Switching A Whole School To Linux

[JimShortz]

I work in a CM school where we are thinking of making a gradual move over to Linux, largely due to the expense of properly licensing proprietary software, but also to show the students that Microsoft is not the only way...

We have very good technical support with our main tech guy being willing to learn new skills in order to make the change. We are thinking of going with Edubuntu. My machine will be made dual boot first of all to enable me to do some initial testing, as I use a wide variety of software on a regular basis.

My key question is what is the likelihood of getting Edubuntu to run properly on the wide variety of PCs that we have in school? They range from brand new, down to a few 5 or 6 year old machines. Are we being too ambitious or is this kind of large scale switch, done gradually, really feasible?

Also, what about running some specialist educational programs that have only been written for Windows XP on a Linux system? Is Wine the best option?

Any advice greatly appreciated. Open Source forever!

[grtaylor]

I work in a CM school where we are thinking of making a gradual move over to Linux, largely due to the expense of properly licensing proprietary software, but also to show the students that Microsoft is not the only way...

We have very good technical support with our main tech guy being willing to learn new skills in order to make the change. We are thinking of going with Edubuntu. My machine will be made dual boot first of all to enable me to do some initial testing, as I use a wide variety of software on a regular basis.

My key question is what is the likelihood of getting Edubuntu to run properly on the wide variety of PCs that we have in school? They range from brand new, down to a few 5 or 6 year old machines. Are we being too ambitious or is this kind of large scale switch, done gradually, really feasible?

Also, what about running some specialist educational programs that have only been written for Windows XP on a Linux system? Is Wine the best option?

Any advice greatly appreciated. Open Source forever!

KIS Kesinee International School in BKK were planning to do this a couple of years ago, for similar reasons. I'm not sure if they went ahead with the plan. You might like to contact them - http://www.kis.ac.th

[Merlin]

well FWIW my experience with various versions of Ubuntu is that it's generally very hardware-compatible.

And there's a very large and helpful forum community too, if you do get into trouble.

Edited September 11, 2008 by Merlin

[endure]

And when your students leave school to be faced with the great big world of Microsoft? Are you preparing your students for the big wide world or indulging your own prejudices?

[higgy88]

I've always thought that the schools have been doing a great disservice to my 15 year old son by only using microsoft products in the school and only teaching him how to use microsoft programs. He has come to believe that microsoft and computers are interchangable words, same as kleenex and tissue. I recently got another computer and installed linux just to show him that there are alternatives and different ways of doing things. I guess we have very different ideas on what big wide world the schools should be preparing our kids for.

And when your students leave school to be faced with the great big world of Microsoft? Are you preparing your students for the big wide world or indulging your own prejudices?

[grtaylor]

I've always thought that the schools have been doing a great disservice to my 15 year old son by only using microsoft products in the school and only teaching him how to use microsoft programs. He has come to believe that microsoft and computers are interchangable words, same as kleenex and tissue. I recently got another computer and installed linux just to show him that there are alternatives and different ways of doing things. I guess we have very different ideas on what big wide world the schools should be preparing our kids for.

And when your students leave school to be faced with the great big world of Microsoft? Are you preparing your students for the big wide world or indulging your own prejudices?

Good point - AND, given that most people will only get as far as Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Presentations and DTP, Open Office and MS Office are mutually intuitive. Many other packages exist for multi-OS environments too.

[Gumballl]

I work in a CM school where we are thinking of making a gradual move over to Linux, largely due to the expense of properly licensing proprietary software, but also to show the students that Microsoft is not the only way...

We have very good technical support with our main tech guy being willing to learn new skills in order to make the change. We are thinking of going with Edubuntu. My machine will be made dual boot first of all to enable me to do some initial testing, as I use a wide variety of software on a regular basis.

My key question is what is the likelihood of getting Edubuntu to run properly on the wide variety of PCs that we have in school? They range from brand new, down to a few 5 or 6 year old machines. Are we being too ambitious or is this kind of large scale switch, done gradually, really feasible?

Also, what about running some specialist educational programs that have only been written for Windows XP on a Linux system? Is Wine the best option?

Any advice greatly appreciated. Open Source forever!

Your chances of getting (Ed)Ubuntu to work on your systems is quite good, provided that your systems have at least 256MB of RAM, but preferably 512MB. There are other Linux distros available that aren't as "heavy" as Ubuntu, but for beginners Ubuntu probably is the easiest to manage.

If you have a duo-core PC running Windows with at least 1GB of RAM, you should consider installing VMware Server (2.0 Beta) and then from there host a guest OS (such as Ubuntu). That way you get to retain your Windows distro and have another OS running "concurrently".

Dual-booting is old-school; most modern companies are migrating to using virtualization (such as VMware) so that they can run multiple OSes on the same hardware.

