The Northern Territory Government in Australia have something called the LATIS project (Learning And Technology In Schools) which involved rolling out a Linux server with a satellite based connection to the Internet, and Windows desktop PCs to every school in the state (territory) including the very remote and very small Aboriginal community schools; 190 odd schools in total.
The servers provide file and print through Samba, authenticated web and ftp proxies via squid and the potential of an email address for every member of the school system, all tied together through an LDAP directory (provided by OpenLDAP).
The desktop PCs are, as I said, Windows boxes but the office suite provided is Sun's StarOffice 5.2 (presumably to be upgraded to 6 when it is finalised).
Linux doesn't have anything resembling plug-and-play.
Yes it does. The 2.4 kernel has built-in support for ISA PnP and PCI PnP. And even if it didn't (as was the case with 2.2 kernels) the BIOS can set up the cards anyway. PnP is just responsible for assigning unconflicting IRQ lines, DMA channels and IO ports to devices in your system.
Perhaps you mean "Linux doesn't have the ability to automatically detect your new devices when you boot your computer, and subsequently install appropriate drivers for the device with minimal user intervention"? Well I'm afraid on most counts that doesn't hold true either. Red Hat linux, for one, ships with a tool called kudzu which does just that.. it compares what is currently in your machine to what was there the last time it ran and modifies appropriate config files for you to include relevant configuration directives including loading the "driver" (kernel module) if such a module was compiled when you built your kernel last.
And just as an aside, you don't run.conf files, and they'd be in/etc anyway not/usr/bin:)
I'd also have to disagree with your sweeping statement that people don't want to know about their computers. Again, what I think you mean is most people don't want to know more about their computers.
I do. So I learnt. Now I use Linux because I recognise that it lets me get the most out of my computing experience because I can configure and tweak almost everything about my working environment; something that Windows never let me do. I played around with replacement shells for Windows (litestep, icesphere, etc) for months before I realised what I really wanted was X;)
I think the reason a lot of people find Linux so hard to use is because it is so different from Windows or MacOS. Most people start on one platform, then never shift because in order to do so they would have to learn a whole bunch of new things. Start someone on Linux and while it might take them a bit longer to become proficient, they will pick it up. Then later they'd probably find Windows a challenge because it had some conceptual differences.
Re:You twisted the question though.
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I live in Australia and consequently pay exorbitant rates for every MB I receive over my static IP (read: 19c/MB). I know, its laughable, but that's not the point.
The point is that I host 2 domains from my connection and every time I recieve unsolicited email the receipt of that email costs me real tangible dollars. Granted, in an ideal world an average email would total far less than 1k. But most spammers send both a text/plain and a text/html with base64 encoded graphics, and that starts to add up fast. I've been sent spam with attached word docs for god's sake.
The fact that I'm careful about where I use my email address, together with the fact that my mail server is subscribed to relevant black-hole lists means that I don't recieve much spam personally, but I can't say the same for my users who may be less discriminant when entering an email address into some bogus online subscription service's signup form.
Every time I receive a piece of spam I check where it came from. I've only once received spam that didn't originate from a (non-listed) open relay.
That is how spam costs money. Scale my setup to the size of a respectible Australian ISP and spam can start to account for a respectable chunk of the montly internet service bill.
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Save the headphones for the bus, train or killing time.
Yeah! Load up the shotgun, whack on some tunes; it's killing time.
The servers provide file and print through Samba, authenticated web and ftp proxies via squid and the potential of an email address for every member of the school system, all tied together through an LDAP directory (provided by OpenLDAP).
The desktop PCs are, as I said, Windows boxes but the office suite provided is Sun's StarOffice 5.2 (presumably to be upgraded to 6 when it is finalised).
Check out www.latis.net.au for more info.
Yes it does. The 2.4 kernel has built-in support for ISA PnP and PCI PnP. And even if it didn't (as was the case with 2.2 kernels) the BIOS can set up the cards anyway. PnP is just responsible for assigning unconflicting IRQ lines, DMA channels and IO ports to devices in your system.
Perhaps you mean "Linux doesn't have the ability to automatically detect your new devices when you boot your computer, and subsequently install appropriate drivers for the device with minimal user intervention"? Well I'm afraid on most counts that doesn't hold true either. Red Hat linux, for one, ships with a tool called kudzu which does just that.. it compares what is currently in your machine to what was there the last time it ran and modifies appropriate config files for you to include relevant configuration directives including loading the "driver" (kernel module) if such a module was compiled when you built your kernel last.
And just as an aside, you don't run .conf files, and they'd be in /etc anyway not /usr/bin :)
I'd also have to disagree with your sweeping statement that people don't want to know about their computers. Again, what I think you mean is most people don't want to know more about their computers.
I do. So I learnt. Now I use Linux because I recognise that it lets me get the most out of my computing experience because I can configure and tweak almost everything about my working environment; something that Windows never let me do. I played around with replacement shells for Windows (litestep, icesphere, etc) for months before I realised what I really wanted was X ;)
I think the reason a lot of people find Linux so hard to use is because it is so different from Windows or MacOS. Most people start on one platform, then never shift because in order to do so they would have to learn a whole bunch of new things. Start someone on Linux and while it might take them a bit longer to become proficient, they will pick it up. Then later they'd probably find Windows a challenge because it had some conceptual differences.
I live in Australia and consequently pay exorbitant rates for every MB I receive over my static IP (read: 19c/MB). I know, its laughable, but that's not the point.
The point is that I host 2 domains from my connection and every time I recieve unsolicited email the receipt of that email costs me real tangible dollars. Granted, in an ideal world an average email would total far less than 1k. But most spammers send both a text/plain and a text/html with base64 encoded graphics, and that starts to add up fast. I've been sent spam with attached word docs for god's sake.
The fact that I'm careful about where I use my email address, together with the fact that my mail server is subscribed to relevant black-hole lists means that I don't recieve much spam personally, but I can't say the same for my users who may be less discriminant when entering an email address into some bogus online subscription service's signup form.
Every time I receive a piece of spam I check where it came from. I've only once received spam that didn't originate from a (non-listed) open relay.
That is how spam costs money. Scale my setup to the size of a respectible Australian ISP and spam can start to account for a respectable chunk of the montly internet service bill.