Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-edu (45 mails)

[Garry Saddington <garry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thursday 19 July 2007 23:47, Ian Lynch wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-07-19 at 19:22 +0100, Phil Thane wrote:
> > On Thursday 19 July 2007 16:29:49 Ian Lynch wrote:
> > > Get them to fund Dial Solutions to port PDT to Linux and Windows and
> > > Open Source it.
> >
> > Am I missing something here? Dial Solutions I've heard of, but their CAD
> > package is Oak Draw originally for Acorn I think (hence Oak) but now for
> > Windows. It's basic 2D proabably comparable to TechSoft's Primary Design.
> >
> > What's PDT?
>
> Parametric design tool developed for the Acorn Archimedes back in the
> late 80s. I think considerably more powerful than Oak Draw but Phil
> Driscoll is better placed than me to say what it can do. I think it was
> written in C so might not be too difficult to port.
>
> > ProDESKTOP which is common in UK schools (but now obsolete) is often
> > referred to as ProD. It was produced by Parametric Technology Corp (PTC).
> > Back in the day when a specialist CAD workstation was needed to run PTC's
> > ProEngineer, ProD was the Windows desktop PC alternative for smallish
> > designs. These days a decent Windows or Linux PC will run ProE so
> > commercially ProD is pointless. It continues in schools becase a) they've
> > already got it, and b) it's reasonably simple as 3D CAD goes.
>
> Thing is that thin clients are not ideally suited to specialist CAD but
> as servers are getting more powerful that is becoming less of an issue.
> Also in a school, I suspect teaching the principles of vector graphics
> is not generally highly developed in any case. I see very few examples
> of kids stretching inkscape or OpenOffice Draw (or proprietary
> equivalents) never mind professional CAD tools. If a school needs 500
> terminals for general productivity tools and 5 specialist CAD machines
> hooked up to CAM then it seems more sensible to have 500 Linux thn
> clients and if necessary 5 workstations running Windows or whatever. We
> don't have to have every machine identical. Let's fit the technology to
> the educational need rather than having a one size fits all applications
> mentality.
Hello all,
We use thin clients exclusively for all our ICT and Graphics teaching. The 
system is built on LTSP and Inkscape is our main vector graphics tool. Our DT 
department uses ProDesktop for CAD and we serve this up on a Windows terminal 
server through Rdesktop to the Linux thin clients which are all HP models and 
work great. All have USB stick access for transferring files.
So, when you ask what does LTSP/thin client technology mean to you, then the 
answer is everything because we use nothing else.
We are also starting with Ingots next term. We tried DiDA but it is an 
almighty fudge heavily weighted in favour of proprietary software;  its 
initial simplicity in aiming for a total web based solution has been removed 
by the approval of ppt and xls files in an eportfolio -- because there are 
free viewers available!! 
King Regards
Garry
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