I don't want to cross post to this political mail list but ............

[Tyler Aviss]

hmm. Actually at the moment I work in a school district and we've been
slowly moving more towards linux over time.

For quite awhile our elementary schools have had thin-client Linux
labs. They were pretty dumpy for a long time though, since the
district was running with a lot of used hardware machines ranged from
between Pentium to P-3. Icewm was the general desktop, although after
joining up I added iDesk to allow for at least some nice backgrounds
and desktop icon support. It was ugly, but we tended to skimp on the
desktops and then have more loaded servers so stuff could be run
remotely with X-forwarding. Even if the desktop was a big win95'esque,
they could still run recent versions of OO and firefox etc

Now that the ball has been rolling, we've rolled out faster client's,
so it's somewhat of a thick-client setup with all storage on the
network (no hard drives, PXE boot) but most apps running locally. Full
KDE Desktops, 3d acceleration, and even Beryl just so people can go
"oooo." Whole schools are in the processes of being converted.

So far things are looking decent. The biggest fallback is some user
re-education, and that required software (such as simply accounting)
lacks native linux versions. These are currently run through a special
server that runs multiple VM's for different sites, connected to
through NX and rDesktop. That any dumb things, like when one of our
techs decided to hook the school up with daisy-chained 10/100 switches
and no gigabit uplinks (doesn't work very well when literally
everything is run through the network). Of course server downtime
because a very major issue as well, as well as network integrity and
wiring, etc. As we're connecting locations through centralized fibre
I'm hoping this issue will lessen as offsite backups and server-pods
with redundancy an be connected for more locations.

Still, cool to see. There's definitely a major cost in infrastructure
upgrades, and issues with proprietary software, but overall
centralized administration is becoming easier, hardware replacement is
a snap (just replace the box and re-register the MAC), and the desktop
environment + features are looking better every day.

Sadly, we may have to treat a few cases of frozen-bubble-addiction
shortly, but hey, it's better than solitaire!

On 10/11/07, tleslie <tleslie-RBVUpeUoHUc at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7034828.stm
>
> This made my day!!
> I hope it happens.
> Something like this could double, triple ..... x10 the
> number of people working on linux and FLOSS in 10 years.
> Also, if it works, (we had a thread about a year ago on why
> Canada schools don;t use linux), it will be very hard for
> IT in schools to ignore it, where we all figure they do
> now because (1) you never get fired for choosing MS,
> (2) the greasing that the decision makes receive.
>
> Anyways, sorry for the cross post,
> but I thought it was exciting news.
>
> I didn't vote by the way,
> being a middle age , honky, male, with post SS education,
> statistically more time then not, this is Conservative
> land, and I don't buck the trend,
> but I thought all the candidates were on
> crack this time out, and the vote issue,
> lets get past the 2000 year old roman system
> where info was disbursed by word of mouth and
> horse back riders. I think we can use the Internet
> now, and actually go to the people to see what they
> want on a issue by issue basis.
> Personally, I can't even vote any more,
> I mix fed and prov here, but,
> I believe in massive spending to Health Care (NDP),
> but i support privatization too (PC)
> (i.e. tax the purchase of the private, and give it to public),
> I support environmental issues probably more then
> Lib and PC do,
> I don't think we should have anymore school
> board systems, the economies of scale
> are against us on that one.
> Lib's want to give more $$$ to health care, but
> havn't been informed that the Doctors leaving
> the Prov are the issue, but they don't see that.
> I don't support sending troops to wars
> that a bunch of f---ups for 100 years have caused,
> (this shit has been cooking even before Bush  Sr.
> was in diapers) but do support honoring treaties for participation,
> and peace keeping.
>
> So basically i am f--ked.
> So bring on a referendum on key issues,
> if for no other reason then to officially
> get public opinion,
> because no party is going to do it for me,
> they are all smoking crack prov & fed alike.
>
> I  may vote federal for the least crooked party, and
> right now i think that is PC's, but that could change,
> I think the Libs are still stealing everything that isn't
> bolted down, but will see. Voting based on the least crooked
> party however is very pathetic, oddly enough I know many who
> do just that, and then its really just a question of
> figuring out which is the least crooked.
> Liberals under  Cretian set the standard in the crooked
> dept., and it might take a while to get all the
> Cretchies out of the system.
>
> Having said that, any country (that isn't like Aussi land)
> who doesn't fine their people for not voting should give their
> heads a shake (that means us), but having said that,
> I doubt it would fix my issues above. However, it might
> follow that they would have mandatory vote on referendums,
> so that would be sweet.
>
> p.s. I know there's not PC's anymore just C's, but its a hard habit to
> break.
>
> oh crap now i think i totally did cross post myself :)
>
>
> -tl
>
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