Here's a high level stategy:
1) Determine if the systems are the same or not
2) If they are the same - CPU, RAM, devices ... then load the distro
you are considering - SKolelinux, Edubuntu, ....
- If the system is configurable to what you wish to do
* Consider setting up the network so you can boot
and build from the network
* Consider extracting the hard drives and boot from CD
if possible
* 600 machines is alot to manually configure - but
you could configure each one manually
I suspect the drives are a bit old and errors are creeping up. I'd opt
to see about running diskless if possible.
While checking out the systems, get a number of people involved. You
need to get enough tech support to make the conversion workable. This
is a part many neglect until the last minute. You can show the basic
capabilities - but need alot of support to deploy and more importantly
maintain the systems.
Rich
On Sun, 2006-05-21 at 09:32 -0400, Daniel Howard wrote:
> Folk,
>
> I've know of a school that has over 600 older laptops (either Win98 or
> Win2k) for a 1:1 grant-funded study in 2000 that now only has 50
> functional units, assumedly due to viruses, upgrading OS w/o adding more
> memory, lack of support, etc. We want to consider converting these into
> K12LTSP thin clients using our laptop cart idea, but I wanted to make
> sure we were considering all options.
>
> We could probably load Linux OS directly onto each laptop and keep them
> as stand-alone units so the kids could take them home as the original
> model proposed, but the support issue (number of PCs to support) along
> with the need to plug them in to power daily in the classrooms and
> either plug network in or log on wirelessly makes that less desirable.
> I'd rather see the kids stay after school for a few hours to do homework
> on them when necessary and reduce the number of PCs to support by a
> factor of 50 by turning them all into thin clients that stay at the school.
>
> Are there any other ideas out there for what to do to revive 600 drunken
> laptops?
>
> Regards,
> Daniel
>
--
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Remember, all Windows machines are, by definition, fault tolerant.
They run Windows don't they!!
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