[K12OSN] Re: Making donations work better

[Les Mikesell]

On Sat, 2004-05-08 at 13:27, Terrell Prude', Jr. wrote:

> Remember, she still has to build workable thin clients out of
> all that random hardware before they can even boot Knoppix
> or Damn Small.

Yes, if it doesn't have a built-in NIC I'd recommend
delegating to someone with hardware experience. In
fact it is probably a good idea to have someone open
the case and clean out the dust from random donations
anyway and do a bios-flash update of anything you expect
to PXE-boot. Otherwise the most complicated choice should
be which connector takes the keyboard and which takes
the mouse which for some unexplainable reason are
identical and weren't always color coded.  Fortunately
most motherboards won't fry if you get this wrong the
first time and most even survive a hot swap even though
it isn't guaranteed.

> Then 
> she's got to do a remaster of the ISO image.

I think you've missed an important point of free
software.  If one person does the remaster and is
willing to share it, everyone else can move on to
the next step.  There may or may not be a bootable
CD with knoppix-style hardware detection that
does an xdm remote login automatically today
but someone could easily make one and make it as
easy to get as k12ltsp.  Likewise since knoppix
itself can network boot clients that get the same
hardware detect capability, it should only take a
little more effort to build that into the server,
at least for pxe clients where you don't have to
detect the NIC type first.  If these projects aren't
already underway, maybe someone could dig up some
grant money to start them.

---
  Les Mikesell
    les at futuresource.com