Re: [Fwd: Re: [seul-edu] RE: [why schools don't adopt OSS]]

[John Hansknecht <jhansknecht@hanstech.com>]

On Tuesday 27 November 2001 05:45 am, Doug Loss wrote:
>
> It might be easier to start with private schools - especially non-profit
> denominational schools, which operate on tight budgets and are somewhat
> smaller than the public behemoths down the street.  These people really
> do care about saving money, and they are not hobbled by large
> bureaucracies either.  Once enough private schools adopt OSS, we can
> collect their case studies and have a body of evidence to present to the
> public sector.  Perhaps these arguments  apply to for-profit private
> schools too, but I think this is a smaller slice of the pie.  I say
> start small and build momentum.  This approach lets us work out the bugs
> before tackling the giants.
>
> Unfortunately, this strategy takes more time, and we're trying to
> "strike while the iron's hot."
>
> I still think the community needs to come out with an Education
> Distribution to ease installation.  As I see it, there are three types
> of installations required in an edu environment: student machines, staff
> machines, and servers.  When you install RedHat, it prompts for the type
> of installation and suggests Workstation, Server, etc.  This doesn't
> make sense for an edu distro.
>
> Right now it is no easy task to set this up.  The packages are
> available, but not on a CD.  The installation procedure goes like this:
> 1) Choose one of a myriad of available installations
> 2) Install it, choosing packages from a tremendous list of confusing (to
> the uninitiated) options (what does ypbind do?  do I need it?)
> 3) Locate educational packages
> 4) download and attempt installation, only to discover dependencies
> 5) Figure out what those dependencies are
> 6) Locate the package that will satisfy the dependency
> 7) Go back to step 4, and repeat as more dependencies are discovered.
> 8) Confiure the application
>
> This is a lot to ask from a person with little or no *nix experience.
> An edu distro would reduce these steps to
> 1) Get the edu distro
> 2) Choose student, staff, or server installation
> 3) Choose applications (which should be well described)
> 4) Customize the configuration (but it should work pretty well without
> this step).
>
> A student installation would include:
> Web/email client
> Office suite
> Educational apps (select by grade level and subject)
> Games (this may be important for fostering acceptance)
> What else?
>
> A staff installation would include:
> same as student install plus
> courseware
> gradebook
> Internet usage monitor
> Account management SW
> What else?
>
> The server installation would be tailored for school use.  There could
> possibly be more than one type of server too, such as a lab server (NFS,
> NIS, DHCP) and a gateway server (firewall, httpd, email server,
> squid/squidguard).  A library app (such as Koha) should also be
> available for the server machine.
>
> I have installed Linux at a private school, and the effort has largely
> been successful.  Linux has still not achieved acceptance by the staff,
> but I'm still working on that.  I'd like to introduce linux to other
> schools too, but managing the one I'm involved with now still requires a
> huge committment on my part (and I'm just a volunteer).

Hello, my name is John Hansknecht, and I work as the Director of Technology 
at a private (non-profit) school in Detroit, Michigan (USA).  I am brand new 
to the SEUL list.  I have been following this string since Doug posted his 
first message last week.  Our school, through the generosity of some alumni 
is currently a Microsoft house (Windows NT.)  I am now looking at the new 
Microsoft licensing and the hardware upgrades required for Windows XP and 
recently I have begun raising the red flag here at school regarding are 
future with Microsoft.  In the near future I am working on a cost/benefit 
analysis of maintaining our current  configuration verse "the alternatives". 
For these alternatives I am leaning heavily toward a Linux/Open Source 
solution.  Well, enough for background...

What would I need to convince folks here to switch to open source?

1) Regarding installations, server installation mode would have to support 
specialized servers (email server, file server, printer server, proxy server, 
etc).  However a workstation installation, especially one with options to 
install a collection of applications for teachers and/or a collection of 
applications for students would be very helpful.

2) A good document/chart helping people identify software alternatives would 
be of great assistance.  This would be a list that identified software 
alternatives to the mainstream Windows applications and that would include 
training resources (books, web sites, etc) as well as a bulleted list of 
strengths and weaknesses.  (This is critical, as applications are replaced I 
know people are going to moan.  Responding will be easier if I have a ready 
list of new strengths to hilight as well as a prepared response for the 
weaknesses that people identify.)

3) We have grown very comfortable with Outlook/MS Exchange calendaring.  What 
are the best Open Source alternatives?

4) Most schools will have some applications that are Windows client only and 
that they must support (In my case it is our Fund Raising/Account/Student 
schedule and grades combination of Blackbaud and GradeQuick.  I see no change 
of changing the Blackbaud program and only limited change of changing 
GradeQuick (the replacement would have to import classes and export grades 
with Blackbaud).  Therefore, you would need to have addressed a method to run 
limited Windows applications on Linux desktops.  ??Does this mean Win4Lin, 
wine, a terminal set up or ???

4) Finally, and I know this is a "Catch 22" issue, any examples of schools 
using Linux/Open Source, especially schools in the United States of America 
and schools that have deployed Linux desktops (Not just linux servers.)


John Hansknecht
Director of Technology
University of Detroit Jesuit High School & Academy