Linux support in schools & universities

[Lisa Milne]

My only experience with Linux in school/uni was at tafe. The teachers
let me install Ubuntu on a number of desktop machines in several rooms,
as long as it was dual boot and I told them the password. I had better
network access than the windows systems (although they did eventually
manage to stop me from having access to USB sticks plugged into other
computers around the campus).

Likewise plugging a Linux laptop into their wired network was fine
(after I'd converted a couple of classmates over to Ubuntu), but I never
tried their wireless network as I never needed to.

Lisa

On Tue, 2009-09-15 at 14:59 +0930, Barry Williams wrote:
> If there are any students or teachers/school IT support guys on these
> lists I was wondering if you have tried to get your linux laptops
> working on the school network and how helpful the IT information and
> or support have been.
> 
> Today i finally got my laptop printing on the network, due to my lack
> of trying as I would often just email any document and use a lab
> computer to print as unisa appears to have no support whatsoever for
> linux printing. They do offer information for internet access however.
> 
> I finally got sick of trying to find a free computer and waiting an
> eternity for it to start up so I decided to try and get my laptop
> connected. As I said the unisa.edu.au/ists says linux (and mac)is not
> supported and there windows instructions offer little useful
> information. A member of the IT staff did notice me trying to set up
> my laptop seeing that it was a netbook asked if it was running XP he
> said good luck. He did give me some information on connecting to the
> LEAP encrypted wifi required to get access to the printers and told me
> I could go to the support room to see what they could do, but I have
> been there before and was pretty much told they do not support linux
> and when going through the options on setting up a printer in linux
> they could not answer my questions.
> So I thought email might be a better option so that the respondent
> would have the opportunity to maybe do a little research on their
> system (not on how to connect via linux) so I could figure it out. I
> asked if their printers where setup as a windows share or direct ip
> printer. However I did not get an answer to this and was only provided
> the ip address for the print server.
> I finally figured out through trial and error that it was a windows
> share and each printer could be accessed via the <ip addr of print
> server>/printername. However a new user to linux would have no idea to
> do that. As netbooks are quite popular with students as a cheap light
> weight laptop it would be nice if IT staff could at least provide the
> information required to connect a printer. Although I do see a lot of
> netbooks around unfortunately most of them run windows.
> Anyway what have your experiences been.
> Regards,
> Barry
> 
-- 
WebLinux - Linux live on the web!
http://www.weblinux-live.org