo that wanders from screen to screen. That is likely to hold the attention of brighter students, who will likely want to learn how that's done so that they can do better. Again, it's all to do with interest levels.
The key with students is that you need to make a subject or a technology a drug of choice. They must want to get hooked on it and must want more so badly they can taste it. That is how you get them engaged and that is how you get them to do more than sit around like stuffed dummies.
Of course, you COULD treat them like stuffed dummies. At that point, you could save yourself time and effort by installing empty boxes rather than computers. They won't notice the difference, in that state.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
As well as OO, look into AbiWord and Gnumeric. I find them much faster than OO, easier to install
and maintain, tpam.
Personally, I think that your first priority should be quality of the educational experience and creating an environment where students can gain skills that will help them in the real world, rather than making a political statement about the power of linux. And before the flames start, I'm not saying install windows. I am saying that IMHO you should spend more time selecting a quality word processor, spreadsheet, graphics editor, etc, rather than being concerned with which window manager you're running.
Unless its for a class about Linux, or your plan on teaching the kids Linux its best to stick with Mac for elemantary students and Windows for secondary ones. One problem Linux does have is that its written fro geeks by geeks and although some Microsoft programs are buggy and what not the reason they cost $ is because MS researches the best way to buid a interface. If you sit a kid in from of a Linux workstation and expect him to know how to use it then your wrong
the skolelinux/debian-edu project is made for exactly this purpose.
Highligths include: Centralized system management, user administration and storage.Scales easily. Uses the excelent LTSP packages to provide support for thin clients. very easy install.
sepski
In fact, every university lab that I have visited is a 100% Microsoft shop
Huh? I did 99% of my CS university degree on Solaris Unix.
I would agree. The best tool is to swindle relatively resourceful a non-geek into being your guinea pig, install Linux for them, teach them a couple things, and leave until they call you.
Then you'll know.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
K12Linux
I'll back up. And I suggest you read this REAL slow.
The original poster, 00squirrel, made the argument that students should be taught on Windows because they will almost certainly use Windows after graduation.
I pointed out that it makes no sense, as Windows itself will change.
I know KDE will change. I know all tools change. Thus, we should teach using the best tools available. And considering that Linux is cheaper, much cheaper. It is not susceptible to spyware and viruses. And can do any thing Windows can do, Linux is the best tool for kids.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I like astronomy and such so a program like Celestia seems like a good addition to me.
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
Good luck, lots of other good advice here.
Regards
Wax on, wax off baby!
So, negative moderators of the parent post, please explain to me how Mexican students are served by being force-fed a marginally-used OS in favor of one that is used by almost everybody in the business world?
Please set aside the "M$ is teh suck!" arguments for a moment. These are kids that likely don't have a lot of educational resources available to them. And while Linux is the less costly option, what will become of students who graduate and either get a job or go to college at a place that only uses Windows?
As others have suggested, teach students BOTH Windows and Linux. Excluding Windows from their education only serves OSS zealots with an agenda.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
You GOT TO get it
- Centrally authenticated
- Centrally managed (updates, new software installations)
- Work with the rest! (File & Printer shares)
because that is what the Windowses do nowadays with quite an ease. If you don't, no one will want extra burden from your tweaks.
The question you pose has been brought up many times before. There are many good answers, and this is really a place that Linux shines. The people who know most of the answers are the people on the mailing lists. You will really be able to find some kindred souls there.
r ge.net/
Useful links:
http://www.seul.org/edu/
http://schoolfo
http://k12ltsp.org/
Here at the Idaho State University College of Engineering, I run the CS facilities. We built our student labs out of old "freebie" computers that other departments wanted to get rid of. They run as xterms, and about 24 stations connect to a central dual Opteron 246 system (gigabit to the switch, 100Mbit to the terminals, fast RAIDed storage)
In practice, for anything but serious number crunching, the end-user performance of using the system as an xterm connected to a powerful central system is far snappier than running things locally. For anything but multimedia, the 100mbit X11 remote display gives a blazing fast GUI.
Our xterms run fine with 64-128M of RAM, and that's without trying particularly hard to strip down the versions of Linux we run on them. With 256M, we could run OpenMosix on them and leverage their spare CPU cycles as a cluster.
Anyway just some ideas you could consider.
Unreasonable logic. I think I know some about something about longhorn and microsoft's interfaces in general. They will follow similar GUI descriptions and learning it will be 100 times easier than shifting to Linux. -I am OS neutral btw
~never play leapfrog with unicorns
In fact, every university lab that I have visited is a 100% Microsoft shop.
