Right. I (as a Linux user) have a very different way of doing things with computers. I'm taking ICT for an A level and I want to do something dazzlingly different, as ICT A level is usually using Excel to create a stupidly over-complicated spreadsheet to perform a very simple function.

I want to create a working Edubuntu network within my school (using only the hardware destined for the scrap). I'll obviously not take over the "real" school network (Which is not actually working, as it runs Window$, but such is life!) but I do want to demonstrate the power and stability of Edubuntu for use in a school network. Basically, I want to use 1 computer as a server and connect it to a few others to create a working network (simillar to the larger school-wide one) but don't really have a clue where to start.

I'm not asking for help in setting it up right away, this project won't begin for at least a year (and may not ever begin!), but I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of some websites, books etc. which may help me in my quest. The biggest challenge will probably be connecting it to the proxy server for internet access, so info on that would be especially valuable

Thanks.

I admire your chutzpah. Good luck!

Connecting through your proxy server is no harder than it might be at home - you simply set your default gateway for any machines you'll configure for school to point at the proxy server. Will act in exactly the same way as a broadband route at home might.

If you're wanting to give it a go, work out what people at school, students + teachers, would want out of a system such as web, e-mail, office suite, photo editing, etc. Haven't looked at Edbunutu, but know a few schools with some small installs just of Ubuntu and find it works well, especially with KDE tweaked to look fairly similar to Windows. I'm not a fan of that at home (Fluxbox all the way), but in a school, you'd need something that didn't look to foreign. Stick to Firefox, Thundebird + OpenOffice and you should be fine. Msot teachers don't like change so are likely to turn their noses up unless it's familiar enough to sit down and work with.

Even with a small machine acting as a server running NFS for shared network drives, maybe Samba to connect in to a couple of Windows shares to demonstrate you can integrate with your current Windows servers, and half a dozen workstations would be cool to setup and shouldn't be that hard. If you're dealing with older machines, hardware configuration might be a problem, but will at least tax your brain a little!

Plus, there's plenty of people on here to lend a hand with any of the network configuration you might need