Folks, With all the MS problems/virus as well as Exchange problems I have been having, I am keen to try a Linux option at our high school. I have RH 9 Web server that performs great, no downtime. I have spoken with our board chair who is also on my side. For workstations and server what OS and Apps should I use? We need 'Office', 'Corel', 'Internet', 'E-mail', 'Publisher'. I want to put a small network together to show the staff. Any suggestions would be great. Cheers Terry Cole Rotorua, New Zealand mailto:terry(a)cole.gen.nz http://www.cole.gen.nz http://www.websnz.com
With all the MS problems/virus as well as Exchange problems I have been having, I am keen to try a Linux option at our high school. I have RH 9 Web server that performs great, no downtime. I have spoken with our board chair who is also on my side.
For workstations and server what OS and Apps should I use? We need 'Office', 'Corel', 'Internet', 'E-mail', 'Publisher'.
Is this really all you need in terms of applications? I run a network for a primary school, and we are so reliant on win32 software that there is very little chance of pushing linux to the desktop at the moment :/
We need 'Office', 'Corel', 'Internet', 'E-mail', 'Publisher'.
My opinions: Office: OpenOffice.org, latest version. Its the 'office suite' style thing. I personally think that abiword and gnumeric are better programs than the OOo equivalent, however they aren't presented in an 'office' package. Corel: Whats corel do? Corel draw? I'm not sure, but there might be a linux version already? Or it might run under wine. Internet / Email: Mozilla / Mozilla Mail. You could run Mozilla Firebird / Mozilla Thunderbird when they come out, but until they stabalise Mozilla 'Seamonkey' is the best all-rounded application. Publisher: This is about the trickiest point you'll have, I think. I dont use publisher very much, nor do I know of any replacements. Does OOo have one?
I want to put a small network together to show the staff.
In terms of setting a network up, I'd recommend using LDAP for centralised authentication, although its a fairly steep learning curve. This allows you to have a central directory of users and groups, and means you dont need to have passwords set on all machines. I also use LDAP for controlling web proxy access (I have a squid ldap_auth module which checks for the presence of a particular attribute in the users ldap entry, if it exists they can use the proxy, if it doesn't they cant). Things to look for : nss_ldap, pam_ldap and the flat-files to ldap Migration Tools (www.padl.com) I'd recommend Cyrus as a mail server (imapd/popd) however it can be a real pain to set up, courier on the other hand "just works". Your MTA (sendmail etc) will probably depend on the distro you use. I like exim. Others dont :) Interestingly, one of the projects some of the LUG members have been involved in is targetted at setting up a drop-in replacement for SBS style servers, using open protocols and standards and Open Source software under linux. We've not gotten past the planning stage yet, but we're in the process of ramping up work again. If you're interested in helping out or talking about it, I think there is a wiki page at www.wlug.org.nz/LinuxServer Daniel
On Fri, Aug 22, 2003 at 07:46:36AM +1200, Terry Cole wrote:
Folks, With all the MS problems/virus as well as Exchange problems I have been having, I am keen to try a Linux option at our high school. I have RH 9 Web server that performs great, no downtime. I have spoken with our board chair who is also on my side.
For workstations and server what OS and Apps should I use? We need 'Office', 'Corel', 'Internet', 'E-mail', 'Publisher'.
I want to put a small network together to show the staff.
