Re: [LUG] Linux in Schools a case Study

On 5/7/07, Mark Jose <kernowyon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

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

-I wish you luck with CCC. My experience over 20 years is that cornering an official who will subsequently get something done takes many years, Yes, I mean years. It isn't that they say no, instead discussions are endlessly talked around and/or postponed. Mind you, if they want you to do something, it's always very urgent, yesterday being too slow. Robin

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