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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.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
the IT staff having to process all the requests for info from other school districts ;-).
Actually, congrats to them. In areas where you have competent IT staff and are willing to do the work yourself, Linux offers great cost savings *and* the ability to have a system tailored exactly to your needs. Other places, it just offers the latter.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
no mention in the article of which distro or if many distros that were implemented...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
All the problems that companies have with OSS, like having to train their supporters and techs, or a fear of loss of productivity due to unknown software, don't apply for schools. They usually have a fair lot of clued students at their hands who would gladly offer support in exchange for additional credit or at least other services the school can provide (like net access and so on), and the loss of productivity is, if it applies at all, on the head of the student, not the school.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I had to laugh... when I clicked to the article, the embedded ad was this ad that people were switching from linux to windows servers....
_ 336x280_DEF.gif
http://spe.atdmt.com/b/NMMRTUMISITP/mrs06245_swit
The above comments are not guaranteed to make sense to anyone other than the author...
I was pleased to read about how they handled staffing issues, with help and support for the people to retrain and time off to train in their own time and to get good qualifications. That's just good management. Bringing people to open source software will probably need initiatives like this to reassure people that the skills that they have won't now be wasted...
Good effort by them.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
It's not about saving money. Campaign donations and influence rule.
Kc schools want laptops for all the students. Yikes. More higher property taxes.
I heard there's a place in Florida that's NOT building any schools just to stop the ever increasing taxes that schools create.
Schools should use free software. They should educate their students about their digital freedom. They should expand their Microsoft-only view.
Why do you think no non-geeks care about digital freedom in our time? They don't know what freedom of software is like, because no one educated them.
That's fine up to a point; the majority of businesses still use MS Office and windows and will want to see that experience, and if you completely replace everything with linux or other free alternatives you're just creating another monoculture, and push a free-only view; which is, to my mind, just as bad.
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.
load "$",8,1
The parent has been unfairly modded as a Troll, because he's right. Network-based PXE reinstallation systems exist and work well (RedHat linux users may be interested in googling for "Cobbler" for example.) However he's also wrong. The best solution is to have ultra-thin clients like Sun Rays. That way there is no expensive gear on student's desks, and everything is run on computers locked safely up in a data center. Plus you'll get session portability and hardware homogenity benefits. You can even run rdesktop or the Sun connector app to connect to Windows Terminal Servers (or, if you have the resources, individual VMware sessions for each user) to grant access to those evil, evil windows applications. Troll me too, moderators.
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
...
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.
I agree that it takes a fair amount of tracking to quantify total cost of ownership beyond the large but incidental fixed cost of implementation.
Still, staff salaries are usually a significant cost to any operation, so if staff resources are able to shift into new activities as a result of the change, it would seem common sense to begin by tracking that. The article has two sentences side by side. It shouldn't be hard to connect the dots between them.
Moreover, if we're measuring true TCO, we should look at overall effect on staff time, not just tech support staff. In a Linux terminal server environment, the entire staff population will now be spending zero time on fiddling with their workstations. It would be nice to compare this with the number of hours on average that individual staff members previously spent in dealing with issues on Windows workstations. That's a big part of TCO as well, but if you never measure it, how can you know when you've improved it?
I don't know the answer in this case, but I'll make one general observation. When Microsoft promotes its lower TCO calculations, look to see whether they fairly compare the total staff time spent in system configuration, software installation, failures due to bugs, compatibility and security issues, problem analysis and resolution.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
What you probably have is a load of ignorant MCSEs. They have worked through the manuals, they have done the multiple choice tests, but they don't really have a clue outside the point and click. Why am I doing this? I don't know, you just have to. If you don't, security demons come and eat your soul. Or something. The fix for any problem? Upgrade. I guess we can't do that in XP, have to wait for Vista. No, I don't know how to do that in Word, I guess you can't, you have to wait for Office 2007. Meanwhile, I don't have to learn anything new, I can just go home at 5 and kick the kids.
This is the way of the world. As soon as you try to democratise a new technology, the skill levels of the early adopters are diluted because there just are not that many really able people about. And the dilution itself reduces expectations. If all the plumbers you meet are incompetent, you don't expect a competent plumber. And if you yourself know nothing about plumbing, you won't be surprised when the plumber takes five hours to swap out a central heating pump.
