[Gllug] London councils and Unix/Linux

[gllug at uncertainty.org.uk]

On Thu, Jan 10, 2002 at 07:48:38PM +0000, Jim Bailey wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Thursday, January 10, 2002, at 07:06 PM, gllug at uncertainty.org.uk wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Jan 10, 2002 at 02:47:51PM -0000, Jackson, Harry wrote:
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: jim at lateral.net [mailto:jim at lateral.net]
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> I don't know if anyone caught the bbc 10 oclock news last
> >>> night the gov
> >>> unveiled it new plan for super IT schools and a school sent a tape in
> >>> showing the state of there IT dept. Most distressing was the
> >>> room full of
> >>> old PCs donated and bought that were just sitting there doing nothing
> >>> bcause the school had no where to put them.  Volunteers anyone.
> >>
> >> I would say that now days it is probably as much as a problem getting the
> >> secure room as the Hardware. I would hate to build an IT suite to see it
> >> half inched. I would have no qualms helping someone fit a room full of
> >> hardware or helping provide it but I get extremely frustrated by the red
> >> tape to get the stuff. My mate helped fit out his wife's school (she's a
> >> teacher) and was lucky enough to have people interested in doing it. I 
> >> know
> >> its the children we are trying to help but as John has said if I got no
> >> enthusiasm from the teachers quarter then I would be a bit disillusioned 
> >> by
> >> the whole "help the schools ethos".
> >>
> >
> > How feasable is it to set up a system based on a couple of nice servers
> > (locked securely) and running a bunch of very cheap X-client machines in
> > the classroom.
> 
> Not that difficult Diskless nodes Howto spring to mind
> >
> > Now I know that people will nick pretty much anything - but could these
> > classroom machines be low enough spec that school security would be
> > adequate (and still good enough to work on) ?
> 
> Not absolutely sure but I know a lot of old machines have 1,2 and 4 meg 
> graphics using system Ram.  8 and 16mb graphics cards can be bought for as 
> little as £15 from computer fairs and mail order which should be able to 
> handle things like the KDE desktop.  I personally use an 8mb AGP ATI card 
> which runs KDE 2.2 without any problems, though admittedly I have a Duron 
> 650 cpu.
> >
> There are a lot of things that could be done again volunteers anyone.
>

I'd be interested in spending some time on this sort of thing

are you organising something ??


-- 

Sean 
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