Re: [school-discuss] Knoppix vs. Freeduc vs. ???

[David Bucknell <david@members.iteachnet.org>]

This is really helpful advice because of the details, Harry. Thanks from someone
facing similar issues. One point worth remembering for Schoolforgers is the
Freeduc is one of our own members; they share our philosophy and build it into
what they do.

Best wishes,


David

Quoting Harry McGregor <micros@osef.org>:

> On Wed, 2003-05-28 at 15:34, Dave Prentice wrote:
> > Hello all,
> >     A sudden opportunity has arisen to donate 20 old Pentium computers
> > to an orphanage in Guatemala. (Free shipping - praise the Lord!) They
> > are doing great work, having gotten over 500 kids off the streets and
> > into schooling, some for the first time in their lives.
> 
> Sounds wonderful, though I assume maintenance will be a bit of an issue.
> 
> >     I need to load an OS on these machines for very basic use in
> > computer literacy at the orphanage's school. There have been
> > discussions on the list about both Knoppix and Freeduc,
> 
> Knoppix is the _original_ bootable linux based on debian (Suse was the
> first with a live evail cd, IIRC).
> 
> OSEF's Knoppix for kids is more Knoppix for people who work with kids. 
> It's much too graphics intensive for general daily use in a school, but
> it helps pull in parents and teachers.
> 
> OFSET's Freeduc is truly knoppix for kids, instead of KDE3, it uses
> XFCE, and is much more kid friendly.
> 
> The original knoppix has a hard disk install script, but remember, hard
> disk drives will fail, cdrom drives will fail, systems as a whole will
> fail. you need to plan around this.
> 
> Also you will have to customize the setup so that you have an NFS server
> for user data storage.
> 
> I would suggest putting the money into one "new" system, with dual 80GB
> HDs, with software raid1 for the server, everything else boot off of CD.
> 
> Another option (better), would be to not use knoppix, but setup a good,
> dual athlon linux terminal server (about $1200US), and make the 20
> pentium class system pure Xterms, less hardware to fail.
> 
> Anything I can do to help, let me know.
> 
> 			Harry
> 
> >  but I have no
> > experience with either. (I've used RH for several years.) It is my
> > impression that they will both run from CD, but it would be nice if
> > they could go on the hard drives for faster response. Which is less
> > demanding of resources? That is, what's the minimum size hard drive
> > and minimum amount of memory to get reasonable performance? Also, does
> > either or both offer the option for Spanish?
> > Thanks,
> > Dave Prentice
> > prentice@instruction.com
> > 
> -- 
> Harry McGregor, CEO, Co-Founder
> Hmcgregor@osef.org, (520) 661-7875 (CELL)
> Open Source Education Foundation, http://www.osef.org
> A non-profit tax exempt charitable organization
> 
> -- 
> If this helped you please take the time to rate the value 
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> 
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> 
> Doug Loss              All you need in this life is
> drloss@suscom.net      ignorance and confidence, 
>                        and then success is sure.
>                          Mark Twain
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 


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