Here at Swarthmore college, all the CS students work in a linux lab, and there is also a Mac lab. With the other computers, Macs and Windows PC's are about equal. Any university with a decent CS program will most likely have a linux lab. I can only guess that you haven't visited many places.
It's an injustice to teach kids Linux, especially the non-geeks. Non-geeks just want to get work done,
Why, you can't get any work done on a linux machine? Have you even seen a linux machine? Once linux is (properly) installed, any idiot can use it. While MSWord might be better than OpenOffice, for my general use I find Linux much more useful. Also the 3-button mouse gives the GUI a little edge.
and when they hit college they are going to have to relearn Windows/Office to get their assignments done.
Why, because they still won't be able to get anything done in Linux?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
On the other hand, if someone is teaching a CS class (either high school or college level), teaching multiple OSes will benefit the students more rather than harm them. In actuality, teaching only one OS places restrictions on career options for students once they move into the real world. Part of the reason I got the job I have now was my knowledge of Unix and Windows. Along the way I learned Linux and OS X (which is really just another version of Unix underneath) and I find switching between the various desktop environments not that difficult.
I am a firm believer that if users are exposed to similar applications, regardless of the OS it runs on, they will adapt and "get work done". The problem is, most users do not get exposed to "alternative" OS environments, and thus have no basis for comparison.
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
Great, now Microsoft has just read about it, and is currently talking to the Mexican president to outlaw Linux from the country.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
I don't wanna sound like a troll or anything but realistically, shouldn't you be teaching windows to students before linux. sure linux is cool, but students would benefit much more from having skills in windows.
Here's a guy who setup a 20-computer lab with Mandrake Linux, KDE, KTouch, TuxTyping, etc. for his school.
Linux from Kindergarten to High School
I set up a 100-node Linux infrastructure for a charter school, with a custom-built server and firewall on the backend and surplus or donated PCs as clients. The niftiest thing was making roaming logons possible; any student could access his/her desktop from any machine on the network (all home directories were on the main server). It was a simple matter of using NFS and NIS to do this. We had nice high-end HP switches, 200 drops, and about two miles of ethernet pulled throughout the building, so the network was quite fast and uncongested. A lot of applications could be run the server's /usr/local, which was also shared out by NFS. We had Samba running as well for the Windows users (mainly clerical staff), and after I left the project, the admins added Macintosh support. OUr main problem was flaky hardware on the client side; otherwise, it worked like a dream and I challenge you to repreoduce any like it on a Windows platform.
*** "Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden". -- Rosa Luxemburg ***
Linux Case Study - Orwell High School
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
You did say PUBLIC school, right? Really, they'll be thrilled to have anything that works. All but the most poor send their children to private school. The public school teachers probably send their own children to private school. So, it's great that the public school get anything at all.
--Jim (me)
I disagree. This mentality is the largest problem. Teaching these students to function in a Linux environment and use Linux tools is certainly not a disservice.
I do agree that teaching them exclusively in Linux is a disservice. Indoctrinating students into Linux is equally as bad as indoctrinating them into Windows. Basic literacy should include exposure to both environments (possibly even MacOS) so students appreciate the scope of what is available.
OK before anything, I'd ask the guys to forget all that bullshit about sombreros and guys wearing sandals.
I live in Mexico City and we're SURROUNDED by "ducky" schools teaching you to be a "computer technician bachelor", and they teach you Windows, Word, and all that crap.
You can find cybercafe's every 2 or 3 blocks.
People in here use MS Word to use their homeworks. Go to a cafe and you'll see thousands of "Learn Word" books, booklets, magazines, etc. You can buy the tutorials off the streets.
Children in elementary already use Word for their homeworks. Most kids I know already got a MSN account (just don't ask me about their grammar or *shudder* spelling).
In other words, no, we don't need any more Microsoft training, thank you.
And with the current trends, Linux will be much more popular 10 years from now. Want to prepare them for the future? Teach them Linux.
>>For education you dont need Xwindows. Command lines is fast on PIII.
;) I actually found midnight commander but miss typing mv.
>Grammar is helpful though.
And A typo in unix will get you another command
--
And they're all running on old donated computers. The average computer in our lab is a PII 200-300 MHz with 128-256 RAM. The two things we purchased were a powerful Dell server with lots of RAM (2 GB) and new network cards (which we bought in bulk). We have about 20 computers in our lab and a couple of class computers that run off of the LTSP server. At first we had to do lots of tweaking and modifications, but now it runs beautifully! Our other lab is a Windows lab which we have to update regularly. We still have to update the LTSP server, but that is just one computer -- it is a pain to update virus software, windows updates, and other software updates for 20+ computers several times a month. We've spent much less time maintaining the LTSP lab than the Windows lab.
