Creating a School Computer Lab With Ubuntu For $0 229
An anonymous reader writes "Here is an interesting story of a school in Oakland that used old computers running Ubuntu and OpenOffice.org to provide a school computer lab for students."
Free hardware? (Score:0, Insightful)
Where are you going to find that many computers for $0?
Great reuse of old hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
An old idea in action is refreshingly inspirational. It humbly reminds us that newer is not always better, it's what you make of it that counts.
Re:Linux is free (Score:5, Insightful)
While Microsoft locks into contracts [microsoft.com] with educational institutions it's a nice change to see this sort of thing happening.
Now hand in your sarcasm badge, Sir!
Re:Linux is free (Score:2, Insightful)
It is a great pity that schools(on the instructional side, obviously certain people on the management side are essentially corporate excel jockies whose paychecks just happen to be signed by a public entity) don't take more advantage of the fact that it is largely impossible for students to give a damn about full compatibility with business-critical workflows laid down before they were born by companies that they don't work for, or interface consistency with the version of MS Office 2024 that they might encounter when they get puked out into the cold world of cube-drone hell...
Re:Linux is free (Score:3, Insightful)
I worked in 3 school districts in the last 6 years. One was all Windows, the other two use Macs. Apple still has large influences as MS realizes schools never update and are cheap and cash budgeted. Corps are an easier sell in comparison.
But one thing working for Microsoft right now you do not see is they support their operating systems for 10 years! Apple used to do that but has stopped angering tax payers and many who do budgeting for the districts. The fact a 10 year old computer still runs on XP saves tax payer money and is a plus.
Can Linux run with a gui on a 10 year old PC? I never tried on anything that old and wonder if the old xfree86 drivers work in a modern XORG? Maybe someone more knowledgable can answer that?
To me a spreadsheet is a spreadsheet. Students only need to know how to enter a formula using basic algebra and how to graph things, use margins in a word processor etc. LibraOffice does this fine. Ubuntu is nice too on netbook as they cheap and small and students can borrow them to type writting assignments.
Re:1...2...3 FUD Is Rolling In (Score:5, Insightful)
- students will learn the "wrong" office flavour, which is of absolutely no use in the real world
- students will suffer badly later on, because they won't know exactly the "industry standard" Windows
The irony is that MS keeps on changing the UI of both Office and Windows so much it doesn't matter if they learn one UI in school. By the time they get into the work place, the UI for both will have gone through several iterations.
Re:Linux is free (Score:5, Insightful)
This makes me feel damn old; but today's "10 year old PC" is a 2GHz-and-change Northwood P4 with a GMA900 or GMA950. Probably a half-gig of RAM.
That will run XP just fine(I'm currently showing some systems of roughly that spec, a bit more RAM, the door in fact); but its also pretty damn modern for everything except gaming and 64-bit memory spaces.
At a computer-lab level, reliability among 10-year old PCs can be a bit troublesome; but the sheer power of what is considered no longer worth bothering with is not to be despised.
Re:Free hardware? (Score:4, Insightful)
With Ubuntu/Linux/GNU and the local advocates the teacher found, I suspect that this program will be self-sustaining. Other teachers will learn about the system hands on. Free software is like a disease; the more you learn about it, the more you want it.
My biggest fear is that the in-fighting of the various free software groups could kill all of this with too much 'love'. "This is better." "That sucks." "Use xxxbuntu, instead." That in-fighting is a bigger threat than MS or Apple.
Re:Free hardware? (Score:5, Insightful)
Many teachers, union or otherwise, would gladly do it but they won't because they know that as soon as they volunteer the administration will make it a "voluntold" position that will simply be another duty that person is expected to work for no additional pay. Once that happens the altruistic nature goes out the window.