In my time I have come across "mechanical engineers" who didn't know you had to supply and remove the energy stored in rotating objects, "electrical engineers" who were capable of using the earth wire to short out a toroidal transformer and not understand why the wire melted, an "industrial chemist" who thought if you diluted an acid spill with plenty of water the sewage company wouldn't notice, an "environmental systems engineer" who thought that it was safe to fill a large plastic tank with a hydrogen/air mixture (he didn't know how the Van der Graaf generator works. It was a _big_ bang). These people were probably the average level of their occupations, and simply were not capable of independent thought. Your IT staff are at that level. As with this school district, you need someone with the support of the management and some real drive to push the thing through, and persuade these people that it's worth learning new skills because they create new opportunities. But they have to be pushed and jollied along, because otherwise they will lapse into sloth. And when they have the new skills - they will plateau again.
Pining for the fjords
Microsoft and Apple, among others, are willing to give stuff to schools. With Linux, the software may be free, but you probably have to buy your own hardware.
It's true, it may be cheaper in the long run, if you're not a highly technical school -- meaning, you don't have to upgrade your hardware very often. But even then, many schools prefer to take the first hit free, and then be stuck with the recurring licencing fees.
Personally, though, schools are the first places I'd want to start on free software, as unlikely as it is. That way, when they graduate, they'll be ready to move their workplace over -- or at least be easily trainable for anything -- and if they go on to be programmers, they'll be more likely to fix the free tools than to buy the commercial ones.
Contrast that to the way it is now, where you only use the proprietary stuff because it's free in school and easy to pirate at home, so when you get to work, you insist that the company buy you the same tools, and the company figures it's cheaper than retraining you.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I live in a mainly rural school district 64 in the same province, and we're starting to undergo a similar process. The local principal is interested, and I've given him a copy of Edubuntu to evaluate the upcoming changes--though I'm not so sure the district is going that direction, I think they're emulating Kamloops (thin client etc.). The comment in the article about the staff having more time for things like a help desk and hardware support is understated, it's absolutely huge in making a difference for teachers, especially at isolated schools. It's important to me, because I want to start a computer club at my kids' (40 student rural) elementary, and I've been giving away old boxes with puppy linux on them for a while now, with some success.
Nice thing about successful changeovers like this is that they're infectious.
Damn those pesky terrorists
I have a similar story.
My name is Josh Beck, and I'm the IT coordinator at a magnet middle school within the Northeast Independent School District.(San Antonio, TX) Last year I piloted about 9 classroom Ubuntu computers in my lab. As the year went on, I modified the default setup so that I have an image that is secure and hopefully %100 percent functional. I've spent the last week exporting this image to 5 computer labs, approximately 150 computers. When the teachers and kids come back next year , they'll have the option to boot Windows or Linux. (The Linux side is sporting the fancy Beryl desktop. It won a lot of the kids over last year, and I'm thinking it will do the same next year.)
If you are in Education, and you want to migrate your school's computers so that open-source is at least an option, be warned. There really can be a whole lot of resistance. I have to agree with what I read here in that respect. I really did put my job on the line when I wiped out my first 9 licensed computers to replace them with open-source alternatives. The district-level IT coordinators put up a bit of a fight.
Although I'm in agreement that Novel can easily be phased out, I do use the Linux client. It isn't easy to bring online, and if your primary net device is listed as anything other that 'ETH0' you have to reprogram and recompile the thing, but Novel access through Linux works. Here's a more detailed look if you are interested:
Novel on Linux How To
At this point in time my feeling is that it's probably more realistic to offer teachers and students a choice, and then educate them about what's involved with that choice. If they want to use Windows, and your school district has a healthy tax-base, by all means purchase the license and allow them to do so. I can tell you this. When I offered the choice last year, the Linux seats were hot real estate. The kids love it.
Here's a video with one of my students:
Eject!
Josh Beck
IT Coordinator
Interactive Media Applications at Krueger Middle School
Northeast ISD
San Antonio, Texas
Yes, congratulations. However, they are building on years of effort by the Kindergarten to 12th grade Linux project, and other such projects. The K12Linux Project was originally started for the Multnomah County Education Service District, using hardware donated by Intel. (Intel does some of its processor design in a big facility which is also in Portland, Oregon, USA.)
Perhaps 8 years ago, one of the founders of the K12Linux project told me that the total cost of maintenance of Linux was less than half that of Windows. (He gave a figure much less than half, but I don't remember the actual figure.)
My experience with Windows is that it is sloppily coded, and lots of things cause Windows to need maintenance. For example, the CPU hogging bug in Firefox, which seems to be worse in Firefox version 2.0.0.4, sometimes causes Windows XP Professional SP2 to become unstable and require re-starting the computer. When Firefox hogs the CPU under Linux, it is only necessary to kill Firefox. Linux remains stable.
If Microsoft paid schools $100 per copy to take Windows, the cost of Windows would still be far higher than K12Linux.