Any suggestions would be great. I know nothing about linux + schools, so feel free to ignore me :p I think there are 2 separate angles here... firstly the general "linux on the desktop" stuff, and then the education-specific stuff. For linux on the desktop, I don't think there's much to add over the normal suggestions... show that the apps can (mostly) interoperate with Microsoft clients, eg gnumeric/openoffice/kspread can all handle excel files pretty well (apart from macros), and same with word documents. For the education specific stuff, you could have a look at the DebianEdu project, which is dedicated to putting together apps with some educational value. While you might not use their packages, you can at least see what sort of educational software is out there for linux. http://wiki.debian.net/?DebianEdu If you want something quick and dirty to show off (I'm not sure if these would be too advanced for most high school students or not): 1) you might try the "molecule" xscreensaver - it shows the makeup (in 3d) of molecules such as poisons, drugs, alcohol and chemical warfare agents, as well as "more boring" compounds like anti-freeze, insecticides and DNA and the nucleotides. 2) "lightspeed" is a small program that shows what an object (by default a cube) would look like due to relativity effects if you were travelling at arbitrary speeds (eg 0.9 the speed of light). Hint - click on the speed units to change the units to "c" - speed of light. 3) gnuplot (for plotting functions and data from files) $ gnuplot # plot a sin function and a cos function, between x=0 and x=3*2pi gnuplot> plot [0:6*pi] sin(x)/x, cos(x) # draws a spiral, calculating x and y from the single "t" parameter gnuplot> set parametric gnuplot> plot [0:4*pi] sin(t)*t, cos(t)*(t**2) Not sure if they're the sort of suggestions you wanted, but that ya go. John McPherson
On Fri, Aug 22, 2003 at 07:46:36AM +1200, Terry Cole wrote:
For workstations and server what OS and Apps should I use? We need 'Office', 'Corel', 'Internet', 'E-mail', 'Publisher'.
Publisher can be replaced with Scribus. http://web2.altmuehlnet.de/fschmid/ A review is here: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=4064 -- Greig McGill
Maybe this link helps: http://www.ofset.org/projects/edusoft/edusoft.html Felix On Fri, 22 Aug 2003 07:46:36 +1200 "Terry Cole" <terry(a)cole.gen.nz> wrote:
Folks, With all the MS problems/virus as well as Exchange problems I have been having, I am keen to try a Linux option at our high school. I have RH 9 Web server that performs great, no downtime. I have spoken with our board chair who is also on my side.
For workstations and server what OS and Apps should I use? We need 'Office', 'Corel', 'Internet', 'E-mail', 'Publisher'.
I want to put a small network together to show the staff.
Any suggestions would be great.
Cheers
Terry Cole Rotorua, New Zealand mailto:terry(a)cole.gen.nz http://www.cole.gen.nz http://www.websnz.com
_______________________________________________ wlug mailing list wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug
-- Felix Hohener http://www.8ung.at/ferina/
Hi, In my opinion running Linux on the server(s) is a great idea, but perhaps not on the desktops. Maybe giving the option, a dualboot or suchlike. But the reality is when you leave school you're gonna be required to know about Windows apps. Even though Linux is becoming more common I don't think it is at the point where you could suddenly switch all the students from Windows to Linux (maybe that should be that the students aren't at the point). Especially when alot of the students are not very computer literate. I know that for a fact having left school this year. Daniel
On Fri, 22 Aug 2003 07:46:36 +1200 "Terry Cole" <terry(a)cole.gen.nz> wrote:
Folks, With all the MS problems/virus as well as Exchange problems I have been having, I am keen to try a Linux option at our high school. I have RH 9 Web server that performs great, no downtime. I have spoken with our board chair who is also on my side.
For workstations and server what OS and Apps should I use? We need 'Office', 'Corel', 'Internet', 'E-mail', 'Publisher'.
I want to put a small network together to show the staff.
Any suggestions would be great.
