Potential School Wide Linux Implementation

Eberhard Roloff tuxebi at gmx.de
Sun Apr 5 18:14:52 UTC 2009


Tim Holmes wrote:
> Hello Folks:
> 
> I am the One Man IT shop for Medina Christian Academy, and am facing a 
> potential situation that i am trying to avert in the future. I am 
> currently a largely Windows XP (fully patched and updated) network built 
> on a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory domain. I have some samba 
> servers for file servers and an APACHE web development server. We have 
> ~150 desktops spread between the classrooms, offices and computer lab. 
> The computers are mostly roughly 5 year old Pentium 4 gateways mostly 
> have 40 gb hdd, onboard sound and video cards and between 512 and 1024 
> mb memory
> 
> I am seeing a problem in that XP support ends here in the next few days 
> / weeks. Our hardware will NOT support Windows Vista , and some of the 
> reviews that I am reading are beginning to indicate that we will not be 
> able to support Windows 7 (even if we can afford the licenses).
> 
> I spoke with our Executive Director today and he indicated a willingness 
> to at least consider moving the entire school to linux as a potential 
> solution.
> 
> We need to be able to do the following things...
> 
> - most of our computer classes use Microsoft Office -- thats covered 
> with Open Office, so no problem there, the same for our teachers using 
> office and the folks in the front office.
> 
> - each classroom is equipped with a SmartBoard interactive white board, 
> -- SmartTech has linux software and drivers for them, so it may be a 
> little bit of work but should be workable.
> 
> -- Printing -- we have a number of printers across the network -- couple 
> of which are all in one type units by keyocera - and all stations/users 
> need to be able to print -- so that means samba print server -- again -- 
> probably take some development work but i am pretty sure it can be done.
> 
> -- domain (or whatever its called in linux) -- users need to be able to 
> sign in on any computer, and have their files accessable similar to what 
> happens when a user logs into a windows domain.
> 
> -- Our School management software / gradebook -- not available in linux, 
> but im wondering about using crossover office / wine or possibly VMWARE 
> -- i'll need input on that -- its a client server app sort of the 
> gradebook writes out text files that are imported into the main 
> application which is based on microsoft access databases with a custom 
> written interface -- might have to run a Virtual windows 2003 server to 
> run the server portion of it -- and like wine or something for the users 
> to access it -- i dont know
> 
> -- backup -- we have a quantum loader, so one way or another we'll need 
> to be able to back stuff up
> 
> -- file servers -- ive got a couple linux file servers now -- but they 
> are running samba i dont know how to share stuff via linux
> 
> im sure there are things that i have forgotten so if anyone has ideas / 
> suggestions please chime in.
> 
> I am tentatively planning to use kubuntu, for the desktop environmen, 
> and this project (if it goes) at least for now would be deployed summer 
> of 2010 for use beginning in the fall of 2010
> 
> ANY and all input is welcome
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Tim Holmes
> IT Director
> Medina Christian Academy
> 
Imho this cries for LTSP, also to lower your adminstartive burden.
Everntually you might consider using MS-Terminalserver for your 
remaining windows needs that you cannot rework with Linux.

see:
http://www.ltsp.org/

and

http://k12ltsp.org/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page

for a more school centric setup

Kind regards
Eberhard





More information about the ubuntu-users mailing list