This is just my own personal experience with Linux and K12LTSP. I never really used Linux before this project, and have learned a lot since. Thankfully, some people have experienced the same problems as me in the past and the solutions have been resolved. There are also some things I wish I could change, but that's for another discussion board.
Check out the websites for more information on K12LTSP or the Linux Terminal Server Project in general.
I saw that someone else posted about K12LTSP already, but I thought I'd just add my 2 cents.
From my experience in helping to administrate a school of 1200 machines while in high school, I nearly weep for the thought of a Linux solution to the high school lab scenario. All the clueless teachers and pseudo-intellectual students wouldn't be endlessly screwing up the machines, and little punk hackers like i was would finally leave the boxes un-rooted. A win for the admins and less headache for everyone involved, should a good solution be reached.
Read the only personal Runyon page out there.
Or Squeak, which already has tons of educational content (the primary objective of the language).
I used to love it around term paper time, because there would be a line of 20 people waiting hours to use the Windows machines and usually over 20 vacant Macs. The funny thing is that they were all waiting to use Microsoft Word, which was installed on all of the Macs. Their OS prejudice was my gain. You can't convince me those people were computer literate. It's like saying a child can read because they know all the words to "Green Eggs and Ham."
We haven't had a Microsoft partition since before Windows XP. I'll be very interested to see how my 8 month old daughter reacts to a Windows world after growing up with only Linux at home. I suspect she will do just fine. After all, we all grew up with TRS-80s, Apple IIes, and commodores, and we still manage to be productive at work. I won't even feel too bad if she rebels as a teenager by switching to xpde to fit in with her friends. Although, who knows what the state of desktop computing will be by then?
This space intentionally left blank.
So, negative moderators of the parent post, please explain to me how Mexican students are served by being force-fed a marginally-used OS in favor of one that is used by almost everybody in the business world?
So I think I have answered your original question. Do you agree?
I gave my nephews copies of the GIMP and now it's unbelievable what they come up with. It's a great way to get kids interested in the Open Source movement and can prep some of them for rewarding careers in Graphics or Web design. It also forces them to learn their way around a Linux box.
Freeduc-cd, Web Interactive Math Server, and 'knosciences' again from OFSET will do you fine. All run from CD; relatively little danger of being rooted; you can throw away the hard disks if you want.
a small Openmosix/LTSP cluster would make a good combo system for such. :-)
Sales figure and user base are practically the same thing. You're confusing quantify with quality.
"Cheaper doesn't mean better"
You have two tools in front of you. They can both do the same thing. One is free. The other you have to buy a license for EVERY student and teacher in the school. In that case, free is better.
"I can't speak for Mexican schools, but US schools have no excuse for being broke."
Not relevant to our discussion. But it'd be wasteful to spend money one a tool when there is a free one available.
"The apps that students need to know to be productive (ie Office) in most jobs are on Windows"
You're repeating yourself. That's the WHOLE point of this discussion. You are aruging that we should teach with Windows because kids will use Windows (and Office) after they graduate. But as I've pointed out, Windows (and Office) will change.
If the tools are going to change, you might was well buy the cheap one that gets the job done.
"Running Linux isn't a safeguard against viruses."
When was the last time your Linux box got a virus? When was the last time your Linux box got spyware? And I'm not entirely sure how choosing a more secure OS leads to "lazy" habits?! Could you explain this please?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Use LinEx.
It's a Linux distribution developed by the regional government of Extremadura (Spain) for elementary schools and high schools.
It's in Spanish and it's currently being used by hundreds (if not thousands) of schools. It's exactly what you need. And you can do a centralized remote management of the computers.
WINE, of course!
Or Crossover Office, if you prefer.
This is the setup I have for two labs in my school: 1st lab: Pentium4 2Ghz with XDMCP + KDE/Kdm Pentium MMX 200MHz, 32Mb RAM 2Gb HD for X-Terminals Running KDE smoothly with KDE educational tools, MatLab, Kylix, OpenOffice, Firefox 1.0 and some free Windows programs with Wine! 2nd lab: AMD Duron 1.3 to 1.8 Ghz processores, 256Mb RAM and 20Gb HD runnin local Linux (NIS+NFS) Everything runs Slackware Linux updated to version 10.1, very stable and fast (40 seconds from boot to login screen on P200) I tuned de KDE startup for speed, removing un-necessary services. Works very nice (in portuguese) Spanish version of all software is also available. Very easy to setup and maintain \m/
\m/
I'm living in the US and some of our schools still use Apple IIs and we have no intention of replacing them. Why? The software still works.
