How to start a revolution?

[Phillip Smith (communitybandwidth.ca)]

Hello TLUGers,

Many thanks for your time and comments in advance.

Among other pursuits, I volunteer at a computer literacy centre in Regent Park. I've
been there almost three years and have watched us support hundreds of students --
grades 3 to 8 -- in their first computer experiences. The program is unique, in that
the students of the "intro" course earn a refurbished computer for their efforts. The
computers are donated by several large companies in the Toronto area.

It is with more-and-more disappointment that I see year-after-year these young people
leaving our lab with the "albatross" that I feel Windows is in this context; that
being financially challenged households, who will probably be unlikely to ever upgrade
their OS or actually buy software. I don't feel good thinking of arming these young
people with a costly ball-and-chain or creating an army of software pirates.

Over the last two years, I've been slowly working to convince the staff and executive
to explore the possibility of using Free/Libre/Gnu open source options for not only
the course material software, but also for the OS itself. To date our only win has
been getting Open Office installed on all of the labs 20+ PCs.

The lab is at a cross roads and I feel that now may be the time to move beyond the
challenges that have made it difficult in the past. Microsoft is no longer supporting
Windows 98 and probably won't provide any more licenses to the lab. They've offered XP
licenses, but the lab's tech support guy doesn't feel that XP will run well on the
refurbished PII 266 machines that we're giving out at the moment.

In addition to that, the lab bought a new server a while ago and my intent was to use
FreeBSD (my personal server choice, but nothing against Linux there either) to support
the shared drive needs of the lab. Unfortunately, in the end, it became too
challenging without the Un*x-type user account support (or the other way around,
without the Windows authentication) to do this easily. So the tech guy went on to
install and set-up Win2k... however, that is not working for him either (in a weird
twist of events, that Win2k is acting up!) and he's asking me what to do next.

Two opportunities, both will timed.

What I would like to see happen -- in my perfect world -- is to convert the entire lab
(minus one or two PCs they need Windows on for their legacy DB and whatever) converted
to a Linux environment. The courses we teach only require Open Office, a browser, GIMP
and a few other basic applications. The server is only used as a shared drive and I'd
like to see it serving the students web pages too (easy in the Un*x world). And,
finally, I'd like to see us giving these students a future that's not costly or
proprietary by supplying a Linux installed PC to them at graduation.

The challenges are thus...

1. No good case studies of this having been done (that I can find) ... not lose
references, but actual case studies; people we could talk to.

2. No Linux knowledge base among the tech guy or volunteers (except me).

3. Convincing the staff and executive to take a leap of faith. Which requires showing
them Linux running with a decent desktop and the basic apps.

4. (this ones tricky) AOL donates 10 years of free internet access to a smaller
sub-set of students. (I've seen Linux answer for this, but I've never tried it)

I think the opportunities are clear. Having not only a working Linux lap in Toronto,
but sending hundreds of young people out into their communities with experience and
understanding of open source software. I believe it could be a beacon and serve as a
great exp ample to others who might be considering the same.

Finally, if it were to pass, we'd need a bunch of Linux experts to help with the
planning and a pseudo installfest type thing when the time came to convert the lab.

So, I guess I'm asking for input, ideas, opinions and general thoughts and guidance on
this. I've been at the lab a long time and I don't want to steer them down the wrong
path. I'm just a volunteer and advisor, I can't hold their hand through this ... but I
can introduce them to the people who can help (people like you) and give them my
advise, which they seem to take seriously.

Many thanks to all of you in advance,

Phillip.



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