Ubuntu in Public Schools Question
 

HI,
I am a computer technician at a medium sized school in Western NYS. I am also fairly new to the LINUX OS. I have been experimenting at home with different Linux Distros an so far it seem that UBUNTU works the best with most of my computers. I am using UBUNTU right now, I have it on my machine that is set up to boot to either U or XP. Well to get to my point, at the school we a quit a number of Emacs running OS9. The student need to get to the web in many cases. The browsers OS9 use are outdated and no longer can get updated versions, such as IE or Netscape. I thought it might be a good idea to get a LINUX Distro such as UBUNTU on these machines. I have experimented with one of the EMACS and UBUNTU works very nicely on it, using the Firefox browser.

The problem is I would have to sell this idea to those in charge, whom are not that tech savvy. So if some of you could give me some selling points and ideas about Linux for education purposes, that would be great. I have looked at EDUBUNTU on the web, I do not know how different that is than UBUNTU. Also, is there any help desk - asset inventory software for linux that is good?

There was one glitch with UBUNTU which I have not yet figured out, is there a way to get FlashPlayer working on the Linux for MAC versions?

Thank You,
Kelsey

That sounds like a great idea. You shouldn't have any trouble getting your way since ubuntu is FREE! When presenting the idea you need to make sure to explain exactly what an operating system is; describe the differences between windows, mac, and unix. Plus mac is already unix based so you have that in your favor.

Thanks for the post. What should I do about the Falsh problem?

Kelsey

While I support any decision to move to Linux, the Mac OS is a great OS, and might serve a school better than Linux(Mac has a wider user base than Linux, like it or not). There really needs to be someone on staff who has a very clear understanding of Linux and or Ubuntu, before making a drastic change. Depending on the version of Edubuntu you've downloaded, your question about Flash will be answered in the Wiki...

Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Wiki...
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Edgy - Flashplayer is addressed in 1.6.7

Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Wiki
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Dapper - Flashplayer is addressed in 6.6


If all you're having trouble with is the browsers, why not just use a Non-Mac browser? I'm not super familiar with Mac's I admit, but my first guesses would be either Opera or Firefox.

http://www.opera.com
http://www.mozilla.com

IGF

Indy,
Thanks for the reply, but those browsers have also been tried on OS9. They either do not work or look like crap. The EMAC i installed UBUNTU works well and the Firefox browser also works great, but of course the flashplayer. Hopefully there is a solution out there.

Thanks,
Kelsey

--
Flash for AMD64 and PPC
At present, there is no non-free flash implementation available for 64-bit processors (or Mac) because the manufacturer does not support them. However, there are two free implementations in the works. One is gnash and the other is swfdec. Gnash, whilst still under development, aims to be a proper free, open source replacement for all the platforms.
--

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...1c7d296cf971c3

Funny you should ask...
 

I just finished writing a paper for school that was pretty much what you are talking about. I proposed switching the servers and a public lab over to Linux at my university. The main points I had were that Linux is much more secure than Windowws due to basic design principles. It is also more stable. I don't know much about the Mac OS, but I would guess that you could use security, stability, cost (or lack thereof) as major selling points. I agree with the guy above though, you should have someone who knows Linux fairly well before trying to switch over any sort of public computer. As the IT guy, its your job to make sure something is up and running. Nobody cares about OS design principles or cost when the machines are down for maintenance, or the IT department hasn't figured out how to get a feature working that they need.

Go one step at a time. It's good that you already got your feet weet into Ubuntu, because that will help the eventual transition. As Nexus suggested, start with just one laboratory to see the student reaction. You'll get very valuable feedback and input from that single lab, when you need to start rolling more machines.

Step by step
 

Don't hurry it. Slowly migrate and make sure what you have done works well, so there is positive feedback. Begin where you can change easily and monitor the whole thing. There will be things you didn't expected and needs to be fixed (I know it is sooo obvious, but its often overlocked).

For a start I would pick up a lab/room/wathever which causes problems and preparing in advance a system which integrates in the existing environement. You must identify where interactions are needed (login, e-Mail, storage place, printing, all this must be configured and managed) and find solution to efficiently manage all those machines. Only once you have a working prototype you should push your idea. I don't know your specific environement, the arguments you bring really depends on who is deciding to make such a move. But some tips:

- get in contact with those concerned/responsible and see how they see the problem, don't push for a particular solution however. Just see what they think of the situation and if they already are working on something. If you feel they are likely to try a migration, propose to do it (WARNING: you will engage yourself in an activity which takes quite some time, so make sure it's what you want BEFORE!)

- if you wan't to do it, be aware that YOU will have to do most of the work to realize it. People who are not tech savvy certainly won't do it, and they don't have a budget for "experiments".

- most people want solutions, so don't come up with foggy ideas once you started to get serious about it. This also means you should rolling out the new system once you made sure it works.

- before presenting a prototype, let some friends WORK with it in a real environement and detect potential problems (technical/usability/...). There will be enough of them comming up afterwards.

So, good luck to you, I'm wishing you get succesfull in it.

Edubuntu is Ubuntu with a modified default package set. It has three major selling points over generic Ubuntu:

1) Thin client support with zero configuration (I'm not kidding - the default installation Just Works).
2) Preloaded with OSS desktop applications for education.
3) The Schooltool system.

A future release of Edubuntu will also include a basic LDAP/auth server - this is currently scheduled for Feisty.

If you ask on the ubuntu-education mailing list you can probably get as much help as you need with this.

IME, the killer for OSS in education is mandated apps. If you are required to run a specific (Windows-only) application for delivering courses or examinations then you need to run Windows from a Terminal Server, or through some other work-around.

Details on mailing lists FYI
 

I'm also looking for more info on this topic. Hob mentions a mailiing list. There are actually two that I tracked down:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edubuntu-users/
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-education/

The second one is newer, but seems to have few posts. I'm still reading the first one, so I can't comment as to its quality. You can also find links from these to subscribe IYWT.

edubuntu works great, and flash comes in the pack