Hi, Please advise... Im a PGCE student of ICT and as my major assignment I have chosen to investigate the possibility of embracing opensource software in the school environment. To this end, a few months ago I wiped out windows and replaced it with super slick SuSE and never looked back! I just thought that this mailing list might be a good place to bounce ideas off people. I've done all the research regarding opensource software replacements for current software + checking out Wine compatibility for departments who are in love with their current packages -- all this has gone very favourably. Now im looking at the really important part (as far as management is concerned), Costing!! Here I have hit an impass! There are so many solutions and distro's around. After initial research http://www.k12ltsp.org/ looks very interesting -- it would certainly be a good way of implementing Linux one step/room at a time. Also looks like old hw could be used to create new computer suites at little extra expense. I know this is a SuSE mailing list, so im presuming that there will be a degree of bias, but thats fair enough because im a bit biased towards it too. Yast has seen me through a lot already, and im a bit loathe to leave it. The school that im compiling this report for has 474 Windows workstations, does anyone have experience of Linux administration, implementation on this scale? If so can you give me an idea of annual costs? Have you used SuSE for this? What OS is being used for your servers? One last thing, most school technicians I have met thus far have little to no experience or knowledge of Linux; I also consider myself to be a newcomer to this field, could anyone direct me to a training course suited to Linux school network administration. I know that all of the above is a big ask, I will be gratefull for any pearls of wisdom. Regards Dermot Mc Laughlin dermot@ictresource.co.uk ___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - sooooo many all-new ways to express yourself http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com