From: Alan Harris
We have been allocated approx £61K for ICT developments leading to a community school . I have proposed an LTSP based solution BUT, can only go ahead if present software will operate under WINE. I hope somebody can help here as the future otherwise becomes to horrible to contemplate (If it does not then the horrible solution that will be imposed on me involves M$ office) and I'll have to resign and go find a job in IT on the Indian Sub-Continent!
Hang on a sec. Are you saying that if Lotus doesn't work they want to switch to M$ Office? If so, why not just use Star Office as its far closer to M$ Office than Lotus is so less of a learning curve, its free and it will run on Windows and Linux. So you could set up Linux thin clients to run StarOffice and say all your Internet stuff from a server and still use existing Windows based machines with their programs on the existing workstations that people are used to. In fact you could either set those machines to dual boot or use a Linux thin client access application on the Windows machines to access the Linux server. If you use Samba on your fileserver it can also then handle all your Windows file serving too. If you want to do thin client and some of these other things you might be better with 2 servers but building 2 machines even with 2 gig of RAM and dual processors is not much over £1000 each on current component prices. When people realise the cost-benefit and the number of free applications increase you can gradually build more on the Linux side and let the Windows stuff wither on the vine.
Sometimes I think (well in fact I'm convinced) that ICT education and the future of this country are on a fast and very slippery downhill road to oblivion!
Nah, I have plans that will change everything, give us a year :-) -- IanL