On Sun, 2004-04-18 at 00:37, Liam Marshall wrote:
Current school lab setup: 1 RedHat 9 server running Samba emulating an NT domain
35 Windows 98 (Yuck!) workstations running All The Right Type (typing tutor) MSOffice Apps (XP version) Microsoft Visual Basic (Grade 11 programming) Java Programming (Grade 12) various and sundry educational games etc Interenet High Speed Access
Am switching to all Linux network this summer
Good for you...
I need to be able to continue teaching programming, preferably still Java and a flavour of Visual Basic.
Java no problem, But... VB is not going to be possible... You'll have to switch to another language... You could start a thread here, to discuss which languages would be best for begginer programmers.
I need to be able to continue teaching an MSOffice - like application (OpenOffice)
Open Office will all the common things required of an Office Suite better and quicker than M$ Office Suite will. You will have compatibility problems with formula editor and other ultra advanced functions I've personally never seen any body use...
I need to allow for typing practice
You probably need to start a thread for this also...
I need to give the kids access to games / internet etc.
There are games available for Linux. But you seemed to have something specific on your mind. As to internet, you will be alot better off with linux on the workstation than windows as Linux does not catch viruses. This is because the viruses are all windows variants at the moment.
I believe Suse will allow me to do all that with the exception of a Visual Basic flavour of programming. (if someone can help me out there it would be appreciated, even if it is just pointing me in the right direction)
Some key features I need to implement.
1 Authentication from the server (NIS? maybe) How to doc would be nice
2 Home directories served up from the server, not each workstation. This is a biggie. With over 500 kids and the very real problem of them having to share the same 35 workstations, I do not want to have to have their files anywhere but on the server. With Samba and windows workstations this was easy. Authenticate and map the "homes" directories to a drive they could access on their workstations. Of course this "homes" directory in Samba was pointing to the equivelent Unix user's home directory on the server
I would use NIS Yellow pages and NFS. Basically, it lets you share home directories, and username/password info from the server, is easy to setup in SuSE, and just what you need. I'm not sure what your network requirements will be for 35 pc's running NIS/NFS, but I don't believe they will be any more that the current setup.
If I can get answers to all the above I will die a happy man and be able to break away from the dependancy on the evil Microsoft Empire, with all its glaring security holes!
Thank you in advance for all your opinions and tips
I didn't see any mention of the needs of the teachers, and school administration needs.... Did you forget these? At any rate, I wish you luck, and want to thank you for having the guts to go out on limb and do what is right, instead of not rocking the boat and using microsoft! Jerry Westrick