Re: [school-discuss] School Admin Software

[cdmiller <cdmiller@xxxxxxxxx>]

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

The vmware player or server is a free download, and you can have a full
windows xp running in a window on your desktop.  Qemu will also work,
I'm less familiar with it.  Ubuntu has a commercial repository that
makes installing vmware player or vmware server easy:

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-install-vmware-server-from-canonical-commercial-repository-in-ubuntu-feisty.html

Some info on Qemu/Kqemu on Ubuntu:
http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2007/07/04/setting-up-qemu-kqemu-on-ubuntu-704-feisty/

- cameron