Roy Schestowitz wrote:
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Linux Makes the Grade in California Schools
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| Beyond slashing the costs of Microsoft licenses, taking giant steps away from
| Windows permits the schools to hold on to their software investments.
| Particularly with LTS versions of Ubuntu, older software "doesn’t stop
| getting supported, the way it does in Windows," he said. Moreover, proposed
| changes to the OS "are examined in light of how they might potentially break
| other things."
|
| Also as Erickson sees it, thin client systems can produce additional cost
| savings by providing better energy efficiency than Windows PCs.
|
| "Schools these days just don’t have all that much to spend. They can apply
| the money they save from LTSP to other needs, such as books," he observed.
|
| "The use of Linux and open source also gives schools a chance to collaborate
| with others, no matter where in the world those schools are located."
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http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/case-studies/16798-linux-makes-the-grade-in-california-schools
See stories of lots of schools and others using Linux thin clients here
(Linux Terminal Server Project):
http://www.ltsp.org/twiki/bin/view/Ltsp/SuccessStories
http://www.ltsp.org/twiki/bin/view/Ltsp/SuccessStories#Logical_Networking_Solutions_Nor
(((((
Logical Networking Solutions - Northern California, USA
Logical Networking Solutions has, so far, deployed 9 total Ubuntu LTSP networks in Sonoma County, California (USA).
7 networks belong to schools of an elementary school district in Santa Rosa. Each of these sites have 35-40 LTSP terminals in their computer labs, and will soon expand the network into the classrooms. The terminals vary in nature - some sites have older Compaq iPaq workstations (P3 500MHz, 128MB RAM). One site has all new Neoware E100 thin-clients (1GHz, 128MB RAM), and another site has all new HP T5530 thin-clients (also 128MB, 800MHz Via Eden low power CPUs). They all boot via PXE to a standardized HP Proliant ML370 G5 server (2x Dualcore Intel Xeon 1.6GHz CPUs, 8GB RAM, 2x SAS HDDs in a hardware RAID 1 mirror, 2x 1Gb/sec NICs, redundant power supplies, yadda yadda) at each school site, besides one site that has the same server hardware, except for the difference of 2x Quadcore Xeon 3.0 GHz CPUs. The servers all run Ubuntu LTS versions and LTSP, with Gnome as the graphical desktop environment. A mix of them have VMWare Server, handing out Windows 2000 Terminal Services fo
r legacy applications through the open-source 'rdesktop' application on the thin-clients, sound included. The most used applications, however, are Firefox, Typing Master (a commercially developed typing tutor for Linux), Open Office - and of course, games at lunch!
Another site is an after-school clubhouse in Petaluma that serves hundreds of children a day. It utilizes a custom-built Intel Core-2 duo CPU server with 4GB RAM and a 160GB hard disk. It serves Ubuntu LTS to 10 Koolu thin-clients for their Learning Center. The youth utilize the system to do homework and do research on the Internet (and yes, games!).
The last site is our own headquarters. A dualcore AMD processor-based 1U rack-mounted server with 4GB RAM and a 500GB HDD serves 2 thin-clients, an LTSP 1220 PXE and a Koolu thin-client (we've engineered our network with expansion in mind). These are the only two user-based workstations in our support office, so it serves our day-to-day business and client support operations. Frequently used applications are Firefox (web), Thunderbird (e-mail), Open Office (business productivity), Sunbird (shared calendaring solution), VNC over SSH tunnels to administrate every LTSP server in the field, Pidgin and XChat for collaboration with the open-source community, Dia (network diagrams), and plenty of others, including a custom VNC client that reverse-connects to our Windows-based systems for remote support when they need us. We also use a simple Windows 2000 Virtual machine, hosted on the same LTSP server, solely for our accountant (Quickbooks).
The ability for us to administrate all 8 remote LTSP sites from our headquarters using secure methods such as SSH/SSH tunnels makes it simple and uniform. We utilize shell scripts to automate tasks such as synchronizing directories on each server from a "master", performing a command across all servers, etc. The reduced administration overhead of LTSP (and Linux in general) has made it easy for one person to stay on top of 8 remote LTSP sites. Our LTSP client-base is rapidly expanding as we set our sights on deploying a continuously safe, stable and rich computing environment.
)))))
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