[SC.LUG] [Fwd: [Fsfe-uk] Parrs Wood on BBC]

[Cockroft, John]

Richard

My daughter goes to a Hayes Lane Primary (Timperley, Altrincham) and having been disgusted at how much they are charged for IT support (£150 for a guy to configure up one printer share in Windoze XP) I was trying to do something about it.  (I am an IT professional working primarily with M$ software at work although I have used Linux on and off for years myself).

They were quoted £2.5k for an 'appropriate' Dell server for the school (running Windows Server 2003) which is ridiculous.  They have plenty of HP workstations each of which is a Pentium 4 based PC (MIDI tower) with 512Mb RAM and a 40Gb hard disk.  My thought was to suggest putting a Linux supported SATA raid controller (PCI) into one of these and have 2 x 200Gb hard disks (RAID 0) + a Sony AIT tape streamer (60Gb native) for user directory backup - total cost about £500 (serving about 30-40 PCs as a file/print server).  The operating system would be Linux configured with Samba as a domain controller.  Idea would be to have two file/printer servers of these - one for staff only and one for pupils and staff.

Initial thoughts for a distro was either Mandriva or SuSE so that they could get technical support and I would set the system up for them although CentOS (free distro based on RH4) was another idea.  Fedora is no good since it is updated too often.  Other thought was SkoleLinux (http://www.skolelinux.org/portal/) as it is intended for Educational use (based on Debian).

I ran into the usual mind set issues about having anything other than Windows and also that anything free (software-wise) is 'bound to be pirated'.

Any gotchas, hints or tips regarding introducing FOSS to schools?

John.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Smedley [mailto:richard.smedley03 at ntlworld.com]
> Sent: 04 July 2005 13:01
> To: Manchester LUG
> Cc: South Cheshire Local Users of GNU/Linux
> Subject: [SC.LUG] [Fwd: [Fsfe-uk] Parrs Wood on BBC]
> 
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
> From: MJ Ray <mjr at phonecoop.coop>
> To: fsfe-uk at gnu.org
> Subject: [Fsfe-uk] Parrs Wood on BBC
> Date: Mon, 04 Jul 2005 12:20:25 +0100
> 
> Congratulations to long-time free software friends Parrs Wood High School
> for getting mentions on the BBC last Friday:
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4642461.stm
> Even though it's education rather than tech reporting, it's still
> heading in pretty much the right direction.
> 
> ------ End Forwarded Message --------
> 
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