I have one at home. It's Linux-FT 1.0 (only 1CD, though, so no extras). I think the kernel version is 1.2.something. It had the nice feature that it ran from the CD, however, if you ran a program, it copied it onto the hard disk, and from there on, it ran from the hard drive.
Did that make any sense to anyone? I would make an ISO of the CD and offer it for download, but my 'net connection isn't fast enough for me to put it up (until I get back to Uni when I can put it onto a dedicated machine). Can you wait until October?
Actually, it does. I'm watching it at the moment. You can get RealPlayer G2 from here. This actually has all the old versions of RealPlayer. Don't forget you need a 16-bit sound card, otherwise it won't work (personal experience having used one which Linux treated as 8-bit).
I go to the Webcast website about 5 minutes before the cast itself. It doesn't work. I reload. It takes around a minute to load, but it's there. The ZD radio link doesn't work. The Realplayer says that the server's too busy. And they've got TWO Microshaft-only broadcasts. Then the Oxford network goes down for 40 mins. Poo.
So, will there still be a recorded webcast available? If so, where? If not, why not? Why didn't ZD have at least 2 Real streams? And is there *any* Linux software which can view M$ streaming format? Of course, it wouldn't be necessary if sites posted in MPEG or even Real format (decent cross-platform). Why do they insist on forcing M$ down people's throats? (Sorry, that was a rant. Ignore that last sentence.)
You pretty much hit the nail on the head, so to speak. Items c and d the supplier generally *did*, with telephone advice, they basically said "We don't know, we'll send an engineer out". As for item a, coming and fixing it, they were located half-way across the country (about 2 hours drive). However, even when an engineer was promised the next day, it normally took them a week to arrive: We once had a hard drive in the server crash completely; it took the engineers a week to come out, then they took the server away. It didn't come back for over a month. Fortunately, the drive crashed in the last week before the holidays, otherwise the school would have been stuck without a server for about a month. How's that for customer servce?
His objective evidence was basically that the company through which the school got their computers from supported NT, no other O/S (okay, so they install Win95). Initially (i.e. 2 years ago), they said they *do* support Novell, but their server fell over at least once a day, and so they've backtracked and said "Nope. No Novell. Only NT."
That's true. I'd have really liked to say to the admin "We'll install it and configure it - you won't even have to touch it ever again". But, as we all know, boxes require administration. Still, a good setup may not need touching for a year or more (handle simple admin stuff, like creating and deleting users remotely). Also, a good friend of mine who is a computer consultant (extremely competent, I might add), offered the school to help with a Linux box without charging them. That wasn't good enough for the school - the MS service was "better value". Still, how long is RedHat going to offer their support for? 6 months from purchase, 1 year, as long as they exist? If it's any less than 1 year, it won't necessarily help, unless a moron installed the box and it keeps failing every few days.
Is there an adequate amount of educational software available for Linux?
Take a look at www.seul.org. It's "Simple End User Linux", and also has a section about Linux in Education (www.seul.org/edu).
With regards to software, the almost exclusive uses are word processing, spreadsheet, etc. (i.e. Staroffice could be used) and programming (and there are so many programming languages available for Linux). There *really* isn't anything else used at school (maybe some CAD occasionally).
Where I was at school (here in the UK), we were running a Novell Netware server with about 150 Windows 95 computers. When we got internet access (end of last year), we (some friends and I) were pushing to get Linux installed (probably have gone with SuSE as it worked right out of the box on our test system), even telling our school deputy head (who controlled the finances) the favorite words of any financially-challenged institution: "It's FREE!". Still, he refused and forked out the money for Windows NT, saying it's better supported (or words very much to that effect). And we did show him a working Linux internet proxy, so did have some facts. So, how many schools will honestly scrap Windows for Linux, rather than remaining on the Microsoft boat "because it's better supported"? That having been said, I was one of the very few people at school who knew enough about Linux to be able to maintain a working system. Isn't computing fun when you know more than your teachers?
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Did that make any sense to anyone? I would make an ISO of the CD and offer it for download, but my 'net connection isn't fast enough for me to put it up (until I get back to Uni when I can put it onto a dedicated machine). Can you wait until October?
Actually, it does. I'm watching it at the moment. You can get RealPlayer G2 from here. This actually has all the old versions of RealPlayer.
Don't forget you need a 16-bit sound card, otherwise it won't work (personal experience having used one which Linux treated as 8-bit).
I go to the Webcast website about 5 minutes before the cast itself. It doesn't work. I reload. It takes around a minute to load, but it's there.
The ZD radio link doesn't work.
The Realplayer says that the server's too busy.
And they've got TWO Microshaft-only broadcasts.
Then the Oxford network goes down for 40 mins.
Poo.
So, will there still be a recorded webcast available? If so, where? If not, why not?
Why didn't ZD have at least 2 Real streams?
And is there *any* Linux software which can view M$ streaming format? Of course, it wouldn't be necessary if sites posted in MPEG or even Real format (decent cross-platform). Why do they insist on forcing M$ down people's throats? (Sorry, that was a rant. Ignore that last sentence.)
Forgive me if I'm wrong here, but won't KOffice come with a grammar checker?
You pretty much hit the nail on the head, so to speak. Items c and d the supplier generally *did*, with telephone advice, they basically said "We don't know, we'll send an engineer out".
As for item a, coming and fixing it, they were located half-way across the country (about 2 hours drive). However, even when an engineer was promised the next day, it normally took them a week to arrive:
We once had a hard drive in the server crash completely; it took the engineers a week to come out, then they took the server away. It didn't come back for over a month. Fortunately, the drive crashed in the last week before the holidays, otherwise the school would have been stuck without a server for about a month. How's that for customer servce?
His objective evidence was basically that the company through which the school got their computers from supported NT, no other O/S (okay, so they install Win95).
Initially (i.e. 2 years ago), they said they *do* support Novell, but their server fell over at least once a day, and so they've backtracked and said "Nope. No Novell. Only NT."
That's true. I'd have really liked to say to the admin "We'll install it and configure it - you won't even have to touch it ever again". But, as we all know, boxes require administration. Still, a good setup may not need touching for a year or more (handle simple admin stuff, like creating and deleting users remotely).
Also, a good friend of mine who is a computer consultant (extremely competent, I might add), offered the school to help with a Linux box without charging them. That wasn't good enough for the school - the MS service was "better value".
Still, how long is RedHat going to offer their support for? 6 months from purchase, 1 year, as long as they exist? If it's any less than 1 year, it won't necessarily help, unless a moron installed the box and it keeps failing every few days.
Take a look at www.seul.org. It's "Simple End User Linux", and also has a section about Linux in Education (www.seul.org/edu).
With regards to software, the almost exclusive uses are word processing, spreadsheet, etc. (i.e. Staroffice could be used) and programming (and there are so many programming languages available for Linux). There *really* isn't anything else used at school (maybe some CAD occasionally).
Where I was at school (here in the UK), we were running a Novell Netware server with about 150 Windows 95 computers.
When we got internet access (end of last year), we (some friends and I) were pushing to get Linux installed (probably have gone with SuSE as it worked right out of the box on our test system), even telling our school deputy head (who controlled the finances) the favorite words of any financially-challenged institution: "It's FREE!".
Still, he refused and forked out the money for Windows NT, saying it's better supported (or words very much to that effect). And we did show him a working Linux internet proxy, so did have some facts.
So, how many schools will honestly scrap Windows for Linux, rather than remaining on the Microsoft boat "because it's better supported"?
That having been said, I was one of the very few people at school who knew enough about Linux to be able to maintain a working system. Isn't computing fun when you know more than your teachers?