I envy the job of your main tech guy. I wish I could have a job like his.

Edited September 12, 2008 by Gumballl

[Cuban]

And when your students leave school to be faced with the great big world of Microsoft? Are you preparing your students for the big wide world or indulging your own prejudices?

My first reaction is to agreed with these thoughts - however my second thought way more open - are the kids learning how to carry out a particular task parrot fashion or learning how to do something using different tools.

If the kids are learning parrot fashion then teaching them Linux and open source applications is not likely to be a skill that is transferable to many Thai businesses.

If they are taught how to construct a spreadsheet and then shown different tools to carry out that task including MS 'Excel' and Open Office's 'Calc' or 'Numbers', then I would see that as being a skill. Although difficult to instill as a concept in some young minds - they need to learn 'how to learn'. I have no direct experiance as a teacher in Thailand - but from observing school age children within the family they are happy to do, the extra desire to find out 'why' is rarer.

Is your focus on the techincal 'how to' rather than the practical 'should you'. Is your driving force anti-Microsoft in which case in all fairness you should also address the other prejudices over the use of abacuses, drugs, age limits, cars, international flights. There are a number of truths in this world, the prefered business language internationally is English, everyone compares values to the US Dollar and the 'standard' for home and business computing is Microsoft on IBM/Intel based platforms.

If money is the driving factor would any local employers sponsor a computer in return for advertising at the school sports events etc?

I like the idea of a phased change over - however stop the change half way through - you can show how each system different with the benifits vs costs. This would cut your licences fees in half (?).

[niller74]

Switching from Windows to Linux is quite a step. Especially if your tech isn't familiar with Linux administration at all.

On the other hand if your tech know his way around Linux and how to configure a network and user administration it is a very good step. The tech might even find administration and updating a lot easier in the future.

My first step would be to pick out a few machines in different categories and do test installs on these.

Going Ubuntu is definitely a good move.

You or your tech are welcome to PM me with any questions you might have and I'd be happy to assist you.

[JimShortz]

Today we made my system dual boot so that we can begin to evaluate our possibilities. Even using the UBUNTU distribution there were installation issues - but nothing that we were unable to overcome. Let the testing begin! Initial impressions are very positive.

In response to the idea that we are doing the students a disservice by using Linux based systems I was always taught that we are teaching transferable skills and not just blindly following the Microsoft route. I want to educate open-minded free thinking individuals - not Lemmings.

Thank you to those offering more support. We are certainly going to give this our best shot. Next month we get a new server and are aiming to run a Linus server distribution on this. I think we have a high chance of success...

[ScienceGuy]

Today we made my system dual boot so that we can begin to evaluate our possibilities. Even using the UBUNTU distribution there were installation issues - but nothing that we were unable to overcome. Let the testing begin! Initial impressions are very positive.

In response to the idea that we are doing the students a disservice by using Linux based systems I was always taught that we are teaching transferable skills and not just blindly following the Microsoft route. I want to educate open-minded free thinking individuals - not Lemmings.

Thank you to those offering more support. We are certainly going to give this our best shot. Next month we get a new server and are aiming to run a Linus server distribution on this. I think we have a high chance of success...

I've done this already. Edubuntu is the defacto standard for what you're trying to do(good choice). You can dual-boot for a while while you transfer everything over to Linux. You'll find equivalent applications for anything a school could possibly need.

Once you're all set up, you'll want a firewall and server(separate devices, low-end PCs). I'd recommend IPCOP for the firewall and Edubuntu LTS server in LAMP mode. Put the server in a DMZ(extra NIC for the firewall). This takes about 2-3 hours to set up after the OS is installed, provided you have a properly configured network and clients. The reason for all of this is so you can put in a Moodle grades server and go paperless. This may or may not be appropriate, it depends on if all the teachers and students have computer access. In my particular situation, it wasn't appropriate and the school was against me so I just put Moodle on my laptop, added firewalling, and had all the students use the Micro$oft computers in the lab to connect to my lappie. It was a huge success until the windows machines got compromised and started flooding the network with virus attacks and redirecting traffic on the lan. Poor kids would get an IP conflict, http redirect, system hang, etc. while taking a test and lose 20 min while their machine reboots....

Once you've got that squared away, you can install a standard setup and image it to the server, then copy it to all the machines with the same hardware. For different machines you can create separate images and tie it to their MAC address. Then use PXE boot to re-image the machine anytime it gets hosed(eg hard-drive failure). There are also backup/restore programs. This might take a few days, depending on the number of machines.

For the really old machines, you could make them dumb terminals which run a virtual window of the OS running on a server. Sort of like remote desktop. For this you will need a really good server with about 256MB ram for each terminal(depending on applications, etc). So 2GB RAM(the max for a 32 bit processor) would give you 8 simultaneous terminals. Go with a 64 bit processor and you can have way more RAM. My suspicion is that if they can run XP, they can definitely run Edubuntu and you won't need virtualization.

