[K12OSN] LTSP sites in New York
Edward Holcroft
edward at netday.org.za
Wed Aug 17 19:04:17 UTC 2005
Petre
Before accepting any slaps on the back, I should mention <shameless
plug> that the funding was provided by the social responsibility wing
of UniForum South Africa, a non-profit organisation that maintains
the .co.za domain. They were founded several years back as a South
African user group: the Unix Forum.
In response to your questions:
1. It's actually more than twice as much bang for buck, because for
the Linux sites not only can we provide twice as many computers:
a. we provide hands-on training (through a subcontracted training
company). This training provides teachers with national level credits
if they meet the assessment criteria. Training is critical as in many
cases this is the first exposure of the school to ICTs.
b. we provide telephonic and e-mail support for the first year
while they get the hang of it
c. and of course all software upgrades are free and gratis in
perpetuity, unlike our early efforts, using that other operating
system. We ensure that the schools get the newest release of K12LTSP
as it becomes available. btw we have tried several LTSP offerings
with varying levels of success and find K12LTSP to be the all-round
best. It's rock-solid in hot and dusty African environments and, very
NB for the schools we work in, it has a dead easy upgrade path.
If we were to remove the cost of training and support, we could
install more equipment. However, these elements are important for new
users and furthermore 20 clients is about right for the average size
of classroom which we convert into a computer lab. Also, much of our
expense lies in the logistics of installing in deep rural areas. We
could do things cheaper in urban areas. Looking at the overall
picture, considering such elements as refurbished PCs (environmental
and economic benefits), less of a theft problem with thin clients,
lower power consumption, ease of administration, range of
applications that ship with K12LTSP etc etc I'd say LTSP is more like
ten times bang for buck. If one considers all this from a perspective
of sustainable ICT solutions, the facts speak for themselves. Now I
am interested to see if this sustainability argument is relevant only
to the under-developed world, or whether it is equally applicable to
a leading global city such as New York. My hypothesis, based on
lurking on a number of discussion lists, is that there are synergies
worth exploring. In particular I am looking for irrefutable evidence
that LTSP should not be read as carrying a "Good for Africa" stamp. I
need to convince certain closed-minded bureaucrats that it's a world-
class solution at a fraction of the cost of anything we have known
before, and part of that argument involves illustrative cases from
the developed world.
2. The 20-client sites are P4 (whatever is entry level at the time -
currently 3GHz) with 2GB RAM, and the 40-client sites (only one so
far) are dual Xeon with 4GB RAM on a gigabit backbone with 100mb
clients. In fact all our newly deployed sites now run on GB backbone
since it's become cost effective to do so, using entry level,
unmanaged switches. The rest: as far as clients are concerned it's
all the usual suspects - old P1's with 32-64MB RAM. Dells, IBMs and
Compaqs are just great, but we use anything we can lay our hands on -
and people are practically throwing them out - even in South Africa.
Esigodini is working faultlessly, and interestingly I find that the
40 clients running simultaneously with a range of apps, even biggies
like OOo, open does not max out the RAM on the server - only gets to
just over 3GB used, with the occasional spike to 4GB as the apps
startup. It almost never goes into swap space. We upgraded the
Esigodini Primary School site from 20 to 40 clients because of the
oustanding enthusiasm we got from the principal there - they are now
even conducting their own training courses for the local community.
cheers
ed
On 17 Aug 2005, at 4:35 PM, Petre Scheie wrote:
> Edward-
> Looking over the list of schools to which you've provided labs, I'm
> impressed with all you've accomplished. Congratulations!
>
> A couple questions come to mind:
>
> 1. I noticed that prior to 2002, the labs consisted of 10 Windows
> computers, but from 2002 forward, the labs are K12LTSP servers with
> around 20 clients (the latest one has 40 clients!). Is the same
> amount of money being spent building the labs? It appears you're
> getting twice as much bang for the buck by switching to LTSP. Is
> that the case?
>
> 2. What are the specs on the hardware you use for the servers? I'm
> particularly interested in how the server at Esigodini Primary
> School, with its 40 clients, is working out.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Petre
>
> Edward Holcroft wrote:
>
>> Hi list
>> I am visiting New York City in September (from South Africa) and
>> was hoping to visit sites there, preferably schools, that are
>> using LTSP or just plain Linux. Our small non-profit organisation
>> has deployed about 40 K12LTSP computer labs to severely
>> disadvantaged schools in rural South Africa with great success. I
>> am interested to see how differently things are done in the
>> developed world, and what lessons I can take back home with me.
>> Any leads will be really welcome. I already know about The Beacon
>> School in Manhattan and have set up something with them.
>> You can see short summaries of what we have done at http://co.za/
>> cares/netday_proj.html
>> Thanks in advance
>> ed
>> PS It would help if any leads you give me are easily reachable by
>> regular public transport from Manhattan.
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