Re: [seul-edu] Linux in Elementry

[Rasjid <rasjidw@bigpond.com>]

James Oden wrote:
> 
> >
> > This brings us full-circle then, doesn't it?  An Edu distribution would
> > prepare the UI for student use.
> >
> Perhaps you don't need a entire distributions.  You could provide a CD with
> several rpms (or debian packages for debian systems) that is designed to
> overlay an existing system such as RH, Debian, Mandrake, ect. in such a
> way as to make it more k12 friendly.  At first I think realisticly you
> would want to target one distro to overlay.  At anyrate this strategy would
> allow you to concentrate for the most part on only on the educational
> objectives and not fuss with things like what kernel to use, filesystem,
> ect.
> 
> Just a thought...james

I agree with James and would strongly suggest this stategy. It is on my
own agenda here in Canberra Australia.  In fact, my stategy was to build
a supplementary CD to the K12 Linux Terminal Server Project
www.k12ltsp.org, as I think in terms of both hardware cost and ease of
system administration Terminal Servers are the way to go.  It allows
cheap or free hardware to be used for terminals but the users still
experience the responsiveness of a newer system (assuming adequate
server performance for the number of users).

My first addition is almost done, which is a greatly cut down version of
Cygwin/XFree86 (xfree86.cygwin.com).  For those of you not familiar with
it, Cygwin/XFree86 is a port of XFree86 to Windows using the Cygwin
libraries, and is fully open-source.  A full install of Cygwin/XFree86
is around 300MB, but provides a full Unix-like environment including an
XServer and windowmanger.  However, my cut down install to provide an
XServer only sufficient to connect to a Linux box running XDM and a font
server is only 5MB (less than 2MB bzip2'ed).  This allows any Windows
workstation to become an instant Xterm, which just runs like any other
program on their Windows desktop.  This can be done without even
installing any software on the Windows computer, as the required files
can be stored on the Linux box and shared using Samba.

There are a number of shareware and commercial products that do this
already, but they need to be installed on each workstation and start at
US$30 per seat.

I hope to have the first version done within the next few weeks and a
website up giving access to it.  I shall post further information when
done.

For those more interested in a product that is a great file, e-mail and
printer server and internet gateway that can 'pretend' to be an NT
server for a school full of Windows clients, I would look at
www.e-smith.com (and www.e-smith.org, their development site).  It is an
extremely cut down distribution based on RedHat, but since it does not
even include XWindows, it can be fully installed in under 10 minutes. 
It has an extremely easy to use Web-based interface for adding users etc
that is substantially easier to use than Windows NT.  There are no
client licence issues, and it can either be used for free or you can
purchase a professional support contract from e-smith (or local
suppliers in some places) for around US$500 per year, which includes all
updates and upgrades.

Rasjid.