Cheers
Terry Cole Rotorua, New Zealand mailto:terry(a)cole.gen.nz http://www.cole.gen.nz http://www.websnz.com
_______________________________________________ wlug mailing list wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug
-- Felix Hohener http://www.8ung.at/ferina/
_______________________________________________ wlug mailing list wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug
http://search.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Search - Looking for more? Try the new Yahoo! Search
On Fri, 2003-08-22 at 20:39, Daniel Appleton wrote:
Hi, In my opinion running Linux on the server(s) is a great idea, but perhaps not on the desktops. Maybe giving the option, a dualboot or suchlike. But the reality is when you leave school you're gonna be required to know about Windows apps. Even though Linux is becoming more common I don't think it is at the point where you could suddenly switch all the students from Windows to Linux (maybe that should be that the students aren't at the point). Especially when alot of the students are not very computer literate. I know that for a fact having left school this year. Daniel
Hmmm...so I'm a tad inebriated at the moment, but hey, I'm in the mood to respond to this. Please excuse any/all typos. School, imho, is not about teaching you how to use MS Word. It's about teaching you the concepts behind what a word processor does, how a spreadsheet works, what a database is etc. Why does this require MS? Teach CONCEPTS, not PRODUCTS. Teach people how to learn rather than a certain way to accomplish a task. Anyway. I need a glass of water... <sleep> -- Greig McGill Prisoner #655321 Yes this message is gpg signed. see http://www.gnupg.org if you don't understand why.
In my opinion running Linux on the server(s) is a great idea, but perhaps not on the desktops. Maybe giving the option, a dualboot or suchlike. But the reality is when you leave school you're gonna be required to know about Windows apps. Even though Linux is becoming more common I don't think it is at the point where you could suddenly switch all the students from Windows to Linux (maybe that should be that the students aren't at the point). Especially when alot of the students are not very computer literate. I know that for a fact having left school this year.
This is often touted as being the big problem, but I'm not really so sure myself. Schools aren't supposed to teach products. If you want in-depth training in a particular package, do a course in that package. The point of a school - and a university - is to provide an education in the concepts required, not the tools required. I know that one of the largest complaints from Photoshop users about The Gimp is the retraining time needed. Without going into the fact that you can get The Gimp in win32 anyway, or without discussing relative merits of the two applications, if you are doing a course on graphic design, and The Gimp will do everything you need, then why not use it? Likewise, if you are doing a component on spreadsheets, you dont really need to use Excel. Especially as Gnumeric is pretty damn close to feature-equivalent to Excel, the only thing it misses (ha!) is VBA support, and it has perl, python, tcl support instead. Again: Schools should not be about products. There is no real reason for a school to teach anything at all using proprietary products *if* a feature-suitable open source one exists already. Do *NOT* let this argument stop you using OO.o or Gnumeric/Abiword instead of MS OFfice. Do *NOT* let it stop you using The Gimp instead of Photoshop, and *NOT* let it stop you using Linux on the desktop instead of Windows. Of course, if the NZQA requirements state that MS software must be used, then the NZQA requirements must be changed. The reason I'm not running Linux on the desktop yet, is the vast library of educational software my school has (primary school) that is windows only. If all we needed were word processing / spreadsheet / publications / graphics editing / email / web browsing, then we'd have a fully linux network already. My 2 cents. :P Daniel
At 17:26 23/08/03 +1200, you wrote:
In my opinion running Linux on the server(s) is a great idea, but perhaps not on the desktops. Maybe giving the option, a dualboot or suchlike. But the reality is when you leave school you're gonna be required to know about Windows apps. Even though Linux is becoming more common I don't think it is at the point where you could suddenly switch all the students from Windows to Linux (maybe that should be that the students aren't at the point). Especially when alot of the students are not very computer literate. I know that for a fact having left school this year.
This is often touted as being the big problem, but I'm not really so sure myself. Schools aren't supposed to teach products. If you want in-depth training in a particular package, do a course in that package. The point of a school - and a university - is to provide an education in the concepts required, not the tools required.
The problem is employers, as an example, expect the students to use the tools the employer uses, sadly if that is Office, then Office is what they use at school.
I know that one of the largest complaints from Photoshop users about The Gimp is the retraining time needed. Without going into the fact that you can get The Gimp in win32 anyway, or without discussing relative merits of the two applications, if you are doing a course on graphic design, and The Gimp will do everything you need, then why not use it?
Likewise, if you are doing a component on spreadsheets, you dont really need to use Excel. Especially as Gnumeric is pretty damn close to feature-equivalent to Excel, the only thing it misses (ha!) is VBA support, and it has perl, python, tcl support instead.