The K12Linux Project home page gives links to other Linux-in-schools projects, also.
A side benefit of Linux is that it is much more secure, partly because of its design, and partly because students are less likely to know how to tinker with it, I was told.
It is far easier to maintain a terminal server with numerous simple terminals, than separate stand-alone computers, too, and Linux is fast enough to be used that way.
I feel a little uncomfortable with what I said above, because I am vastly understating the savings of using Linux rather than Windows. Microsoft can't even make "Microsoft Genuine Advantage" work correctly; that is a GENUINE disadvantage of Windows. (I am using the word "genuine" in its honest sense, not in its abusive public relations spin sense.)
Another problem with a Windows system is hiring people who are willing to work with products from a company such as Microsoft that is so abusive. It's tiring to work with abusiveness.
Again, I still feel uncomfortable because I am understating the case. My company has had considerable trouble with error messages from Windows Update, for example. We've had about 8 different kinds of problems, some of which have required hours to solve. Judging from the many, many complaints on the newsgroup, there seem to be many other kinds of Windows Update problems we haven't had.
People who work in IT sometimes like Microsoft because the sloppy Microsoft products give them more work.
Here was the most tragic line in the piece for me
secondary schools in British Columbia are supposed to teach skills rather than specific software, in practice, many teachers had developed courses that specified particular pieces of software. "You get a teacher who's been around 20-30 years, and they're not that keen on developing their course again," Ferrie says in wry hindsight. Also, many schools had already paid for textbooks that referred to specific proprietary software.
The teacher is absolutely right in this assertion: students should be learning about concepts and ideas - not only about examples and instances. It's fine if an algebra student can derive the quadratic formula from rote memorization; but it is far more important that she develops the skills to think critically on how to attack this problem on her own.
In the best computer science programs and programming books; you walk away with a deeper understanding of the science behind the code. Learning should be focused on cultivating concepts and ideas that can be applied to a broad range of implementations; not churning out specifically Java or C# developers. Similarly, children should learn about core computer concepts and ideas - not on how to create flashing text in Microsoft Word.
I am a level one tech support volunteer who has gotten some assistance building a 33-seat thin client network in a public school in San Francisco. We could use the help of a one or two higher-level network admins on a few issues. We have been up and running nicely for two years. We could just use some help occasionally. It's a public school, so there is almost no budget. We are doing almost all of this on legacy hardware. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, and would like to help with a few issues, please email me at einfeldt at digitaltippingpoint dot com. Thanks either way! Christian Einfeldt
It would seem the article dis agrees with you?
If the terms are just remote X-Terms there is no swap problems, config problems.
I would advise you to re-read your comments and apply them to any network architecture. Lack of network or power is usually an end to user productivity.
20+ years ago I worked on system that had 1,000 concurrent users, downtime never happened in my tenure, 5 years, the users treated the system like the phone system, it was always there for them, always. The IT staff totaled 9 in operations and 4 in development plus 2 managers and a IT director.
Today I work on many systems that support a total of 800 users, downtime is a weekly occurance. The users treat the system like a mortally wounded rhino, the longer the thing stays down the happier they are. IT staff is over 25. The quality of the staff is less, the quality of the machines is less, the quality of the systems is less. I wish I could say that this is an isolated example.
I have worked on both terminal and tiered systems, terminal based services are far easier on every level.
In short, I am firmly convinced that IT made a huge mistake investing in PCs and tiered architecture. I see Linux as slowly changing this balance. I long for the day when at work I have a fully fault tolerant server and thousands of terminals. Where control of the data is the hands of IT and access to the data is wide open to any employee.
I've done a lot of work with schools, and mostly in NetWare systems. While I saved them a bunch of $$$ over using Windows, not much is cheaper than free...
And I looked at the LTSP back in 2003 thought it was so not ready. Two systems asked me if it was something they should consider, and I told they yes, but 1)let it mature a little technically, and 2)find an advocate in the system, even *just* a teacher, who would drive the project. I knew this would cut my consulting fees dramatically, but I thought then it was inevitable.
Unfortunately, this was in Maine, and the MLTI (Apple iBooks for 7th and 8th grades) pretty much slammed the door shut on open source. Apple declared 'other' software completely unacceptable, though we got several NetWare systems talking to the Apple systems quite nicely, thank you very much. Microsoft, of course, straddled the fence. Linux systems were actively fought against by the Apple engineers, being the only true threat to their business.
I'm hoping that the LTSP catches hold. It has tremendous potential for schools, and frankly for most any application where there is a limited number of applications necessary. And maybe more than that...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
"Or you could say, just kill the process in Windows."