Finally, you mentioned some old XP apps that won't run on Linux. Use Wine first and if that fails, use virtual-box.

Everything here such as Moodle, virtual-box, backups, etc are all 2-click installs through the package manager(or one command-line command. )

Enjoy... if you need a guru, I can come down to Chiang Mai for a small fee(I'm about 2 hours away).

[ScienceGuy]

And when your students leave school to be faced with the great big world of Microsoft? Are you preparing your students for the big wide world or indulging your own prejudices?

My first reaction is to agreed with these thoughts - however my second thought way more open - are the kids learning how to carry out a particular task parrot fashion or learning how to do something using different tools.

If the kids are learning parrot fashion then teaching them Linux and open source applications is not likely to be a skill that is transferable to many Thai businesses.

If they are taught how to construct a spreadsheet and then shown different tools to carry out that task including MS 'Excel' and Open Office's 'Calc' or 'Numbers', then I would see that as being a skill. Although difficult to instill as a concept in some young minds - they need to learn 'how to learn'. I have no direct experiance as a teacher in Thailand - but from observing school age children within the family they are happy to do, the extra desire to find out 'why' is rarer.

Is your focus on the techincal 'how to' rather than the practical 'should you'. Is your driving force anti-Microsoft in which case in all fairness you should also address the other prejudices over the use of abacuses, drugs, age limits, cars, international flights. There are a number of truths in this world, the prefered business language internationally is English, everyone compares values to the US Dollar and the 'standard' for home and business computing is Microsoft on IBM/Intel based platforms.

If money is the driving factor would any local employers sponsor a computer in return for advertising at the school sports events etc?

I like the idea of a phased change over - however stop the change half way through - you can show how each system different with the benifits vs costs. This would cut your licences fees in half (?).

This is FUD! In less than 2 years, XP and all the apps you're using today will be obsolete. Micro$oft has already announced they plan to stop updates for XP in 2010(only after millions of people bitched about them stopping it in 2008). Anything you teach your students with proprietary applications will be completely worthless to them in a couple years. Oh Photoshop? Macromedia Dreamweaver? Vista? Did you know all of these companies(Adobe, Microsoft, et al) practice designed obsolescence? Every release, they completely change their interface, file formats, and limit backward compatability. You're just setting the students up to fail and fall into a cycle of dependence upon greedy corporations.

The standard for business computing is Linux. Sorry, but it's true. 90% of all web servers run Linux and Apache. Businesses are changing their desktops to Linux at an unprecedented scale and Linux gurus are in very high demand. In Thailand, one of the largest companies, 1-2-call, uses 100% RedHat Linux. Now that educators and businesses have been handed the most advanced technology, on a silver platter, from the open-source community, they are adopting it as fast as they can and kissing Micro$oft goodbye.

The only people still running Windoze are those that are incapable of learning or unwilling to change. With Linux, your kids will learn real skills and when they are faced with the big bad world of Micro$oft, they'll laugh at the stupidity of whoever is using it and learn to use it within minutes. Give your kids Linux and they'll be able to take it home and use it in the future. Teach GIMP(Photoshop), OpenOffice, 3D-CAD/CAM, scientific applications, astronomy, etc. It's all a 2-click install in Ubuntu and well documented.

As a bonus, they won't feel guilty about using pirated software nor will they be at risk of prosecution for piracy... Oh, and you'll save money.

Have a nice day.

[Merlin]

Well speaking for myself, I used to run a small electronics repairs business in the days from Windows 3.1 to NT to 2000. In that time I paid Micro$oft something like $50,000 in license fees for OSs and Office apps alone. I even paid extra for "priority support" that was pretty much useless, most of the time. One day when hosed my whole system I finally got the sheets one last time and went to Red Hat. Now I run Ubuntu on most of my machines because it's easy and pretty much "just works". It finds the network by itself, even the wifi, all I need to do is give it the passwords etc. Printers etc all found or automatically looked for and installed over the net.

The company I work for now runs a mix of Fedora and Red Hat. They have 14 guys in the IT dept - one Australian one Dutch and 12 Indians. They have a deal with Dell for hardware. The owner has been quoted as saying that the total cost of his whole IT setup including hardware and wages is about 15% of what he would have had to pay Micro$oft for licenses alone.

[thetravellingcat]

dual boot - it can't hurt and will add another string to the students bows.

[niller74]

dual boot - it can't hurt and will add another string to the students bows.

But you will still have to pay license fees to Microsoft!!

I believe that was one of the reasons for the switch.

You can buy a lot of Linux experience here in Thailand for the price of Microsoft licenses for a whole school.