Linux in the TDSB

[Anton Markov]

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As a current TDSB student and having helped out with my school's IT
department, I think I can offer some pointers. Not sure how generally
these will apply though.

Igor Denisov wrote:
| I intend to present Linux as a n alternative for Win2K for the network
clients.

This would work best in general-purpose computer labs, for example at
the library, where the main use is web browsing, e-mail, and word
processing/printing documents.

| Each is basically an off-the-shelf PC, fully functional on its own,
| but also able to log on to the board-wide netowork and connect to the
| user's shared drive. I have a plan for the connecting-to-share part,
| the user authentication, etc,
You would have to find a way of authenticating users from an NT Domain
Server at least at first. These servers are school-run for now. Worse
yet, some of the servers are Novell. Some students would also have to
have access to a personal folder on the server which is shared with
Windows.

|
| but I assume the board will also want fairly strict user privilege
| controls (hands-off browser history, than kind of thing), something I
| have little experience with (besides not running as root :-)

They mostly don't want people changing the look of the desktop when
using a shared login (ex. at the library). Otherwise the standard
permissions should work well. Obviously no browsing other people's
files, etc.

You may need access control lists or something similar, as the
user/group system could get very complex.

|
| As for compatibility, OpenOffice will do fine, no one really knows or
| seems to care about MS Office's more advanced functionality, most
| people would be fine using Notepad :-)

Here are some caveates to watch for: The Graphics Design and Photography
classes teach Photoshop and Pagemaker, because they are the tools
professionals use. Ideally, these tools should be used on a Mac (our
school does video editing on Macs), but $$$ constraints means that PCs
are used for this. It's and important area to think about.

Computer Science courses use that stupid language/program called
"Turing" which has no equivalence anywhere (probably because it's so
stupid). Never the less, it teaches the basics with a "visual" response
(i.e. drawing circles, etc.). Perhaps a Perl library providing a
simplified GDI and a GTK or QT output window would do well.

Also, they teach some VB to introduce event-driven GUI programming,
which may be a little hard to beat (the people who take those classes
are the last people you expect to touch a computer; they know NOTHING).
Disecting the Linux Kernel is way above the curriculum.

Another program is called Markbook as far as I know. It's designed to
keep track of marks, and A LOT of teachers are attached to it. Perhaps
Wine/Crossover Office would be of help here.

Also a good idea to have a program that can read Microsoft Publisher
files. Some people at our school use that for making Zines and some
other assignments, and I recall that the library has Microsoft Publisher
installed.

A final very important point is ease of deployment. The system must be
capable of installing itself, fully configured (minus DNS/computer name)
unattended. From what I hear, only Slackware can do it, but I think an
RPM or DEB based system can be installed using some custom scripts.
Perhaps a system where the school can configure one computer, and then
take a "snapshot" of its configuration to copy to other computers.

I've done Debian installes completely from the command line by using
"dbootstrap" I believe (probably the wrong name).

|
| I plan to make an official proposal in a few weeks, so far, I've been
| approaching the head of IT and others with the idea to get an idea
| about the current attitude towards OSS/Linux.

Good luck with that, and please inform us of how it goes. Perhaps you
should create a seperate mailing list for this discussion; after all,
the TDSB is important to the "education" aspect of the long-term Linux
domination strategy :).

I will probably add some more ideas later. It's a very interesting
project, and perhaps I'll be able to help somehow.

- --
Anton Markov <("anton" + "@" + "truxtar" + "." + "com")>

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