Promoting Open Source in Schools

[Christopher Browne]

On 12/17/05, Zbigniew Koziol <zkoziol-Zd07PnzKK1IAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> This is rather off topic what I want to ask.
>
> Igor Denisov wrote:
> > Also, with Linux, there _would_ be a lot less work, because all the
> > l33t_h4xx0r_dud3 high school kids would no longer be able to download
> > and use system cracks from sites like Blackcode. After all, all you
> > need for local Win2K admin rights is a boot disk, and then you can
> > install anything you want, be it Quake3 or a network traffic sniffer.
>
> Isnt the same in this case danger with using Linux as well? One needs
> just the first installation CD to put in and get full access (not even
> with of the same distribution). Or is there perhaps a way that this
> could be prevented?

Good question.  If some form of strong authentication is in use, that
could make it difficult to replace the installation with something
else.  "Difficult" and "impossible" are obviously two different words.

> But the real question I have is the following.
>
> Wouldnt it be less expensive to use just one powerfull machine for
> entire school/organization and connect to it by using 100$ terminal
> machines only, and run in that way any X applications?

That has the downside of requiring 100% uptime of the network and
chews quite a bit of bandwidth.  Further, it means you need a rack of
those "really powerful" machines in the back room.

At least some portion of the savings made on the "cheap terminals"
will have to be consumed in beefing up the server and the network.

It is also not clear how well that approach scales.  What works OK
with ten terminals may not be so OK with 100, or 1000.
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