Warren Togami wrote:
I have decided to take a semester off of college during Spring 2003 in
order to focus on Linux research, development and advocacy. I will
spend all of my time until Fall 2003 working on the following projects.
Hi Warren-
Sorry that I have not been visiting LUAU for quite some time. About
quitting school, even for just one semester, I really think you should
give it very careful thoughts. I remember Michael Dell told us (at
Exxon) exactly the same thing, that he was going to quit University of
Texas for just one semester. But he never returned to school. There
are, of course, big differences between Dell and yourself. Michael Dell
had a very definitive goal and eventually became a multi-billionaire.
Working on Linux (ha!), particularly on the kind of "pro bono" projects
that you mentioned, will get you nowhere. Between my wife and I, we are
probably one of the most educated pairs on earth (I have BS, MS, PhD in
chemical engineering and JD, and my wife has BS, MS in electrical
engineering and MD). I always hated schools. And because I hated
schools, may goal had always been to study as hard as possible while in
school so that I could get the degree and get out of school as quickly
as possible.
The technology world, however, represents a very different story. If
you really plan to take one semester off, you should try to formulate a
much grander goal--more particularly, trying to work on something that
has a much broader reach and more permanent impact. For example,
instead of working on the project(s) yourself, perhaps you should think
about the possibility of working on a "handbook" (or "cookbook"), so
others can do the dirty work for you. That's how technology and
experience can best propagate and grow local roots. By doing this, you
and our other LUAU "guys" (gender-neutral) will acquire a strong
leadership, and Hawaii will produce an army of willing and able Linux
advocates.
As I mentioned earlier, I will be more than happy to sponsor you
project, if you can articulate its worthy goals and demonstrate its
long-term self-sustainability (the key word is "self"). Hawaii is a
very difficult place to do business, and I have drastically cut down my
expenses, including moving my office to my basement, to compensate for
my drastically reduced revenue. However, I believe I will still be able
to absorb at least part of the hardware cost to develop a "Linux lab".
In order to promote Linux in Hawaii, I really believe we should shelf
the idea of using used PCs at least for a while. My idea is to build a
number of powerful (and cheap) new LInux and Windows PCs networked
together, which can be duplicated by business concerns. One of those
PCs should be a new Athlon-64 machine. :-)
Technology and money always have to go hand in hand. I know a number of
venture capital groups. But to be blunt, I just don't see how anyone
will be interested in investing in what we are doing here. (Living in
paradise has a price, but we should never give up our hope.) Another
possibility (probably the only possibility) is to pursue the non-profit
route. There are quite a few chartible foundations in Hawaii constantly
reviewing funding proposals. As an example (this is the one that I am
somewhat familiar with), when one of my neighbors (Doris Duke) died, she
left more than two billion dollars in her estate. Her will was recently
probated, giving all her money to a charitable foundation established
under her name. As a matter of law, her estate must give out at least
5% of its assets (or 100 million dollars) to non-profit causes including
education. I don't have any influence, whatsoever, as to how the
trustees of her estate will decide on funding requests. I brought this
up because you mentioned quitting school, and believed that you probably
need to look over a broader horizon.
1) "Linux for Education Showcase" at Mid-Pacific Institute
-----------
We are rapidly approaching a point at MPI where Linux servers and LDAP
central authentication will be adopted. Late December we will begin
to transition all the teachers from the current unstable Windows based
e-mail server to Linux (uw imap, Sendmail, SpamAssassin, Vipul's
Razor, virus scanning). This e-mail server roll-out will be the
beginning of Linux based LDAP central authentication on Mid-Pac
campus. Immediately upon LDAP implementation, the LTSP thin client
lab will use LDAP for authentication. Before mid-2003 we will
integrate the Windows clients on the school network with LDAP/Samba.
http://diradmin.open-it.org/
We will be using "Directory Administrator" in order to easily manage
LDAP authentication.
MPI is also in the process of implementing another LTSP thin client
lab in lower campus. This will probably occur sometime around January.
Late December we are converting all Windows machines to use Mozilla as
the campus standard browser, replacing the deprecated Netscape 4.x.
I personally will need to learn much about LDAP, Samba and Windows
domain configuration in order to make this happen. I hope that I can
get assistance from the community on these tasks.
With all of these Linux and Open Source solutions being implemented at
Mid-Pac, Mid-Pac will be a Showcase of "Linux for Education" systems.
We will invite educators from other schools, public and private to let
them see what Open Source Software can do with low costs and high
reliability. We will show them how the community will take active
roles in implementation and maintenance of Open Source solutions at
their schools.
2) St. John the Baptist LTSP lab and Firewall
----------
A while ago Wilson Chan, Ray Strode and I configured a LTSP lab and
Linux based firewall at St. John the Baptist school in Kalihi. The
firewall has been working great, unfortunately the LTSP server kept
locking up due to hardware problems. Currently Ray Strode is
analyzing the server. We may need to replace the motherboard. Wayne
Liauh had donated a complete Athlon system to Mililani High School but
it is no longer needed (read below about Mililani), so we may be able
to use this motherboard in the St. John server. We will also need $50
print server appliance for the school.
After the server is made stable, we will need to configure the LTSP
server to be ready for student usage. While the K12LTSP distribution
does most of this work for us, there are many little modifications
that should be made to the default user profiles in order to simplify
the desktops for the users.
St. John's LTSP server is only a single 1.2GHz Athlon processor and
1GB of RAM, so I suspect this will not be enough power for the 12-15
clients that they hope to run.
3) Mililani High School and Linux
-----------
Wayne Liauh had donated a complete Athlon 1GHz system to Mililani High
School that would be used as a Oracle Linux server. Later it turned
out that they had a spare Dell server already at the school and they
will be using that machine for Oracle on Linux during Spring 2003.
This motherboard may be able to stabilize the unstable St. John LTSP
server.
Wayne, do you want the parts back if they are not needed, or can I
appropriate this for another server at some school?
Mililani's SunRay lab is currently working, but poorly configured and
running ancient software. During the Christmas break after December
18th we will need to go into their lab and completely re-install the
server. I hope to use the following software on their Sun Enterprise
450 server: Solaris 9, Gnome2, StarOffice 6 SP1, Gimp.
I will need considerable assistance between December 18th through 20th
with this server because I have almost zero experience with Sun
hardware and Solaris.
4) Future Linux for schools projects
----------
I have demonstrated Mid-Pac's LTSP lab to educators from Kaimuki High
School, St. Louis, and Mililani High School about the possibility of
implementing LTSP at their schools. While they were impressed by what
they have seen, there is a considerable amount of difficulty involved
in implementation and I ran out of time to follow up.
Fortunately during Spring 2003 I will have much more time to talk to
the schools and demonstrate LTSP to educators, so hopefully we will be
able to get this started at more schools during that period. Please
let me know if you have any other schools that would be prime
candidates for this, and try to convince some of their educators
(principles and sys admins are the best) to check out Mid-Pac's Linux
lab.
5) ITEC?
----------
Last month Brian Low said he would arrange for a booth at ITEC but I
had heard nothing from him since. Since I have heard nothing about
this and we have had no planning meetings, I'm assuming that we will
not be at ITEC this year. Even if I do hear from Brian at this point
it is too late, I'm too busy to throw together booth demos and handouts.
Warren Togami
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