[K12OSN] State of K12LTSP usefullness in your school

Tom Wolfe twolfe at sawback.com
Mon May 12 01:40:50 UTC 2008


Hi Barry and others,

Students -- don't care at all whether it's Linux or Windows 98 or Vista or 
Mac so long as they can get on youtube and bebo ;) but they do like that 
we suddenly have lots of computers to go around.

Teachers -- love having these minilabs in their classrooms, and love how 
easy they are to use.

On the topic of teachers: This winter I was away, as I often am in the 
winter, for a couple of weeks and an electrical contractor working on an 
addition accidentally piped 220 VAC into three classrooms. Literally there 
were flames and smoke coming out of 20 P3 IBM Netvistas. Fortunately I had 
a stack of "spares" in our storage room, and the teachers, remembering my 
exhortations of "hey if it ever craps out just throw it in a pile and grab 
new one" took me at my word, and when I returned a week later it was like 
nothing had happened... Except that I had 20 destroyed workstations lying 
in a pile. All the labs were operational. Wow. How much did this cost the 
school? Well... how much was the labour cost of these teachers grabbing a 
new one and plugging it in? If they had been shiny new Optiplexes running 
Vista, the cost would have been massive, to say nothing of the down time 
until I replaced them. Nothing I hate more than re-imaging hard disks 
since I discovered K12LTSP

School admin -- They love stories like the one above, and the fact that 
they have 150 new computers with a shoestring budget. BUT... sadly they 
have been using their surplus cash to buy that $cholastic Read180 stuff, 
and we all know what Scholastic thinks of Linux... talk about opposite 
paradigms.

Myself -- I do wish that it were easier to run windows applications on 
K12LTSP. Although it's sharing beds with the devil it would sure make it 
easier for me and other schools to phase out the Windows machines 
completely. In a few years time I'm quite sure that the presence of Linux 
machines in schools would become massive enough to start drawing the 
attention of software vendors like even Scholastic, and running Windows 
apps would eventually become a thing of the past.

But this is a relatively minor point for me, if K12LTSP want to keep 
morally pure that's fine with me.

Regards,
Tom Wolfe

---
 	Tom Wolfe, IT Specialist 	twolfe at sawback.com
 	Stoney Education Authority	tel: (403) 881-2650
 	Box 238, Morley AB, T0L 1N0	fax: (403) 881-2793
Morley Community School | Chief Jacob Bearspaw School | Ta-otha School


On Sat, 10 May 2008, Barry R Cisna wrote:

> Hello List,
>
> I pose this question about once a year to all the K12LTSP'ers on the
> list here. I'd like to know,especially the newer people on the list
> here,how your admins think, when you mention,about the K12ltsp setup in
> a school setting. I have posted all my trials and tribulations many
> times before. I always wonder what the admins think when you mention the
> distro is free. This seems to be the biggest downfall I have found.Seems
> odd doesn't it?,,,hhmm.I was told many moons ago by an older gentleman
> that is a long time Linux guru that the United States would be the last
> country to "flip" to Linux ,because the US is such a commercialized
> country. I can see now he is correct:)
> For example what does the teachers say when you have mentioned to them
> about k12ltsp for the first time,etc.
> Any comments to share?
>
> Take Care,
>
> Barry Cisna
>
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