1) The primary one that I have been using for the past ten years is to store my stuff on the network. In prcatice it is far more reliable than any portable media. The space is limited depending on what the sysadmins policy on quotas for students might be. This can be a problem for people working with large graphics files. At my school this is recognized and the students that need it are given up to 500MB of quota. For the rest of us... even the most prolific CS student or English major is not gonna use much more than 5-10M in their entire time at the uni (often much less) even using MS-Words appetite.
2) When I need to move large amounts of data I have a small device the size of a pack of cigarettes. It is an old laptop drive (1.4G). This works very well for me and I can even "hotswap" it between Linux machines. The cost was kinda high US$80 for both "base" units that fit in a 2.5" drive bay. The disk was "free" because I replaced the one in my laptop with a larger one. But "low" capacity laptop disks can be had for cheap. This solution has been extremely reliable and fast. I have been using it for the past two years with no problems. I only use this solution for large transfers of data that would be too time consuming from my home PC (56K).. to school and back.
By far the best solution would be to invest in more shared disk capacity on the servers at the school. As far as network reliability... it would still be cheaper to invest in a more reliable network. The network shares are shareable across all known platforms, at least from a Linux/BSD server. This would cost next to nothing for the school to implement.
Removeable media of the floppy, zip, etc variety are very unreliable. I would certainly not trust my semesters, let alone my lifes, work to a flimsy bit of plastic that is gonna bang around in a plastic case in my bookbag.
Students are forever losing and/or mangling their removeable media... add to that the floppy drives, zip drives, etc all get mangled and broken in the labs eventually.
Got it Tuesday... Huge box skinny CD sleeve.
Installation took 30 Minutes on an iMac-DV running OS-9.04. The iMac DV has 128 M of RAM the documentation says that is a minnimum.
Our local Macaddict hated it at first... a few minutes later I hear sqeuals of delight over the GUI bells an whistles.
30 minutes after installation it crashed and locked up so hard we had to power cycle the iMac. Then it wouldn't boot OS-X only 9. Had to re-install.
Yeah I know it is Beta... BUT it is NOT "A better Unix than Unix". It would not run even simple things like AppleWorks in "Classic" mode.
I am underwhelmed by its stability and speed. The GUI is pretty... but those little buttons look more like zits. I get an urge to pop em. Would be cool if colored goo ran down the screen when one "popped" one (clicked on it).
-HP-...etc...
Over the past 4 years I have set up about a dozen Linux print servers... some of them supporting more than 100 clients of all types.... and have never had a problem. The client machines include Windows, Linux, other Unixen, and Apple.
This is about the dumbest comment I have seen. (aside from the fact that the whole premise of the article is pretty stupid.) This HP product supports Linux clients simply because Linux supports printing on Windows shared printers. See: man smbprint for more details.
Though you may not have tried very hard... Linux is extremely easy and dependable to set up as a print server OR client. There are at least two HOWTOs on this subject alone. If you use printtool that comes with RedHat and most RH based distros it is braindead simple.
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1) The primary one that I have been using for the past ten years is to store my stuff on the network. In prcatice it is far more reliable than any portable media. The space is limited depending on what the sysadmins policy on quotas for students might be. This can be a problem for people working with large graphics files. At my school this is recognized and the students that need it are given up to 500MB of quota. For the rest of us... even the most prolific CS student or English major is not gonna use much more than 5-10M in their entire time at the uni (often much less) even using MS-Words appetite.
2) When I need to move large amounts of data I have a small device the size of a pack of cigarettes. It is an old laptop drive (1.4G). This works very well for me and I can even "hotswap" it between Linux machines. The cost was kinda high US$80 for both "base" units that fit in a 2.5" drive bay. The disk was "free" because I replaced the one in my laptop with a larger one. But "low" capacity laptop disks can be had for cheap. This solution has been extremely reliable and fast. I have been using it for the past two years with no problems. I only use this solution for large transfers of data that would be too time consuming from my home PC (56K).. to school and back.
By far the best solution would be to invest in more shared disk capacity on the servers at the school. As far as network reliability... it would still be cheaper to invest in a more reliable network. The network shares are shareable across all known platforms, at least from a Linux/BSD server. This would cost next to nothing for the school to implement.
Removeable media of the floppy, zip, etc variety are very unreliable. I would certainly not trust my semesters, let alone my lifes, work to a flimsy bit of plastic that is gonna bang around in a plastic case in my bookbag. Students are forever losing and/or mangling their removeable media... add to that the floppy drives, zip drives, etc all get mangled and broken in the labs eventually.
-DU-...etc...
Got it Tuesday... Huge box skinny CD sleeve. Installation took 30 Minutes on an iMac-DV running OS-9.04. The iMac DV has 128 M of RAM the documentation says that is a minnimum. Our local Macaddict hated it at first... a few minutes later I hear sqeuals of delight over the GUI bells an whistles. 30 minutes after installation it crashed and locked up so hard we had to power cycle the iMac. Then it wouldn't boot OS-X only 9. Had to re-install. Yeah I know it is Beta... BUT it is NOT "A better Unix than Unix". It would not run even simple things like AppleWorks in "Classic" mode. I am underwhelmed by its stability and speed. The GUI is pretty... but those little buttons look more like zits. I get an urge to pop em. Would be cool if colored goo ran down the screen when one "popped" one (clicked on it). -HP-...etc...
Over the past 4 years I have set up about a dozen Linux print servers... some of them supporting more than 100 clients of all types.... and have never had a problem. The client machines include Windows, Linux, other Unixen, and Apple. This is about the dumbest comment I have seen. (aside from the fact that the whole premise of the article is pretty stupid.) This HP product supports Linux clients simply because Linux supports printing on Windows shared printers. See: man smbprint for more details. Though you may not have tried very hard... Linux is extremely easy and dependable to set up as a print server OR client. There are at least two HOWTOs on this subject alone. If you use printtool that comes with RedHat and most RH based distros it is braindead simple.