* michael stone (agentsmith@mail.utexas.edu) [020412 14:12]:
I think some technical support (or at least ideas about technical implementations) should be allowed, as long as it is specific or common to an academic environment.
As long as you keep in mind that you'll probably receive a much better (meaning faster, not nec. higher quality) response on suse-linux-e. I think mentioning that you are working to help get Linux into schools will only help with this.
1) How do I easily create 25 identical systems (i.e. write a bootable cd that automatically partitions disks, loads the exact software I want off of NFS, and prompts me for machine name, IP, etc...) and, how do I keep all of these machines exactly the same?
Using ALICE or the new SuSE autoinstall that will replace it. Both of these are very specialized (I don't really know much about them) but they each have their own lists.
2) Has anyone set up OpenLDAP to use instead of NIS so it can interface with the X.500 databases that many universities run?
Yes, our business products are all based on LDAP. Again, it's highly specialized topic that's probably best handled on the Open LDAP lists or maybe SLE if the problem is specific to SuSE.
3) Setting up systems (yes, windows and mac, too) so that students get their same home directory no matter what machine in the building they log onto, and how to keep this secure.
SLE and suse-security.
4) Clustering / Batching
SLE, but only because those sort of "wastebasket" lists for topics that don't have their own list.
5) How to keep the Linux systems attractive (read: **sexy**) to the students, so they will use it over the windows lab.
This seems very relevant as it's more of a sociological problem than a technical one.
I have some ideas on most of this stuff, but I don't really have anyone here to bounce them off of. I would like to be able to use this list for that.
You probably won't get much feedback though. The security people all hang out on suse-security (and maybe SLE or SL), the alice/auto-install people are on their lists, etc. We don't really have a list for people who are interested in topics like 5) and some geek's concept of what's sexy or cool is probably very different from from what, say, a high school teacher would think-- That sort of issue is probably really important. -- -ckm