If I were you, I'd install tux-type to teach kids the all-important skill of keyboarding. Also, in our school, maintenance and network speed due to lack of maintance, was a large concern. Linux, I think, will definitely shine here due to difficulty students will have installing 3rd party software without root.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
"BTW, Gnumeric is a great replacement for XL, but I can't get it to print to my laser printer properly. :/"
That's what cracks me up about Linux zealots. They bitch about every little Windows idiosyncracy, but gloss over glaring problems with OSS. How is it great if you can't even make a printout?
Vote for Pedro
Try to do that with M$! It ain't happening!! ONLY Linux and only with Open Source Software. And it IS happening in classrooms across the nation and the world. My school district is a perfect example. I have done just that.
Now my students can login at any "thick" client (old Pentium I - 133's w/ 64 Mb RAM) and have access to all their desktop settings and files. No matter where they roam, their settings follow them. The thick clients are old "throw away" PCs or donated PCs from businesses or other schools. Our only cost is purchasing the server (with plenty of RAM), the printer and the LCD projector. We COULD even login to a Windows Terminal Server (IF we had one) and have access to all of our Window$ apps. Nothing beats the K12LTSP http://www.k12ltsp.org/ distro!
Don't worry too much in the beginning about the "wow" factor of Linux and what a good OS can do. First focus on demonstrating that Linux can in fact do all of the things you expect from a typical pc (web surf, check email, write MS Office docs with OpenOffice, etc...). Once your users see that Linux can do everything they already do, then they might be ready for the gee-wiz stuff. It has been my experience that diving into the technical details of what makes Linux better than some OS's turns people off. Teachers usually don't care that you can custom compile your OS :) Cheers and happy computing to all.
You must be visiting crappy "university" labs then!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Check MEPIS out.
.org not sure...
:)
Go to www.distrowatch.com or maybe its
Anyway it has every linux distrabution you can think of and about 400 more.
I am a linux noobie and I just installed it on my old DELL Dimension 4100 (PIII-800 256mb ram, POS).
I had some problem geting the live-cd (boot cd) working but by using a combonation of a "Smart Bootmanager" (I think it was called) and updating my BIOS, I got it to go.
I am very impressed thus far, even though I am still figuring things out.
Seems to run fine though, includes all the basics for computer use. Easy to install and use.
One thought I had though it may be too intensive for young pups, but Gentoo distrobution is a source based version that has apparently a very extensive install procedure if you want it to, and you can learn the linux OS from the bottom up, what better way to learn than to make the little buggers do the install for you.
at BETT (British Education Technology show) in London earlier this year i came across School Linux, a two-man team making a thin-client type distro specifically for schools and an application server solution. Have a look at their site for more details. I also saw a very interesting article on The Register (as an IT teacher) about a school in my region of the UK using solely thin clients with old hardwear and new servers to be faster and more reliable and popular, not to mention easier to maintain than the old MS-based system.
SIMPLE
http://k12ltsp.org/
B-)
A friend will come and bail you out of jail, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "damn that was fun!"
Well, you probably haven't visited the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden then. All of our main comuter labs consist of either Solaris or Redhat workstations, there's only a few Windows workstations on all of campus, and we have a good reason to get access to those. Even though most of my classmates uses Windows at home, there has never been any problems using either Solaris nor Redhat. Sure you have to point them in the right direction for a few minor things in the begining, but there hasn't been any big issues.
As many others has already stated, using Linux or any other system besides Windows teaches diversity, which is a good thing. This way they the kids wont have any major problems if/when they face a non-Windows system in the future.
Gentoo would be nice, but I broke portage so often, I was going nuts.
As I've mentioned on LWM, I am considering rolling my own distro, just to meet my requirements. All I need is enough time and enough disk space. (If anyone would like a comprehensive distro rolled for a Pentium 4, I would appreciate any help on this project.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
From personal experience a P-III with 256MB of RAM should have no trouble running almost any Distro. (MDK 10.1, FC3, Debian, Gentoo ....)
I would take a look at what sort of apps you would need, what sort of support you would need (Mandrake have just merged with Connectiva which I understand are well established in S.A.) and if language support (spanish?) is a big issue for you.