Again: Schools should not be about products. There is no real reason for a school to teach anything at all using proprietary products *if* a feature-suitable open source one exists already. Do *NOT* let this argument stop you using OO.o or Gnumeric/Abiword instead of MS OFfice. Do *NOT* let it stop you using The Gimp instead of Photoshop, and *NOT* let it stop you using Linux on the desktop instead of Windows.
Here Here!!
Of course, if the NZQA requirements state that MS software must be used, then the NZQA requirements must be changed.
Change does not come with out making a stand, the question is who is willing to make a stand?
The reason I'm not running Linux on the desktop yet, is the vast library of educational software my school has (primary school) that is windows only. If all we needed were word processing / spreadsheet / publications / graphics editing / email / web browsing, then we'd have a fully linux network already.
Umm, do the kids have a choice of Linux or MS for the tasks that do not involve the MS only software? More to the question, would they handle the choice and be able to switch between Linux and MS without much of a problem?
My 2 cents. :P
Daniel
Better then my 1 cent worth.
_______________________________________________ wlug mailing list wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug
The reason I'm not running Linux on the desktop yet, is the vast library of educational software my school has (primary school) that is windows only. If all we needed were word processing / spreadsheet / publications / graphics editing / email / web browsing, then we'd have a fully linux network already.
Umm, do the kids have a choice of Linux or MS for the tasks that do not involve the MS only software?
Dual booting will not work - they will stay in the OS they use for whatever tool they use the most. if they need to reboot into windows to use the reader software they use everyday, they will definitely not boot back into linux to read email or do word processing. There is no point dualbooting in a class environment.
More to the question, would they handle the choice and be able to switch between Linux and MS without much of a problem?
Regardless of whether they could handle it or not, in practice they wont. If they can read email and do word processing under Windows, they'll do it there. I could not set it up for them - but then they'll complain, and the Linux partition will go unused. They wont even log out of the teacher account to get the students to use a word processor - they just load the word proccessor up under their login and let the children use it there. Sadly, it has to be a complete switch. Note, this is a primary school, which is why we have so much educational software that is required. Computers are not a generic tool in a primary school, as much as a means of providing education. They act as another teacher aid doing pronunciation and reading tests, or interactive maths challenges. In a secondary school, they are a more of a tool.
On Fri, 22 Aug 2003 07:46:36 +1200, Terry Cole wrote
For workstations and server what OS and Apps should I use? We need 'Office', 'Corel', 'Internet', 'E-mail', 'Publisher'.
From what ive used, OpenOffice.Org has wordprocessor, spreadsheet etc It also has a drawing program that should be able to replace publisher. Scribus is also quite nice to use, as Greig pointed out, although it has some quirks that take a bit of getting used to (ie. inserting a picture)
For corel, im asuming corel draw..? which is a vector based graphics tool. You might want to try something like SodiPodi - http://sodipodi.sourceforge.net/ Alastair
My 1cent worth.. The biggest problem I see with trying to get Linux into the classroom is proving to employers, boards, teachers and parents that a student will have the same level of "skill" using Linux and non Microsoft software. How to go about this? my idea is for some brave school to take the National Certificate in Computing Level 3 and get a group of students to do it using Linux and Open Office. Perhaps even paralleling it with the existing requirements to show that it is possible. Of cause this may not be the end all method, but allegedly the NZQA framework is based on what the job market wonts... Also the brave school will need to generate a suitable long winded red tape orientated report detailing the students progress, observations, problems and what ever else may be needed. Looking at the assessments I have, someone (even me) who is Microsoft brain washed could do it with open office with a minimal amount of "up skilling" Well what do you think?
participants (8)
-
Alastair Porter -
Daniel Appleton -
Daniel Lawson -
DrWho? -
Felix Hohener -
Greig McGill -
John R. McPherson -
Terry Cole