[ale] Palladium/MS: ideas for retaliation

[Dow Hurst]

One of the challenges I see is for the LUG at KSU to encourage faculty and 
staff here at KSU to embrace Linux over Windows thru student interest. 
 Helping local K12 schools should come from the top down such as CSIS 
students applying knowledge for credit in a project like teaching a 
Linux Boot Camp at a K12 school or Chemistry students demonstrating 
molecular modelling software.  There are lots of ways to have higher 
learning institutions create trickle down to help out K12 schools.  One 
of our staff in CSIS has helped a professor use a totally Linux 
environment with VMware on top for certain apps.  He raves about the 
versatility and stability.

Our ITS dept. has created a standard load of Win98 2nd ed. that runs on 
all the Dell desktops and laptops on campus.  This is very important to 
them for management of 4K users and lab desktops/laptops.  A standard 
Linux load would be just as critical since the last thing they want is a 
bunch of varied installations and software.  The ease of management 
would obviously be easier once the migration was over with since 
Linux/Unix is easier to manage configuration and updates.  However, 
until a usable standard load is developed and proved, most ITS 
departments would not be interested.
Dow


Dow Hurst wrote:

> This is a good time to let your anger at Microsoft's miserable 
> attitudes and business practices motivate you to write your government 
> officials. Also, we should leverage our local influence and expertise 
> into helping local school systems avoid MS ensnarement before time 
> wastes even more.
>
> A good ALE project would be to develop a realistic plan to implement 
> Linux across the GA school system.  How many local ALE members are 
> there in total?  Do we have enough people interested in helping if we 
> scheduled few dates this year to develop a project to fight back 
> against MS invading schools here?  We would need someone used to 
> managing large projects, which definitely counts me out! ;-)   I am 
> used to being a peon, but a good hardworking peon!  I think we would need:
>
> Management guru
> Buttkicker (motivator) guru
> Security expert
> MS and Linux software integration guru
> Networking guru
> Lot's of intelligent workers in teams
> A few good programmers in teams
> A couple of years commitment
>
> Anyone want to jump into discussing this?  This is not a simple 
> project nor a short project, but it could be very rewarding in the 
> long term. Geoffrey, do you have any comments on this?  I know I 
> talked with a Cobb school employee, a very nice lady, who explained 
> she was on the team that updates the master database of all students 
> in Cobb schools. This is around ~100K students sized database.  She 
> talked about there being firewalls in place, but that they would map 
> drives between schools and such.  I was cringing thinking of the 
> license fees to run all those NT and Win2K servers behind expensive 
> Checkpoint firewalls.  I am sure that we could spend the rest of our 
> lives in ALE on a project like this. :-)
> Dow
>
>
> John Wells wrote:
>
>> It's on /., but thought I'd send it out.  I think everyone on this list
>> needs to take the time to read and digest the questions presented here:
>>
>> http://www.theregus.com/content/4/25378.html
>>
>>
>>
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