[K12OSN] State of K12LTSP usefullness in your school

[Mark Lindman]

Hi Barry,
I'm the "parent volunteer" at a local private school that has about 200
students.  They have a "computer lab" that consists of a small classroom
equipped with 8 donated laptop computers, a Mac, and a terminal server
that I donated to the school. One parent works for microsoft and has
donated some software to the school. The lab was laid out to support a
photography class that is also assembling the school annual.

K12LTSP is what makes this possible.  The laptops are incapable of
running windows xp in a reasonable fashion.  The instructor is
relatively "operating system agnostic".  She just needs computers and
software for the students to use - the fact that we've got Gimp,
Scribus, OpenOffice, and Mozilla with Flash at nearly zero cost
continues to amaze her. 

When I first mentioned using K12LTSP, I didn't present it as a radical
idea, and didn't emphasize the 'free' part, but presented it as a way to
solve nearly all the issues that she faced as an instructor - most
significantly how to get from a pile of mostly useless laptops, to
functioning terminals that allowed the students to learn rather than
fight with the hardware.

There's more to tell, but I'm out of time tonight. Bottom line, without
LTSP, and really K12LTSP, there would be no supportable student
environment at the school. It's being used now by both teachers and
students from many other classes. 

A huge "Thank you" for the untold hours. You'll likely never know this
side of heaven how many folks your work has impacted.

Regards,
Mark





On Sat, 2008-05-10 at 19:59 -0500, 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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