Some teachers are bad and some teachers are in unions. The overlap of these circles is unfortunate because bad teachers are defended from the administration by a union just like good teachers are. Unions are not about money. They are about job security. A teacher risks their job by going above and beyond like this. Suddenly an administrator sees 4 hours being worked for free and the situation becomes "if you can do A for free then why can't you do B for free?". When the union defends the teacher getting paid to do B the administration publicly paints the unions as money grubbing anachronisms that served their purpose and need to go away, when paradoxically the fact the the union needed to step in at all proves they are not yet done serving their purpose.
Teaching, much like police work, fire fighting, is a "share the burden" profession where workers help one another often times at personal expense, financial or otherwise, to achieve a common goal. The mindset of "help others" that these workers possess however is easily abused. Administrators seek to pay themselves as much as possible, because they're the chief executives of the district, while paying the "working class" as little as possible and often times asking for volunteer labor that could be paid labor if the administration paid itself less greedily.
Re:It's free if you don't value your time (Score:5, Insightful)
It's free if you don't value your time
I despise articles like this.
And I despise posts like this. It's basically a disingenuous lie wrapped up in a tink kernel of truth, making it the worst kind of lie.
Everything takes time. Absoloutely everything. Which means that according to you nothing is ever free. Well done. You've successfully removed a useful word from the english language. You are also strongly implying that other options are cheaper because they take less time, again, something which isn't true.
Yes. You need to do a lot of hustling though to get the components, assemble the network and keep it running.
Basically what you've said is completely vapid since it applies to every network ever. New machines will require hustling (infant mortality, wrangling with vendors over bulk contracts and school purchasing systems) and to assemble the network.
But it sounds like it was done by a teacher for the school, so actually, it was free. As in, cost the school nothing.
Which is, you know, kind of the definition of free,
Additional, electricity and internet access are never free. Someone maintain the network, install software and answer user questions.
Well no shit! This applies to basically every school ever. Basically, computers don't actually draw that much power and electricity is quite cheap. The payoff time for more efficient CPUs is actually quite a long time if you can get the computers for free. Running 8 hours per day, 180 days per year and old P4 will cost about £200 in electricity after about 5 years at current domestic rates. You're looking at about 7 years payoff time for buying new hardware.
But this doesn't affect the fact that the guy built the network of computers for free.
Noone tried to claim that it was not only free but zero cost to run as well.
You can't whip a linux network on a bunch of teachers and expected it to be useful. I can't even do that with IT professionals.
Well, then perhaps you should find a new job better aligned to your skills, because a completely unqualified self taught teacher did, in fact, manage to whip up a linux network that was useful to him (a teacher).
So basically, you've managed to claim that you're less use than a self-taught guy working in his spare time (and then moving to 4 hours paid time per week), while you are a fully paid up, full-time prefessional. Well done.
Re:Free hardware? (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of the 'free' (as in speech) application programs available for Linux are also available for Windows. Things like Open (Libre) Office, the Gimp, etc, can be downloaded for use on Windows. Thank MicroSoft for making available a 'free' (as in beer) version of Visual Studio for C,C++,C# and VB that you can use to build applications for Windows XP and Win7 (but NOT windows 8!).
Re:Microsoft provides discounts to Students and Un (Score:4, Insightful)
> If that student doesn't go on to college (at least right away), and wants to get a job in the community that requires computer literacy, they won't be able to say that they have multi-year experience working in a Windows environment.
So?
"I can use any computer you put in front of me" is a hell of a lot better than "I'm a robot that only learned one way to do things"
>but if you don't develop on Windows, you have no marketable skills.
This is the biggest load of bullshit you've said.
There is more to computing than office documents. There is more to computing than the desktop. Indeed, it seems that anywhere *real work* is done like science and engineering, Windows is nowhere to be found.
Out of the Top 500 supercomputers in the world, you know, where the real big problems are solved, there are a token *two* Windows clusters.
Linux owns 92 percent. Proprietary Unix, Mixed, and BSD the rest.
