A School District's Education in Free Software 288
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.
Another BC School District, too (Score:4, Informative)
Nice thing about successful changeovers like this is that they're infectious.
Free Software Project in San Antonio is Similar (Score:5, Informative)
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
Congratulations to them, but... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
School District Techie (Score:2, Informative)
1) Terminal Servers suck using presentation software. Two or three people on one machine is enough to bring it to its knees. Adding Servers to the farm is not really a viable option for every three people doing "Powerpoints".
2) Using Web based applications can bring the server to its knees with about 10-15 users. Combine with #1 and you are toast.
3) Teachers want to use whatever software they want to use. Telling them that they can't run X because it is 1) Windows and we're Linux, 2) wasn't designed for Term Servers, 3) will bring the Term Servers to their knees with minimal users, IS NOT AN OPTION to them. They don't care, and will run whining to the site admin, or to the District Office about how unsupportive IT is to teaching etc.
4) Flash/Shockwave Nuff said.
So, we've pulled out the client server environment and replace it with stand alone computers. With modern imaging software and RIS/Windows Deployment Services I don't care if Little Johnny Rotten has just installed malware, I just re-image the machine and it is only down for less than 1/2 hour, and comes back fully patched and ready do go.
No longer am I required to spend countless hours trying to defend why some piece of software doesn't run right, and won't be supported. Nor am I spending weeks trying to figure out a work around for application X that doesn't work right on Term Servers. Now I tell them to install whatever they want, they are responsible, and if it fubars the computer it will be reset. I can reset 40 / 50 computers a day if necissary, and it is mostly brain dead work.
Which frees me to be more productive with my time. It is much better for IT when a Network Analyst can help teachers with technology rather than being a stumbling block of "not possible", "no", "we can't". It is all fine and good to try Term Services with the latest Linux distro, but in the long run, it wasn't feasible considering the requirements/desires of the Teaching staff.
I wish them well, and hope they have better luck than I did. I just know that Terminal Servers didn't work for us.
Help with a K12LTSP lab in San Francisco (Score:5, Informative)
Re:which distro? (Score:3, Informative)
(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..."
Re:Free Software Project in San Antonio is Similar (Score:2, Informative)
Re:School District Techie (Score:1, Informative)
We give the kids copies of the software used in the school, which removes a barrier with students having to buy other software. I have found many companies willing to work with us getting their software to work on Linux or in a windows terminal services environment (great marketing for them since it means they can talk about consolidating resources, saving money, etc for the schools).
It does work, but it requires that the IT staff wants to have it work, management gives it a chance to work, and teachers understand the benefit of it working.
Just my two cents.
Re:And all the cost savings are eaten up by (Score:3, Informative)
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 all the "little things" that crop up. Meanwhile, management indulges them because they look more important when they hire more people.
When I read:
Sadly, my first thought was "fire a few of them." While this is a brilliant success story, I'm left wondering why on earth there wasn't an out of the box Linux solution they could have used... Why is a high-school doing this independently instead of paying into a centralized development model?
the Pros and Cons (Score:2, Informative)
Re:School District Techie (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Something similar for home networks (Score:3, Informative)
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).
Re:Finally someone gets it in education... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:which distro? (Score:2, Informative)