I take everyone's points on board and I was rather devil's advocating (English is such a wonderful language that you can invent words to suit..). I am pushing Ingots at my SMT Ian but the same argument remains from Tony and Thomas that it is tried and tested things that managemant want. Many of the school's I have worked at the leaders have been very thin on technical knowledge so getting 60 more Windows boxes in is an easy option compared to a suit of LTSP. On Thomas's particular point that it is tried and tested I did say that Edexcel's Units 24/25 can only really be taught by Cisco Academys and I know there are not that many about. I would say there are as many people knowledgeable enough with Linux to teach it as there are Cisco Academys but obviously pressure and money have been applied there. On Joe's more specific example that does not necessarily negate what I am saying as I too have taught with Linux material and at a recent AQA moderation meeting I was told that the chief moderator used LAMP stuff like Moodle but added that he didn't really promote it. People who use Linux are generally more computer savvy and it would be a harsh examiner that penalised a student for something that they obviously knew as much about or more than a moderator, regardless of whether it was mentioned in the official syllabus. This brings me back in a way to Thomas's more general point that it relates to teachers. He says that in some way it relates to qualified teachers who can handle the units. That is only partly true. All exam boards offer Programming as a portfolio unit but I doubt there are more than 1% of schools in the country that have staff that could teach it properly (or networking, CGI, Computer Accounts et al for that fact). I am no complete philanthropist and if I could write good C++ I doubt I would be fighting teenage rebellions in my classroom day in day out :) I bet there are more than 1% of staff in schools in the UK who have dabbled in Linux. Every school I have so far taught at in the SW has had some ICT teacher who has set up a Linux server for the school's web. I suppose, again to answer Thomas's comments, I would create a unit to supplement the other units offered by the boards. As Joe points out, it is easy to do database and networking units using Linux but only if you know a bit about it. Why not have a general Linux unit to support the other ones. Every student could use Knoppix or similar (SuSE 9.1 live if this is still a SuSE site post-Roger) and not make a mess of the school's network and as Joe did (and in conjunction with Ian) everyone could write it up on OOo with their knowledge acquired from Ingot training. Paul -- De Omnibus Dubitandum