Linux runs embedded devices
Linux runs smartphones
Linux runs the databases
Linux trades your stocks
Linux probably runs your car's computer and if Google gets its way, you'll be sharing the road with Linux automatically driven cars.
Linux runs the computers that found Higgs and got us to Mars.
Yeah, no marketable skills if you write for Linux.
Troll.
--
BMO
Re:Free hardware? (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows is NOT just as easy.
Issue One: License compliance. You have to make sure you each machine has a legit copy of windows. Making the assumption these systems have an OEM copy of Windows and knowing what it takes to pass a BSA audit they should have the following: A copy of the invoice for the hardware which shows what verion of Windows is on it. Not just "Windows XP", but "Windows XP SP2". Then they need the Original Windows install media. They should also have a bill of sale or something to document the donation. Plus the maching should have the Windows Licence Key Sticker on it. I know no one crosses all the T's and dots all the I's, but that is what it takes to be in compliance.
Issue Two: Software compliance. You have to make sure you are legit on the software on the computer. MS Office, WordPerfect, PhotoShop, etc. So now you have to do a software audit on the computer. Or you can skip ahead to Issue Three and just wipe the drive and reinsatll the OS.
Issue Three: Cleanly installing the OS to bring the computer back into compliance or to kill the spyware , Cant have a pirate copy of Windows 7 installed on there. If the machine came with XP S2, You have to install that from the original media. Many times people don't even bother to make a set of backeup media. If the system is old enough to use original media instaed of a backup set. then you need drivers for the computer. You may or may not have been given the driver CDs/DVDs. Even if you have, those drvivers are buggy. That means you need to get drivers. So off to to Dell. or HP, or whoever to get the drivers.
Issue Four: Installing the same software on all systems. And again, if any of this is nonfree software, pay attention to license compliance.
And I am not joking. Anyone can phone in and ask for a BSA audit. The school system can decide they don't want to sign on to another 3 years of "MS Software Advantage" at which point the friendly MS rep will remind them that they will be audited for compliance. This is serious stuff.
With Linux all they have to do is toss all the paperwork and CDs. Install from a CD and then check off a list of packages in Synaptic/Software Center. If they partner together with a local linux group/guru they can get an install image with everything already set up. They can even mass blast intalls over the network out to multiple machine. With widnows that takes you to
Issue Five: Purchasing additional licenses if you desire to reimage systems.
I am not saying Widnows is NOT the way to go. There is a lot of great commerceal educationl software. But the license compliance and routine audits are time consuming. You need to have written polices in place about installing and copying software. You need to pay for this software. You have to update a variety of programs with different updaters.
It is NOT as easy as Linux is. It you use a .deb based sytem and only install software from repos. You can image machines, and use batch updates
Issue Six: Heterogeneous computing environment. Windows XP home, Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista Home Basic, etc. Complex environment. The Home machines can't join a domian, cant be administered with group policy. XP using Documents and Settings, Vista using Users. This adds complexity to taking care of these machines.
Then there are other advantages. I can patch, update, modity and work with all of the Ubutnu systems from cli even when there are users logged into the desktop. Even if I have to install an app with a gui I can always do a "vncserver :5" and start up a new desktop that does not interfere with user desktop.
Please do not tell me that it is as easy setting up a computer lab ruinng widows with random donated hardware as it is with Linux. Unless you have a lot of manpower, experince and finances. At that point you could more eaisly create a Widnows Lab with all new Hardware.
Re:Free hardware? (Score:5, Insightful)
They already came with Windows licenses too (even had a nice sticker with the activation code right on them). Total cost $0.
Even if the licenses were donated and legally transferable (MS may not agree), that would still not enable installs of a recent and common version of Windows on all donated PCs. The teacher accepted donations of PCs from 2002 and onwards - that means some of the donated machines would've likely been running unsupported operating systems like Windows 2000, which now completely unsupported. Using Linux means he could use the same modern distribution across every donated PC.