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Re: [school-discuss] School Admin Software



Hi Alan,

My condolences.

I've been working very hard on an open source school administration package for several years.

If people don't help out with open source software development in some way, the natural consequence is proprietary software of various sorts. Of course, both types will continue to co-exist for a long time to come; but in education we should try to improve the amounts of OSS variety.

What happened earlier in your school when they were specifying the software requirements for your school environment? IMO, that was the critical time...


Les Richardson
Open Admin for Schools
http://richtech.ca/openadmin



On Mon, 8 Oct 2007, Alan E. Davis wrote:

One of my worst nightmares has befallen my school: a proprietary, Windoze
only administration package is being implemented: Rediker.

I have been one of few who has cleaved to GNU/Linux in my school system.  To
make a long story short, either I'll repartition my laptop's drive (small
enough at 40GB), or learn to run Rediker in either an emulator or a virtual
environment like Vmware.  I have used Crossover Office when students needed
access to shockwave virtual labs, and for alot of other plugins.  Do I have
a prayer of getting Rediker's school software running on CX Office?
Vmware?  Is VMWare suitable for basically emulating Windows XP in a window,
to run this one program?  Maybe even Wine is good enough?  I have used Wine?

So my question to the list is this: has anyone any clues about how to start
the latter?

My voice is much in the minority when I complain that we have no books, but
you are spending thousands and thousands on a proprietary package.  The
local economy is in a stall/tailspin right now, but that doesn't stop this
sort of inanity.

I have been quite happy using GNU/Linux for the past 14 years.  I could just
as well live without it now.  I have gotten used to a different way of doing
things, but I can get things done I could never do on WIndows.
Teachers/Educators are the last, I think, to get the "good news."  M$
probably spent a lot of money hooking them up, during earlier educational
years.

I'm not going to get far be refusing to install WIndows back on the machine
that was given to me with WIndows installed.  But I hope to put up a decent
amount of resistance.

Alan

--
Alan Davis, Kagman High School, Saipan  lngndvs@xxxxxxxxx

"It's never a matter of liking or disliking ..."
      ---Santa Ynez Chumash Medicine Man