On Wednesday 19 September 2001 20:33, Kevin Taylor wrote:
It would be interesting to generate a list of 'must haves' which would turn Linux into a more attractive proposition for UK primary use.
The usual server side things apply - except that many primary schools would not have an IT technicial to learn about things to set them up - so tend to rely more on bought in pre configured machines or similar.
They can do that with Linux and probably less expensively.
My daughters school has no network to speak of and is only just starting to put together a computer lab - its currently all standalone workstations with modems, printers and CDRoms. There are no real servers of any kind for Linux to replace!
Ideal site to start with Linux. No baggage.
On the desktop side, key uses of computers in my kids nursery/early years classes uses: 1. early learning multimedia (living books, DK, etc) - most of which I can run under Win 3.11 at home (I have not tried under Wine ...)
So its easy to maintain these on existing machines and use these as thin clients to Linux.
2. Old BBC stuff running on RM BBC emulators or native RM stuff 3. Some native DOS shareware type stuff 4. Simple things like notepad and paintbrush type programs.
Paintbrush basically teaches the wrong tools to use for graphic illustration at an early age. Ditch it!
It should be possible to write new stuff for 2, 3 or 4, (like "Linux Letters and Numbers" for example) but I don't know of much of it. There are also basic notepad/painting programs with all the GUI environments (plus cat & mouse type games for mouse practise, etc).
Another issue is that using RM or Win 3.11 on machines means that they can get away with running on quite low spec machines - X just wouldn't cut it
Yes it does if you use thin clients. Just done an INSET in a primary with about 16 users on a 1 gig processors 512 meg RAM server with only 50% of processor resources taken with them doing graphics in Star Draw. Much cheaper to build a reasobaly powered server and use the old machines as clients. - otherwise, I would have been tempted to
write a few simple kids games in perl/tk for my own family use (basic counting, animation, etc).
Do it! It'll get used on servers with client machines.
I was following some of the low spec GUI on LInux developments (QT embedded, frame buffer, small X servers, etc) - but have lost touch, due to lack of time.
Not necessary - just use KDE in thin client config.
From my experiences in the classroom and at home (I have 4 children, the oldest is 6) - until multimedia is available, desktops will stay Windows based. There is also the support issue in a school with no real current IT support for Windows (let alone Linux).
Well they can get Linux managed remotely and there is multimedia. Several video players audio etc even across thin client networks.
In our local case, support would have to come from parents (ie people like me) - and those of us interested in Linux, are usually in full time employment anyway doing other things :)
Get the parents to do the easy things like pulling old machines apart to upgrade graphics etc. Pay an expert to manage the servers remotely and you don't need any specialist knowledge and it isn't very expensive.
Just my thoughts ... Kevin.
Thanks for them! regards. Ian