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.
which distro? (Score:2, Interesting)
US schools = owned by Apple and Microsoft???? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Schools should use free software (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Wasted Skills (Score:1, Interesting)
Thin Clients at School (Score:5, Interesting)
Diskless again. (Score:3, Interesting)
Connect the dots (Score:3, Interesting)
...
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:Thin Clients at School (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Free Software Project in San Antonio is Similar (Score:2, Interesting)
Did you experiment in using Xen to use Windows AND some version of Linux (Ubuntu is the craze these days)?
With both running, you could have students choose without rebooting and such annoying things, however memdisks are a bit problematic.
The only other downside is that it raises complexity by a nice factor of 4: configure Xen and system properly, then install/configure guest OSes properly.
Re:Dickless again? (Score:3, Interesting)
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 operations and 4 in development plus 2 managers and a IT director.
Today I work on many systems that support a total of 800 users, downtime is a weekly occurance. The users treat the system like a mortally wounded rhino, the longer the thing stays down the happier they are. IT staff is over 25. The quality of the staff is less, the quality of the machines is less, the quality of the systems is less. I wish I could say that this is an isolated example.
I have worked on both terminal and tiered systems, terminal based services are far easier on every level.
In short, I am firmly convinced that IT made a huge mistake investing in PCs and tiered architecture. I see Linux as slowly changing this balance. I long for the day when at work I have a fully fault tolerant server and thousands of terminals. Where control of the data is the hands of IT and access to the data is wide open to any employee.
Poignant... (Score:2, Interesting)
And I looked at the LTSP back in 2003 thought it was so not ready. Two systems asked me if it was something they should consider, and I told they yes, but 1)let it mature a little technically, and 2)find an advocate in the system, even *just* a teacher, who would drive the project. I knew this would cut my consulting fees dramatically, but I thought then it was inevitable.
Unfortunately, this was in Maine, and the MLTI (Apple iBooks for 7th and 8th grades) pretty much slammed the door shut on open source. Apple declared 'other' software completely unacceptable, though we got several NetWare systems talking to the Apple systems quite nicely, thank you very much. Microsoft, of course, straddled the fence. Linux systems were actively fought against by the Apple engineers, being the only true threat to their business.
I'm hoping that the LTSP catches hold. It has tremendous potential for schools, and frankly for most any application where there is a limited number of applications necessary. And maybe more than that...
Re:But... (Score:3, Interesting)
Who cares if the functions in OpenOffice use a ; instead of a
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 something like $100!
I can only imagine what I would have been capable of when I graduated if I had access to gcc, or a similar high quality compiler -- for free!
Re:Schools can switch easily (Score:3, Interesting)
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 than "keep kids off the street and pay a bunch of bureaucrats salaries". It's almost trivial to design a better system, but between teachers unions and all the funding-related bureaucrats it's almost impossible to get such a thing implemented.
Re:Congratulations to them, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
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:Free Software Project in San Antonio is Similar (Score:2, Interesting)
Linux
Students log in with username 'student' password 'student'
-Kiosktool + chmod -R a-w on
Windows We have deepfreeze + a limited user account. Windows explorer is effectively disabled, and the 'public fox' extensions is in full effect on firefox keeping the students from downloaded pesky
shared resources
I have a Samba Server set up
Internal Bind9 Just as an aside we have named every computer in the wing and have set up and internal *.imak domain. Every computer has its name prominently displayed. For example, sambaserver.imak is where our public samba shares are located. Zeus.imak is my teacher computer --etc.
All computers have the following on both OS'S so that the students can work collaboratively and the teacher can maintain control:
-Apache Web servers with php interpreters.
-FTP Server
-SSH Server
-VNC Server -Tight VNC on windows
-KRFB on Linux
(THE VNC is cool because it allows the teacher to remotely comandeer student machines. The name resolution makes it easier, but I also have interactive bird's-eye-view seating charts at each teacher desk. --Point and click to take over the student machine. It's neat.)
-Anyway, I don't mean to sound like a wise-guy, but I thought a little more elaboration was necessary. Any comments that will help to enhance my security are appreciated!
Josh Beck
Thin Clients at a Small Company (Score:2, Interesting)
I am the IT Department at a small company. We have employees who require access to computers on a semi-regular basis for checking email, looking at web pages for suppliers and doing simple spreadsheets. I am also lucky to work directly for the company's owner who is a huge advocate of appropriate technology.
Several employees use windows PCs for specific tasks such as scanning office documents or graphics work. Most other employees need very little power on the desktop.
Several years ago we switched a dozen employees to diskless thin clients. They boot using the NIC and get the OS from a linux server. I got all the documentation and instructions on setup from the Linux Terminal Server Project (ltsp.org). We build diskless thin clients for about $200 each (case, power supply, motherboard w/ NIC, and memory)
I have never done a rigorous cost analysis of the benefits of this set up. All I know is I have a dozen employees, who required hardly any training, using linux PCs, who average less than five minutes of support *total* per day. Usually much less.