I'm interested to know how I can implement linux across the college network. It will need to like that of Orwell High School but on a larger scale.

Any ideas...

The network will need to support ~1000 concurrent users with ~3500 user profiles + staff accounts.
Electronic register system, printing quotas, email, ftp, web server + intranet.
Pref. Thin Client

...But for now I'm starting a college lug to help ease the transition.

Is it worth while bringing linux to college?
The rest of the IT department only know "Windows" (BARELY)!

1. Changing from Windows to Linux is a big step (Really!).
2. All Windows maleware has no "function" on Linux/Unix systems.
3. If all programs, you are using, exist on Linux, you should change.
4. If you buy or download a distribution like Mandriva, Red Hat or Suse, nearly all programs you need are included.
5. In comparision to Windows, Linux OS consumes much less CPU power.

It's feasible, but just out of interest, what is your involvement with things at college? If the techies only know Windows, which is quite reasonable in most IT departments, a move to Linux may not be the best step unless they're comfortable with managing such systems. It takes a lot of work to move your system over, especially since you're not really going to have the same kinda training budgets business would have at their disposal for staff re-training. What's generally suggested and what I recommend out to other schools, is try brining OSS stuff into your Windows environment - OpenOffice.org/Firefox/Thunderbird being the top 3 to look at. In a college, saving on Microsoft Office licenses next time renewal comes will save a huge amount, and moving to Firefox/Thunderbird reduces security problems for your IT department, making them take notice of what the alternatives are. Distro wise, Ubuntu/Kubuntu is what I roll out at the moment as it's fairly Windows-user-friendly, but pretty much any distro could do it. You'd just need to look at how you're going to manage all those systems, and additional apps the college may run as Adobe/Macromedia design software, technology apps, etc. and the possible replacements.

First, I would ask why the need to change? Or budgets being slashed? Tech support getting swamped by spyware nonsense? Once you have a reason, see if its one of linux's strengths and go from there.

The big item on your list is the electronic register system. Does the school run it on Windows? If so, does it run halfway decent on Windows? If it does, I can see some people being skeptical.

That's a good concept. Oblivious made a good question about the register system. Additionally, you should see about asking yourself a few questions before going forward with any sort of decision:

1) Can the IT department/staff/students become acclimated to the linux environment? Can the IT department repair a problem if the need arises?
2) Will the current network be able to pallette the bandwith needed to run thin clients?
3) What are advantages of thin clients over traditional workstations?

I go to the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and our labs use Linux (Ubuntu). I know they use a print quota system, but I dont know any other details about it (it may use CUPS somehow?). There is email with a nice webmail interface using Open Webmail (http://openwebmail.org).

Most (if not all) modern Linux distributions come with:
- SMTP and POP3 servers for email (e.g.: sendmail, exim, postfix, fetchmail, qmail, etc.)
- HTTP server (Apache) for your intranet needs
- FTP server (proftpd)

And on the client side, GNOME is an easy to use and learn environment. For applications similar to those on Windows, there is:
- OpenOffice (partially compatible with MS Office docs, similar interface)
- Evolution (like Outlook, for email etc.)
- Firefox (standards compliant web browser, better than Internet Explorer in my opinion)

And if the users barely know Windows, then you might as well teach them how to use Linux instead of teaching them how to use Windows?

Another question is if your hardware is compatible. Use a Live CD first to see if your PCs can handle the Linux Distro (and so you can impress coleagues ).

setup an ltsp server.. I recently setup an ltsp server on gentoo linux for my High school, then we turned a lot of the computers throughout the school into thin clients where all student accounts are on the server the students can roam to different labs and still login under their same username and password. Just an idea.

I think you're making a mistake. It sounds like you are not that experienced in Linux or in the needs of the school or in campus wide networking. You should be an expert in all three of these fields before you consider changing a working configuration.

I believe that you will cause all kinds of problems due to your lack of expertise. When the dust settles all of the people at the college will hate Linux because of this experience. Either forget about doing this or get a consultant who is an expert.