Frequently Asked Questions
The following questions are questions that those in education ask most in regards to LTSP and / or Gnu/Linux.
Question 1:
How long to train teachers and staff to use it?
Answer:
It is normal for different people to require different training times. Many users who are not esepecially attached to a certain OS (e.g. fans of Vista, XP, or OS X) will not be very cognizant of the differences. They will ask 'where is the button to go to: 'the internet', 'word', and 'Power Points'?
The Firefox browser is an open source browser that is more secure with many pluginsavailable that offer advanced functionality. (You could make a personalized Firefox theme for your school if you were so inclined.)
Open Office is very similar to other document editors (the older more familiar version) and presentation software.
As they are now oblivious to the details of updates, permissions, and network configuration, so too shall they be in the future.
Question 2:
What training materials are available?
Answer:
Which training materials?
Would you like to train students? teachers? or edtech coordinators?
For students:
The programs that you will most likely want to train students in are: OpenOffice.org (the office productivity suite), the GIMP (an image editing program similar to Photoshop), Audacity (a very popular audio editing tool), and Inkscape ( a vector based image editing program).
For OpenOffice.org: there are several sites that offer tutorials and training.
The 'Learn Open Office' site is very well put together with lots of videos and step by step tutorials with screen shots. The site also provides links to several other online resources.
Solveig Haugland from GetOpenOffice.org sells training manuals, workbooks, and users' guides for Open Office products.
For 'The Gimp':
The Gimp site provides links to several online tutorials. If you want to pay money and get DVDs with training material, 'Learn Gimp Fast' offers a video set with instruction for $29.99. There are a plethora of materials available on Amazon.
For Audacity:
Although the interface is relatively intuitive, there are several online step-by-step tutorials. There also organizations readily found via Google that sell kits and training.
For Teachers:
Teachers will rely primarily on the same training materials available to students.
For Edtech coordinators:
In addition to the materials available students, edtech coordinators may want to learn the basic system and network management tools of Gnu/Linux.
Beginning Gnu/Linux users may want to begin with materials such as:
The 'Ultimate Linux Newbie Guide'
and 'Ubuntu for Non-geeks.'
Intermediate Gnu/Linux users will want to have a look at the plethora of information available at 'The Linux Documentation Project' including an 'Introduction to Linux.' There are a plethora of online guides and walk throughs related to Gnu/Linux and its applications.
Advanced users (such as the sys-admin) will want to look at many of the O'Reilly books on Gnu/Linux and may consider working on a Linux certification such as those offered by Red Hat, Ubuntu, O'Reilly and LPI.
Question 3:
What does the training cost?
Answer:
Training for students and teachers is typically online and free.
System and network administration walk-throughs and tutorials are also available online and free.
Gnu\Linux Linux technical training can cost from $400 (O'Reilly) to $2000-$3000 (Red Hat Certified Engineer program).
Question 4:
What do the training materials cost?
Most training materials will be free and online. Some books may be recommended ($40-$80). The software is typically free.
Question 5:
What schools (list of specific people at each school) can I talk to about why it is worth doing this at all?
There is no definitive list.
These TCEA members are known to use FOSS and Gnu/Linux.
Mark Cockrell - Honey Grove ISD - cockrell@honeygroveisd.net (thin client and more)
Jeremy Fluhmann - Winters ISD - fluhmann@gmail.com (Ubuntu/station and servers)
Jimmy Blaschke - Woodsboro ISD - james_blaschke@wisd.net (internet servers - all in one)
Leslie Sessions - Austwell/Tivoli ISD - techleslie@gmail.com (internet servers/other)
MGuhlin, the ultra-prolific blogger and tech coordinator, is compiling a list of Texas schools and classroooms that use Gnu/Linux here.
Debian-edu users are found primarily throughout Germany and the Scandinavian countries; however, there are schools using Debian-edu (Skole Linux) in North and South America as well. A list of schools using Debian-Edu is available here. The user forum for Debian-edu is here.
TCEA has an special interest group dedicated to Free and Open Source Software: http://sos.tcea.org/.
Its members may be able to answer many of your questions.
TOSS Foundation (Texas Open Source Software Foundation) helps guide educators in the use of FOSS (especially Gnu/Linux and LTSP) in Texas. Alan Hodson (aahodson at foo gmail.com no foo) is a member of the TOSS Foundation as well as being a technology coordinator for El Paso ISD responsible for much of the implementation and trouble shooting with their LTSP (K12Linux) system.
Question 6:
The students are going to learn this faster than many teachers; so, how do I know it will be secure from the students when administered/operated by 'typical' teachers?
Answer:
Gnu/Linux was built from the ground up with networking and security in mind. Other OSes added networking and permissions as an after thought.
User permissions and file permissions are vastly important in Gnu/Linux. Take a look at what the file permissions in Gnu\Linux are. On top of default security, things can be tightened down with SELinux, Bastille Unix, or AppArmor. Debian-edu comes with the graphical network system monitor Nagios. The other LTSP distributions can use Nagios or a plethora of other network monitoring software such as: Munin, Ganglia, and OpenNMS. There are also many command line options available as well.
Question 7:
How will installation disrupt classes?
Answer:
If you are decommisioning computers-- Yes, the work flow will be interrupted. If the server is up and running it won't take any longer than booting the thin clients.