We have had some efforts in Mexico to bring computing rooms to every school, and a lot has been done by the government and universities. The project eMexico http://www.emexico.gob.mx/ states as its mission providing technological infrastructure and digital services to the whole population, and ITESM university is doing an important education effort on poor societies also.
Any way, Miguel de Icaza (surely the best mexican hacker) addressed last March the Mexican President and the Secretaria de Comunicaciones y Transporte (FCC equivalent) and told them about the advantages of open source software http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/emexico2.html (in spanish). At the end, Bill Gates paid a visit to president Fox and the eMexico project was done on Windows machines.
I find it hard to really move the Linux initiative to Mexico. I told my film-mayoring roomate (I'm studying at the US) that I was installing another version of Linux and he told me "really, do you code and shit?", I told some bussiness-mayoring mexican friends who live here, and all I got was "what's that?". There's much more to be done than you think.
For what it's worth, I know of a elementary school that uses Linux on all it's computers. A friend of mine teaches there and says she likes it, "it's prettier".
you know it!
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
What educational software packages are available for Linux?
Linux per se is the best education I ever had. =)
Shouldn't you be asking, "what do these people want to do with their computers?" before asking how to equip them.
Linux or not, it's still a waste if you don't first ask that question.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
You should maybe take a look at extremadura linux.
A linux developed specifically for schools in the poorest region of spain. They will probably have what you need in mexico and it will run on the hardware specified. All the best with the project!
Do they include spelling lessons?
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
Good choice, it's debian, it has most of what you need already installed, it works.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Definitely OpenOffice.
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
Try linex for staters. It installs automatically in less than an hour, and comes fully bundled. I would contact those guys directly, to see if you can set up some sort of oficial partnership. 1500 comps is a lot, and may make a ripple. So get help from those who are already helping -- unlike most nerds over here :)
http://www.linex.org/index.php
Then I go the idea from a group called HOSEF (at hosef.org), to make the big change. I have 22 clients (P233, 64mb ram) all running off a server, a quad p3 550, 3gb ram (under $500 off ebay, including shipping) like they were new machines. It took my kids literally 5 minutes to make the switch over. They love it. Their files are protected, no popups, no spyware. PLUS, you get free office suite (thanks to Open office) free GUI web development, free ftp, free photo editing, free games (non-violent for schools), free edutainment programs.
I have two certs towards my MCSE, and I would never ever switch back to windows after the productivity I've gained in the classroom environment by making the big switch.
Take a look at http://www.tuxlabs.co.za/
kino edits DV natively. There are a bunch of Linux audio/video editing programs listed here.
You'll probably also want mjpegtools to turn DV into VideoCDs and DVDs.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
I think that you are getting inside a really really BIG project. And I also think that you should have posted this first at the "cofradia.org" instead slashdot.
Anyway I don't know how you will setup a whole linux lab without any help. I'm here to offer my help and support with whatever I got.
Please remember that linux mexican community is big and helpful, don't waste that.
Please drop me an email if you're interested in some help. iscabrera@netscape.net
Israel Cabrera at -> Mexico City
I'm not sure which distro makes the most sense (although, for a school setting, I'm fond of Fedora Core 3), but I definitely think that they should look into a system to manage a large group of machines from a central point.
I've been using stateless linux from RH on our local cluster, but for a more polished solution, I would recommend onesis (what Sandia National Lab uses for their cluster management) http://onesis.org/index.php
A solution like this can make upgrades/changes to the computers in the network much less painful than what a lot of sysadmins use.
Impossible = A fun challenge
Regarding the over all setup, take a look at the thin client linux setup at Riverdale High School in Oregon.
For distros I'd recommend debian or something debian based like skolelinux or ubuntu.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
You pay for Windows (well, I do), so it would be nice if you actually got a quality, nonidiosyncratic (yes, I made that up) product. OSS is free, so your rate of return is infinitely superior (even if you can't get your laser printer to behave).
Specialisation is for insects
Give the kids a LiveCD :) Come on, you really think Unis will have no Linux machines 3 years from now?
Specialisation is for insects
If you want off the shelf, then Novell's NDS or eDirectory is the way to go.
If you have some system administration background or really want Free Software, then Kerberos or Kerberos + LDAP is the way to go. It's not the bear people make it out to be.
For file sharing there's Samba or OpenAFS
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
OK, no M$ guff. As an earlier post has pointed out, GUI skills are transferable, and there is a fair bit of common software (Mozilla, Open Office). In fact, using Linux makes it easier to teach *generic* user skills (instead of "MS Word shortcuts") because you can easily expose them to a range of desktop environments and allow them to find the common features. You teach 'em on Windows XP, they will have no adaptation skillset for when they're suddenly exposed to Longhorn (or whatever cow MS drops on them when they graduate).
