Re: [seul-edu] Fw: Linux in schools?

[Dave Prentice <dprentice@uno.edu>]

Karsten,
Your situation sounds similar to mine. I set up a classroom lab from
scratch, with 14 machines now running and 9 more in the works. A few
suggestions:
1. Ask universities in your area if they have any old hardware to donate to
your school. You may catch one right after they've decided to upgrade. Even
if all they have are 486's, those are still OK for Linux. Cost=$0.
    You don't need a very powerful server if each client has its own hard
drive and does its own processing. All the server needs to furnish to the
clients is NIS (or equivalent) and perhaps NFS.
2. Search the net to see if there is a computer recycling organization in
your state. You may be able to get some free hardware there too.
3. You can get pieces and parts like NICs, hard drives, and so on pretty
cheap through such sources as ebay.
4. You only need one Internet conenction for a network like yours. I set up
a 486 as a router using Freesco. Any 486 with 16meg and a floppy drive will
do.
5. Find out if there is a Linux user group in your area. Linux people
practically trip over themselves to help you.
6. Everybody has their own favorite distro. I like RedHat, but any of them
should work.
From personal experience, you can put together a pretty good network for
well under $1000.
Dave Prentice
prentice@instruction.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Douglas Loss <dloss@suscom.net>
To: seul-edu@seul.org <seul-edu@seul.org>
Date: Sunday, July 29, 2001 6:17 PM
Subject: [seul-edu] Fw: Linux in schools?


<snip>
>On Sat, 28 Jul 2001, Karsten M. Self wrote:
>
>> To: Doug Loss <dloss@suscom.net>
>> From: "Karsten M. Self" <kmself@ix.netcom.com>
>> Subject: Linux in schools?
>>
>> Doug:
>>
>> I'm kicking around a few ideas, one of which is getting
>> involved in
>> educational GNU/Linux projects.  I know you've been highly
>> active in
>> SEUL, am wondering if you could kick me in some good
>> directions, those
>> being:
>>
>>   - Active organizations doing this sort of thing,
>> particularly in
>>     California.
>>
>>   - People involved in similar tasks.
>>
>>   - Businesses which are partnering in similar efforts.
>>
>>   - War stories and/or informational resources on what
>> does/doesn't
>>     work.
>>
>> What I'm seeing right now are efforts to set up "a small
>> GNU/Linux lab
>> in a secondary school, 4-20 boxes, for a small budget, $1000 -
>> $
>> 50,000", thereabouts.  Not sure if this is enough to make a go
>> of, but
>> I'm willing to wing it.  Hoping that something bigger and/or
>> more
>> interesting might start showing up after a time.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> --
>> Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com>
>> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/