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.

Finally someone gets it in education...

[A beautiful mind (821714)]

However, resistance among educators crumbled with the emergence of an advocate of the new system. In 2005, Dean Coder, a principal from the Prince George district with whom Ferrie had corresponded, transferred to the Kamloops district because he wanted to become involved in its transition to free software. Assigned to Barriere secondary school, Coder decided to convert all 110 computers at the school over to the thin client system. Systems analyst Dean Montgomery began work on a second-generation system, using state-of-the-art equipment.

By this point, applications such as OpenOffice.org and Scribus had evolved to the point that teachers were "awestruck" by the new pilot system. However, what really convinced teachers that the change was worthwhile, Ferrie says, was Coder's advocacy. "He put his own reputation on the line and said to the staff, 'I'm going to be there for you.'" A young principal at the district's largest school soon requested the new system, and several others quickly followed. Now, Ferrie says, "we're struggling to implement it at the rest of our secondaries." In the end, an advocate who was both an educator and an administrator, he maintains, made all the difference in getting the system accepted.

Nomen est omen?

And all the cost savings are eaten up by

[einhverfr (238914)]

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.

Free Software made them competent.

[twitter (104583)]

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.

This is something that will be repeated because free software is like that and the pioneering days are over.

Ferrie has nothing but praise for his staff for working through the conflict and learning new skills."Even the technicians who struggled a little bit initially are very good," Ferrie says. "They're phenomenal now. On

Congratulations to them, but...

[Futurepower(R) (558542)]

Yes, congratulations. However, they are building on years of effort by the Kindergarten to 12th grade Linux [k12linux.org] project, and other such projects. The K12Linux Project was originally started for the Multnomah County Education Service District [k12.or.us], 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 [k12ltsp.org] 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 [microsoft.com]. (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 [microsoft.com], 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.

Re:Congratulations to them, but...

[TrancePhreak (576593)]

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.

Or you could say, just kill the process in Windows.

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.

The whole point of computers in schools is to familiarise students with them. There's always going to be at least one uber-geek able to take down the whole network with a flick of the wrist. Anecdotal evidence does not setup your computer to be the most secure platform.

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.

I'm sure it's hard to hire from all those millions of certified people.

Good managers enjoy reducing the workload.

[Futurepower(R) (558542)]

"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.

Re:Congratulations to them, but...

[einhverfr (238914)]

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...

Re:

[EvilRyry (1025309)]

What reality are you in? It's far easier to hire admins who know Windows well, even high quality admins. And they come cheaper than Linux admins.

I'll agree that its easier to find a Windows admin... a competent Windows admin on the other hand is just as hard to find as a competent Linux admin. The vast majority of Windows admins I run into are complete idiots, not to say its set in stone.

As far as being cheaper, that is generally correct. However surveys repeatedly show that Linux admins can cover a much larger amount of systems than Windows admins, greatly reducing or eliminating the total cost difference between them.

Re:

[acidrain (35064)]

Yeah, I'm sure having your IT staff doing all of that work entails a great cost savings. I mean, it's not like they're paid employees or anything...

Not sure why this guy was modded as a troll. In this case, rolling their own may have been a win, but it is still a worthwhile question.

I have watched companies invest man-years to solve a problem quite poorly that they could have solved excellently with third party software costing much less. Programmers always gloss over use cases and overlook the cost of

Re:

[indifferent children (842621)]

One might assume that there's other work that they were already doing, and that they're no longer doing now that they're doing something else...

Removing viruses, removing malware, reinstalling Windows to remove registry cruft, removing pornadoes so that their teachers don't go to prison, etc. Switching to Linux can take less than no time (it's a manager thing, not a physics thing. if you didn't understand it instantly, don't bother trying).

which distro?

[FudRucker (866063)]

no mention in the article of which distro or if many distros that were implemented...

Re:

[bl8n8r (649187)]

My first reaction was that it may be TraitorousWhore-StickItUptheCommunityAss-Linux [suselinux.com] since it appears on the a Microvell [suseblog.com] blog, but I found an article [sd73.bc.ca] on the school website [sd73.bc.ca] that may suggest otherwise:

(from Linux in Education Project link, on right column)
"Here is a list of some of the free software technologies that we use: Debian, Free BSD, RedHat, MySQL, PHP, OpenOffice, Linux Terminal Server Project, Diskless Clients, Dansguardian, Squid, Cyrus, Squirrelmail, Scribus, Qcad, Cycus, and more..."

Schools can switch easily

[Opportunist (166417)]

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.

What does apply...

[SanityInAnarchy (655584)]

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.

Re:

[Chandon Seldon (43083)]

we were told specifically that students were not allowed to have administrative access to anything at all for liability reasons.

