Linux killer!

[Les Mikesell]

On Sat, 2005-10-29 at 11:34, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > >
> > >>It will save the school £20000 per year, so why does it suck
> > >>
> > >>Because we can't watch Yahoo music videos and that was it - Ok I did
> > >>point out that they weren't suppose to be watching them at all really
> > >>but that doesn't cut much ice with teenagers.

> > Heh heh... sounds about right; more reason to install Linux: you can
> > keep _much_ better control over the student's systems, and you don't
> > have to worry so much about spyware/adware/viruses/worms. To say nothing
> > of the maintenance involved; with Fedora, you can keep the systems at
> > the level _you_ want in terms of updates and packages.

> 
> Problem is, thats going to make Linux-haters out of the students.
> 
> The students are going to find something else to waste their time on.
> Might as well let them waste it on something that will make them love
> Linux. Even better, if you can break the video downloads somehow in
> windows and let them use that for a week before you switch them over
> to linux. Then they will really love linux.

Yes, you really should install firewalling or proxies if you
want to control access to the internet so it is not dependent
on the individual PCs or OS. In some places that is a requirement
for students.  If you are interested in using Linux in schools
you should probably look at the k12ltsp project which is made
from fedora or Centos and adds the ability to net-boot about
any old PC as a thin client plus some additional software.
Someone recently set up one of those google frappr maps for
sites to register at http://www.frappr.com/k12ltsp so you can
see some places that are using it.  If you haven't seen these
before you can click the links on the right to pop up the info
balloon for any location or zoom and drag as usual for google
maps.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com