A School District's Education in Free Software

david.jonathan.russe writes "The school district in Kamloops, BC, Canada has been working on a linux-based terminal infrastructure for several years. They now have a system in place district wide and they can not keep up with all of the requests for info. They have a great hybrid system, using diskless workstations all booting from local servers. 'The second-generation system cost the Kamloops district about $47,000 to implement, as well as the cost of training and the release time for personal study and taking exams. However, Ferrie has no doubt of the savings overall. License costs are disappearing as the district phases out its Novell NetWare licenses, and the district no longer needs to purchase productivity software. Ferrie also figures that the increased reliability represents a substantial savings, although he admits that it is hard to quantify. However, perhaps the greatest benefit of switching to free software is that the reliability of the new system frees up technical staff to do more than routine support.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by SourceForge.

Comments

Thin Clients at School

[fishthegeek]

In the US, or at least the school district I teach in there is tremendous resistance to anything that isn't blessed by the Gods of Redmond. I teach with Ubuntu in the classroom and I am forever getting snide remarks about it. They've even asked me not to put the machines on the network for what they claim are security reasons as if they actually don't want any secure machines on the lan or something. I put the machines behind a router and have safely hidden my enclave of FLOSS goodness. The problem I have with homogeneous networks is that the kids I'm teaching now will probably never see one in real life because in real life there is a mix of *nix and Windows out there and they need those integration skills badly. If anyone knows a way to convince lifetime IT employees at a school district of anything please let me know because these guys and gals are stuck in 1997 and they aren't willing to let it go.

Re:Thin Clients at School

[flyingfsck]

Keep up the good work. Mixed networks are sloooooooly making a comeback. At the large company I work, almost all IT stuff is MS. However, most of the products we build and deliver are *nix and the pressure from the engineers to get Linux desktops is growing. Many engineers are running CDROM based Linux versions on their laptops and desktops and never boot into the IT installed MS configuration. Our customers are feeling the same pressure, since we keep installing Linux systems for them.

Re:Congratulations to them, but...

[einhverfr]

In my experience, companies pay for Linux systems whatever they can afford to pay. The cost of maintenance is lower, but the system offers a larger number of options to optimize it to a specific environment. More often than not, companies pay *more* for the Linux solution than for a Windows one because they want to put their money into making sure it gets done right. Thus while there is some truth to Microsoft's TCO figures, they only tell a small portion of the story.

I would add that:

1) It is usually possible to migrate entirely from Windows to Linux over a total migration cycle with no added expenses. For most businesses, that is about 5 years. Some of my customers are at the end of their migration cycle and only have the accounting systems and the like to migrate.

2) Linux costs whatever you are willing to pay. It can cost less if you want to just use out of the box configurations. It can cost more if you want to put the effort into making it work perfectly for your business. Since schools usually have lower budgets, this generally forces them to do more in-house and rely on consultants less. This has good and bad points....

3) Linux always costs less to maintain than Windows. This means that these cost savings can go towards improving the computing environment in other ways... No need to cut your budget, just get more for your money :-).

4) Though many businesses find a higher TCO with Linux than Windows, this is because they are willingly investing more into their networks. Hence, it can fit any budget...