It's a mistake to let stupid bureaucracy get in the way of effective operation. You can get free entry level sysadmin services out of some of these kids for free, and even some less competent kids can be recruited as free first level tech support - turning that down is dumb. Sure, you can't do without techs or anything, but most support organizations have low level techs to solve

Re:

[Chandon Seldon (43083)]

The students who are intelligent and worthwhile rise above the crap.

Some students rise above the crap. Others get discouraged and spend all their time stoned. Others over-exert and end up being burned out on anything vaguely resembling academics for life. Most of them end up with emotional scars that make them phobic about mathematics. Personally, I ended up dropping out and going to community college - best decision ever.

Public school in the United States is poorly designed to accomplish any goal other t

Switching to Windows

[Taimat (944976)]

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....

http://spe.atdmt.com/b/NMMRTUMISITP/mrs06245_swit_ 336x280_DEF.gif [atdmt.com]

good,

[joe 155 (937621)]

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.

US schools = owned by Apple and Microsoft????

[zymano (581466)]

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.

Re:

[Billly Gates (198444)]

What happened in Florida was the result of the high deficit of the federal government that Bush created.

Florida used to receive billions in federal revenue and loans. Now since money is tight I do not believe they receive any assistance.

So when Florida had more money they increased spending and now they can not afford to pay for everything. Texas, California and many other states are in the same boat with huge gapping deficits. IF you are going to cut off money you need to so do gradually and not just overn

Re:

[shmlco (594907)]

First rule of a bureaucracy: Spend ALL of your budget. Spend more if you can.

Because if you (shudder) spend less, the powers that be might actually CUT your budget to what you actually need.

Re:

[daeg (828071)]

Do not let your district fall for the "laptop for every child" ploy. It's a trap. The productivity gains are none whatsoever. Combine that with even higher IT costs, licensing costs, etc, and it's a taxpayer's nightmare.

Try to push for the library to have laptops instead that students can check out like they do books. Set them up on Linux -- if the student is just typing, they shouldn't need Internet outside of school. Set up an easy system to wipe/re-image the drives upon return. Everyone wins.

Schools should use free software

[saibot834 (1061528)]

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.

But...

[blowdart (31458)]

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.

Re:But...

[Bert64 (520050)]

We used wordperfect in school, now that i have left school i find that noone uses wordperfect in the workplace.
Those who learn word in school today will probably be using something totally different by the time they enter the workplace anyway.
Atleast for them, whatever they end up using will almost certainly be an improvement, to someone taught on wordperfect word is a huge step down.

Re:

[Ant P. (974313)]

We used Wordperfect in our school as well, until in 2001-2 they replaced all the 512k Macs with Pentium 2 PCs running Win2k and Office 2000. They were slower, crashed more and caused us to miss more classes (several times we had to waste an entire hour following instructions from the teacher to run virus removal tools and windows update, because they'd apparently never heard of SUS).

Re:

[KingOfBLASH (620432)]

But any software students use will teach them about using software, and give them basic computer skills.

Who cares if the functions in OpenOffice use a ; instead of a ,, the students will learn how to use a spreadsheet.

And, at least with open software, there's the chance they may be able to learn something about how to put together software.

When I was in school, I took a computer course in Pascal. I was so excited, I wanted a copy for myself to program in on my spare time -- but it Borland Pascal cost somet

Re:

[dvice_null (981029)]

> you're just creating another monoculture, and push a free-only view; which is, to my mind, just as bad

Do you know what is the difference between Microsoft monoculture and open source monoculture?

I give you a hint. The other has huge license costs and you have to like what you get. And the other doesn't have license costs and if you don't like something, you can always either fix it yourself, ask anyone else to fix it or pay anyone to fix it for you. Please note the term "anyone". It is very importan wo

Re:

[nine-times (778537)]

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.

Replacing everything with Linux *or* other free alternatives might create a software monoculture, but that's only if everyone really chooses the same free alternative. Replacing some things with Ubuntu, some things with SuSE, some things with FreeBSD, some things with Solaris, etc., would not quite be a monoculture.

There's a lot

Re:But...

[JohnBailey (1092697)]

So instead of teaching applications, teach concepts. There is no profound difference in using Windows and associated apps and using Linux and the alternatives until you start doing the admin stuff. Outside any computer tech classes, that isn't even a consideration. These are school kids not IT admins. You still click on a menu or an icon to open a program, you still need to use a menu or a button to save a document. And last time I checked, Open Office didn't require you to convert everything to hex and back to decimal to do any calculations, Same old formulas in cells stuff as Excel.

I agree, a monoculture is bad.. So how are you proposing that it changes? Teaching kids that the only way to use a computer is with Microsoft products just maintains the current state. Teaching them to use different systems can only be an advantage. If nothing else, it will give the kids a chance to see a different system in use. At worst, it will require them to do a little more study to get up to speed with Office.

Re:But...

