<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 7:34 PM, Thomas A. Cantara <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:tacantara@gmail.com">tacantara@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Don't forget to add the cost effectiveness of OSS.</blockquote><div><br>Heh - that's a given! One of the core points of LTSP on a server cloud is reducing the largest costs - human labor. While software licensing fees are an expense, with staff getting cut, IT folks are concerned about getting over worked doing their regular run-around fixing workstations.<br>
<br>Being able to manage a small set of cloud "images" with student file storage separate, and using either existing equipment or $100 terminals that plug onto the back of LCD monitors, the real savings is not having to hire people to handle the latest virus that's spreading through their network or fix some workstation a student has messed with.<br>
<br>But even further, with student logging into a cloud, it really doesn't matter where they are - including at the library or at home. Each student could have admin access own VM, which they could easily re-image if they mess it up, and their home directory stored separately, and use that VM from a home computer as readily as from school.<br>
<br>For that matter, those $100 thin-client terminals could be used from home to the school's cloud, giving those servers something to do after 3pm.<br><br>This isn't just about the school - this is about students and their families. We do this right and we could add hundreds of local Ubuntu users in the Fall, not to mention spread the community network to hundreds of families.<br>
<br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Off topic for a second: If you don't read the Nashua Telegraph, you<br>
missed an interesting article on the guy who has tied up the license<br>
plate "UNIX" in NH for a couple of decades. Jon Hall, who lives in<br>
Amherst, was a Unix pioneer.</blockquote><div><br>Yea Jon "maddog" Hall is a local, many of us have met him :-) He's not just a Unix pioneer, Linux wouldn't be what it is today without his involvement with Linus Torvolds early on.<br>
<br>
He actually chatted with us about the new LoCo at a BBQ last Summer and
has been fairly supportive, though he's not an Ubuntu user himself.<br>
<br></div></div><br>