Question 8:
How will it reduce work loads?
Answer:
The software is maintained on one server. When a thin client quits working, a new one only has to be booted its place -- no software installation neccessary.
Reduce worrying about the plethora of worms, malware, and viruses that infect other computers.
Question 9:
How much does maintenance cost?
Answer:
You are saving money by being able to extend the life of computers that you would otherwise not be able to use. The software is free and the hardware was headed to be recycled.
Not much time and remoting in is very simple and can be done using ssh (available on many phones).
Question 10:
What does it cost to hire someone who can maintain this thing?
Answer:
1. It's not difficult. Just about anyone (who feels comfortable with computers) could learn to do it. (Google really is your friend.)
2. We're in education; our duty is to create life long learners. Why skimp here?
3. If you are working on large scale deployments, you may want an IT specialist trained or to be trained in Gnu/Linux. (You might even being doing yourself a favor -- IT specialists proficient in Gnu/Linux earn on average $10,000 a year more than their non-Gnu/Linux-adept counterparts. After saving the district thousands of dollars mightn't they opt to reward you? Isn't a firm hand shake and a smile reward enough?)
4. You could always have paid for support from the large companies Canonical (Ubuntu, Edubuntu), Redhat, and SUSE. You could contract a number of hours a year starting at $250.
5. You could hire an outside consultant such as Helios Solutions or T9 Productions for very reasonable rates.
Question 11:
What's in it for me?
Answer:
The satisfaction of having:
helped bridge the digital divide,
saved your district money,
increased students' access to technology,
possibly improved your value as a more knowledgable versatile employee,
improved the skill base of students,
provided students with access to software that they can all afford in their homes,
helped keep the planet a little greener by keeping some old computers out of a land fill,
created a more sustainable, affordable, and scalable IT infrastruture.
Question 12:
If I do this will it help us meet state and federal certification goals?
Question 13:
How does it affect my licensing costs?
Answer:
You probably have a site license for everything MS.
If you are using Gnu/Linux you will definitely not need to increase site licenses. You may even begin phasing out site licenses where not strictly needed. Why not use OpenOffice?
One of the reasons you have the license from MS is because the teachers, staff, and students are relatively clueless about the legal implications of stealing software. So you have to have a site license for everything MS, because when the copyright police show up and audit every PC you own they will find software that "just showed up". If you are using Gnu/Linux with thin clients it would be impossible for proprietary (licensed) software to be installed to the thin clients and nearly impossible for it to be installed to the server.
Question 14:
What will parents say? Will the parents believe their children are getting a relevant education when they are not learning to use MS software?
Answer:
Starting in middle school you have to convince the students too. Students may complain bitterly about being trained on Office 2003 running on Windows XP when Office 2007 and 2008 and Vista were available. Parents may demand to have their children using what they perceive as the most current software.
Here is where I scream. AAAAHHH!
We're educators.
This boils down to basic educational theory. Gagne describes that learning has occured when knowledge can be transfered.
We are teaching a skill not an interface.
Students can learn the skill of editing better if they have used multiple interfaces.
They gain a better understanding for the underlying processes of what they're doing.
Why focus on a particular interface? Did learning the old Word interface really help to use the new Word more than using OpenOffice would have?
And clear my throat <ahhemm>.
How many of our students are economically disadvantaged? How moral is it of us that we have been requiring our students to use expensive proprietary software even though they may even receive free and reduced lunch? Why are we teaching programs and requiring programs for homework that we know students can't afford? All too often educators and tech policy makers conveniently turn a blind eye to students fiscal circumstances in regards to what software they can be expected to have.
It is our economically disdvantaged students who perform least well on standardized tests. Why penalize them even further by relying on software they can't afford?
Question 15:
What about compatibility with existing software. Will the teachers current pet application run on this system?
Answer:
Probably not. However, there is probably a virus-free and cost-free alternative readily available in the distributions software repository.
Oh wait... just a second. These are the computers that were headed for the land fill. They certainly couldn't have run that program.
Question 16:
What are the most important implications?
Answer:
The tech person is not the one who makes the final decision. The social, business, human, and legal questions are much larger than any technical question. If you can't address those, the technical questions do not matter. When you have addressed those question then you have to show that it will work and play well with your existing network and software.
The answer: you will be helping better bridge the digital divide. You will be functioning ethically and morally providing software that you know your students can afford. You will be acting responsibly by increasing the length of your school's hardware. You will be improving students' lives through a greater richness of experience and by exposing them to a communtiy effort that works for the greatest benefit of its users.
Question 17:
Can users authenticate over Active Directory?
Answer:
Yes, they can. It does not take long to configure. An example walk through is here. and here.
Question 18:
What are the Linux alternatives to the programs I'm using?
Answer:
There are many places to find this information. Thomas Weeks put together this slide show, it is a rather useful list.
There is also a 'Linux App Finder website.'
HOWEVER, This is not like the OS you may be used to that requires 'treasure hunts' all over the internet looking for diverse sources of programs to install. Most of the programs you will ever need are available in a repository accessible through a GUI interface (Synaptic and others) for downloading. The files have md5 sums and are sent in encrypted (gpg) streams. (Now there is apt-secure as well that checks both md5 and sha checksums.)
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