Yes, and after killing the Firefox CPU hogging process, the ENTIRE OS is unstable.
The founders of the K12Linux project were the kind of people who will always have work. They enjoyed reducing the workload as much as possible. A lot of the discussion of Windows comes from people who wouldn't have a job if Windows weren't so difficult to maintain.
FWIW..I spent the last 3 years working as the (only full time) IT admin/tech for a K-12 school district. (approx 5 schools,.. total when I left of about 700 workstations.) What they did right (in the article) was (seemingly) they had good management who understood what they were doing and put an organized effort into re-training the staff and valuing the "soft" side of the equation (human factors) as much as the technical side. (Although I would also like to see specifications on exactly how many systems they migrated, and what distros they used) From my experience, having spent the last 3 years in a K-12 IT position.. I'm of the opinion that success stories like this are (and will continue to be) few and far between. School districts are full of politics and "resistance" and very little money. (as shown by the fact that this "project" took them 10 years to implement) In all the school districts I've been in (and worked in) the employees, staff and students didnt care whether it was FOSS or Windows or Mac or whatever. All they cared about was that it worked reliably. If you took the time to care about their issues, AND you were skilled enough to make it work.. then you were a hero. I'm an advocate for having as much variety as possible ( In the high school library lab I built, I wanted to include several Ubuntu machines and some Macs.. but the school had standardized on HP/Compaq and XP... so it didnt happen.
Deployment was also relatively simple. I created accounts for all of our students and teachers. I used samba to connect to the existing student/teacher data on our old Windows 2000 Small Business Server and copied the data to one of the new servers. One server was going to be used as the Application Server and the other as the File Server. Secondly, I went around to all of the PCs, yanked the hard disks and set them to PXE Boot. The teachers came back early for an inservice and to see the new system. During the presentation, the older PC I was using died. I got a few snickers and snide comments. They were mesmerized when I shrugged my shoulders and grabbed its new-in-box replacement, turned it on and the presentation resumed. Here the teachers thought they'd get a coffee break while I would have to image a new machine. Instead I just cut the tape off of a new Dell box and was up and running in under 5 minutes. The returning students were greeted to a flashy, student-designed GNOME login screen and an equally slick desktop. Mostly, I got comments like, "You mean I don't have to reboot!?" and "Every time I print, it actually prints."
Now, I can devote more time to some of my passions. I took the old Win SBS box and turned it into a FreeBSD machine that I use for teaching system administration to interested students who then become assistants. These student will come out with a far stronger knowledge of TCP/IP networks than any MCSE. In fact, if some should decide to go on to careers, they will be further ahead of the curve and, most likely, will be able to run rings around many of the MCSE teachers.
Nice to see that. Better have the money going to local business than licensing fees that go outside the country.
...etc., and disks are cheap anyway).
/etc/nsswitch.conf to give precedence to NIS over local files). /etc/fstab has the NFS shares and what they map to.
I did something similar for the home network.
Completely diskless PCs are less practical in a home environment (need to source the cards, the Boot ROMs,
For the home network, I don't want to chase viruses and malware. So except for one dual boot machine, everything is Linux (5 workstations, and one server).
A server at home stores all the user data. NFS handles file sharing, and NIS handles authentication (do not forget to configure
All this is on on kubuntu for the workstations and ubuntu server on the server. I think I started doing this with Dapper, and moved on to Breezy, Edgy then now it is on Feisty.
For general computing, kubuntu is very usable. OpenOffice, FireFox and Gaim/Kopete for the basics. Skype works well, and so does Opera.
I used to have autofs too so all home directories were mounted automatically from the server, but stopped doing that several months ago. I can't remember what it was, but it was an upgrade that caused some issues (maybe around Edgy).
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
I am the IT Department at a small company. We have employees who require access to computers on a semi-regular basis for checking email, looking at web pages for suppliers and doing simple spreadsheets. I am also lucky to work directly for the company's owner who is a huge advocate of appropriate technology.
Several employees use windows PCs for specific tasks such as scanning office documents or graphics work. Most other employees need very little power on the desktop.
Several years ago we switched a dozen employees to diskless thin clients. They boot using the NIC and get the OS from a linux server. I got all the documentation and instructions on setup from the Linux Terminal Server Project (ltsp.org). We build diskless thin clients for about $200 each (case, power supply, motherboard w/ NIC, and memory)
I have never done a rigorous cost analysis of the benefits of this set up. All I know is I have a dozen employees, who required hardly any training, using linux PCs, who average less than five minutes of support *total* per day. Usually much less.