One benefit for the "when it breaks" that I thought of is that they could use "distro on a disk" type solutions. I think Cluggix would be the best bet, simply because home-grown means alot. Rebuilding the box means "shut machine off - turn on again". It wouldn't work for the servers, but it would easily work for the desktops. Further, upgrades would be a matter of shipping out new CDs.
LTSP would work too, but it seemed a bit ugly to get it going for each different machine. It certainly worked and it worked well once it was running, but with CDs, you're immediately ready to go with anything that's donated and brought in. This school currently does not even accept donations due to the level of maintenance they require to get them running initially. With a CD, they could just ask, does it have a CDrom, does it have a NIC (not even neccessary for some uses). Further, if a student needs help with some assignment, they could simply be given or lent a CD identical to the ones used in the classroom. Parents would be free to keep a copy for their own home use. Currently, if a student is learning to use Word (publisher, XL, whatever), and they need a copy at home, they face 2 options. 1) the school can implicitly encourage the parents to pirate a copy. 2) the school can expect the parents to cough up several hundred dollars for a legit copy. Heck, the School could even accept donated computers, even if they won't use them internally, and then offer them to parents who can't afford a PC of their own. or partner with a Computer Recycler, and give the recycler all the donations with the understanding that CBE would be able to allocate used PCs at a 10 to 1 ratio (or whatever). I'm still thinking it through, but there are far more possibilities when building the machine involves "put in the disk, turn it on". Kev. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mahlah Hansen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, September 22, 2003 3:00 PM Subject: Re: (clug-talk) CBE Wants to hear from us - it's a start at least. > On September 22, 2003 02:50 pm, you wrote: > > This is an excellent idea. The schools are always talking to Microsoft but, > > the schools are always crying about cash. The ROI for them with Linux would > > be a huge annual savings even with their educational discounts. > > I think a fair argument for this would be how much would it cost them to train > their staff to use it? sometimes the cost of training is far greater then the > cost of the licenses. They would have to know they would be guaranteed free > or low cost consulting until their staff are completely trained and > comfortable with the system. Offering help through certain mailing lists etc > would not be enough support for them to start at least. I just couldn't > imagine they would have the time in the day to be searching the internet on > how to fix their system if something breaks. You also have to realize some > people don't know how to use search engines efficiently, and they might not > even know what they are suppose to be looking for. Putting together some > sort of 6 month to 1 year support group for the school may be helpful, at > least this way one person wouldn't have to be on call 24/7.. > > just a thought.. > >