[CheeseTroll (696413)]

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: Are we sending our kids to secretarial school, or are we teaching them to think? I used AppleWorks to type papers in high school, and wrote them out in cursive before that. Who the heck writes in cursive anymore (except grandparents and elementary schoolkids)? But amazingly enough, I have *somehow* managed to get jobs and be a productive member of society.

Thin Clients at School

[fishthegeek (943099)]

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.

It's fear. Ignorance and fear. And sloth

[Flying pig (925874)]

How many real IT administrators do you have? I'm guessing it's between 0 and 1/aleph-null.

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

Re:Thin Clients at School

[Ant P. (974313)]

Easy answer.

Every second Tuesday of the month, walk by the IT office and remind them what day it is with a snide remark of your own.

Re:Thin Clients at School

[flyingfsck (986395)]

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:Thin Clients at School

[greg_barton (5551)]

If anyone knows a way to convince lifetime IT employees at a school district of anything please let me know...

Easy. Outlive them.

Vermont

[mattr (78516)]

I understand my elementary school nephews in Stowe, Vermont are going to be learning on Vista in their school. It's nice they are getting any exposure at all (though they've been playing Harry Potter on a PC at home for years) but I'm worried about what their first experience will be, and also why an OS that most businesses are leery about and which ties up huge computing resources is being used in an elementary school. True I had a fabulous opportunity when I was young to learn on a keypunch terminal and f

Connect the dots

[starfishsystems (834319)]

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.

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.

Re:

[starfishsystems (834319)]

If Linux is so secure users should be allowed to install applications!

Absolutely. Users already can install applications. There's no great mystery to it. They're also free to develop applications, if they care to. All the tools they might need are there, or can be downloaded off the net.

Of course, with Linux being a secure environment, your system administrators probably won't let you have root, and they may restrict what you can do in other ways, even to the extent of disallowing programs to execut

Another BC School District, too

[gobbo (567674)]

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.

Just imagine ...

[jamesl (106902)]

... how much the school could save if the staff could maintain the boilers, plow snow in the parking lot and wash the windows too.

Free Software Project in San Antonio is Similar

[Prospero2007 (1113755)]

Hello All,
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 [ubuntuforums.org]

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! [youtube.com]

Josh Beck
IT Coordinator
Interactive Media Applications at Krueger Middle School
Northeast ISD
San Antonio, Texas

Children learning products instead of concepts?

[kungfoolery (1022787)]

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.

Help with a K12LTSP lab in San Francisco

[christian.einfeldt (874074)]

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

Something similar for home networks

[kbahey (102895)]

Nice to see that. Better have the money going to local business than licensing fees that go outside the country.

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, ...etc., and disks are cheap anyway).

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 /etc/nsswitch.conf to give precedence to NIS over local files). /etc/fstab has the NFS shares and what they map to.

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).

Re:Dickless again?

[Rakishi (759894)]

fail to reboot most of the machines after a power outage

Wouldn't someone pressing the power button fix this right up?

require unnecessary amount of effort to make an extra application available to a particular user...

It's a school they don't want suers to install apps,if they did they'd have kids failing out for skipping classes to play games in the library while making it impossible for library systems to be used for actual work (yes this happened in my HS). Then there is all the fan wanna-be hackers that'd be putting trojans on the systems.

And still control freaks everywhere are pushing for an architecture that inhibits user creativity,

User creativity in schools by students generally means figuring out how to break the school network, repeatably. I think the only thing that wasn't compromised at my HS was the grade system and the main admin's password. The later was was mostly since no one cared enough to get it (it'd be quite possible to fake a problem, get someone with the pass to need to log in locally while modifying the keyboard to have a hardware keylogger). The former was rumored to be very difficult to break into and the punishment for trying was a suspension, no one card enough to risk it. Oh and the students weren't above dissembling school computers in semi-public areas (mostly to bypass hardware security devices), one library desktop lost a cpu and the server room got raided as well.

Diskless again.

[xdroop (4039)]

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 ru

deep freeze

[Joe The Dragon (967727)]

deep freeze works good in school as all you have to do is reboot the system to undo any changes and then you don't have to lock down the systems as much as you do with other setups.

Re:

[Usquebaugh (230216)]

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 ope

Re:School District Techie

[DaMattster (977781)]

I have had a lot of luck with the Open Source variety of Terminal Services. I use FreeBSD as a server for 25 diskless workstations at a very small, private, special ed school. It even works fine on slightly older hardware. Most of the expense in deploying this came with an upgrade to a gigabit switch and two high end dell servers. I was lucky in that most of the other workstations from 2-3 years ago on had gb ethernet cards in them. But, all in all, it's been nicely cruising along since the Christmas holiday and there is plenty of extra power for growth. We had only one outage due to power loss and the UPS's shut everything down safely. I love FreeBSD's acupsd (power management daemon.) The gigabit ethernet makes lots of difference.

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.