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On Monday 07 May 2007 16:38, james kilty wrote: > On Mon, 2007-05-07 at 16:09 +0100, Mark Jose wrote: > > The problem - > > as they, and I, see it - lies with the RM tie in. > > Do we have any connections or prior discussions with RM? > > james kilty > http://www.kilty.demon.co.uk Not to my knowledge. RM are very Microsoft-centric and from my understanding, installing "unapproved" software is not permitted under the agreements they have with individual schools. My own school installed a file server a while back, following a visit by one of the IT staff from County Hall. Both he and I agreed that the use of a Linux system for that would be ideal, however the system had to be an RM one with a Microsoft based system. Of course, they could have put a couple of large hard drives into one of the old retired systems and used one of the free NAS systems (freeNAS or NASLite for example) for nothing more than the cost of the drives, but that was not acceptable under the agreements! With school budgets being constrained the way they are, F/OSS would make huge savings - quite apart from the cost of licences for the copies of Windows and Office etc, they could run something like the LTSP (or Edubuntu) and use older hardware happily. I can understand that schools may wish to run some instances of Windows - for familiarity for pupils who use Windows at home for example as well - but if say half the machines were running Linux, that would cut the budget on IT quite considerably. Mark -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html