Specialisation is for insects
Umm "zealot" might be a strong word. "Advocate" would be better. Besides, this may be fixed in the latest builds (I only use .debs for sarge). And like the previous respondent: The cost of the software outweighs the minor problems that, if I dug into the issue, could probably be addressed. If it hasn't already been addressed by the latest builds.
I work for a government agency. I'd like to save myself, and all of the taxpayers that I work for, as much cash as possible, so I can divert what we *do* get to something more productive. That's why I'm testing Linux on the desktop at work.
EveryDNS. Use it. It works.
AC's need not reply
Which applications you don't need?
That should guide you in your quest.
Don't listen to the Windows naysayers and the Apple fanboys, Linux is a perfectly capable system for any task if you put the time and effort to do the inital setup properly, specially in an academic context (for bunny's sakes, I am dismayed at how many people can't overcome the thought that computer skills and computer services can be provided with something else different from Windows based software. The brainwash is so torough that one has to admire the people in Redmond for this achievement).
Wn Mexico la corrupcion y falta de recursos endemicos deberian forzar a toda la gente con conciencia a implementar soluciones basadas en software gratuito y libre.
No se desanime, la idea es la correcta, echele ganas y haga caso de los comentarios constructivos.
Saludos y buena suerte.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You think Linux users are going to find it difficult to learn Windows? I don't think so.
If next president in Mexico is Lopez Obrador, current Mexico City's major in 2006, Linux will be big in Mexico. Obrador's team has implemented Linux in several areas of the government.
PVMPOV (a parallel build of POV-Ray) is impressive on a large cluster -- first demonstrate it running on one unit, then on the entire cluster, for effect.
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
OK, here it is quick, to back up Anita.
7 69514 or http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=138172&cid=115 61825).
2005-8 = 1997
http://toastytech.com/guis/guitimeline4.html
8.5 years ago, my current 8th grade class was starting 1st Grade, and many were using PCs for the 1st time. Windows '95 was MS's "consumer" option, NT 4 was the best option available from MS. OS/2 Warp 4 and Mac OS8 were competitors. Fortunately, MS Bob had died an early death, and could be found (if at all) in dollar stores.
2005-12 = 1993
http://toastytech.com/guis/guitimeline3.html
Current U.S. high school seniors were entering 1st Grade, and many were using PCs for the first time. The main OS choices are Windows 3.1, Windows NT 3.1 (there were no previous versions), OS/2 V2, PC-Geos, Amiga Workbench 3, and Mac (not sure which version, sorry).
Fortunately, Lotus 1-2-3 was no longer considered as a viable option (see quote "In the single-tasking MS-DOS 1-2-3 was sometimes used as a complete environment" at http://www.answers.com/topic/lotus-1-2-3
In light of all this, it is foolish to assume that any OS that students use in school, or university, will be vaguely similar to the similarly-titled offerings available when they graduate and go into the "real world". No one can say that Win XP would be quickly intuitive to a Win 3.1 user, and yet wouldn't be much harder for an Amiga Workbench user to learn.
Therefore, it is irrelevant to claim that students will have to learn a new OS when they graduate; and I would think that encouraging students to try new things is an important part of teaching "computers"; it is in my classroom, at least
(see: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=140414&cid=11
I set up an elementary school classroom with Linux. Originally, the school wanted it to be Windows so they could use their existing software. But they couldn't actually find their licensed copy of Windows, and after weeks went by, I just installed Linux plus lots of neat stuff.
Turns out they only had one piece of 'educational software', which the teachers didn't really understand and the kids didn't use. The kids used the paint program and the web browser.
So give 'em a system with a paint program-- put in both Stickers and TuxPaint (the former, you can add image sets to match their curricula/units). Toss in any other interesting s/w like other people mention. And include a web browser (like that's hard).
There, you now have something that's probably better than the lame-o stuff they already have. You'd be surprised how little 'legacy sw' actually gets _used_.
A.
Heck, that's how my town's computer labs ran for years... Admittedly, they eventually got caught at it. (The "computer teacher," a former librarian who knew enough to point out the difference between a tower, a monitor, and a keyboard, never knew the software was pirated. Her students [which included my older brother] had assured her everything was on the up and up) Ah, the days of playing Stickybear on the black diskette with the misspelled handwritten label...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.