Ubuntu Desktop vs. Win 7 Pro - hidden costs, unexpected issues, bad surprises?

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Originally Posted by glennda

Well its a case of listing software you currently have on your network and seeing if there are alternatives on linux which staff would be happy with. At the end of the day without knowing the staff and the software you currently use on windows and how its used its very had to comment IMHO

I.e if staff use windows movie maker in the classroom is there an alternative for it which is simple to use on linux. The major type of software there are alternatives for such as libre office instead of m$ office etc.

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Almost everything is web-based except for MS Word, and if I can get the teachers more comfortable with Google Docs then we won't need that either. We tried Open Office a few years ago and everyone screamed. But Google Docs solves so many other problems (students losing files, having files at school but not at home, etc etc) that I think it's worth the struggle.
The classes that do a lot with photoshop / video / etc are already using Macs so that's not much of an issue.

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Originally Posted by misterfriendly

Printing is the dealbreaker, otherwise I'd do something like ChromiumOS or Webconverger.

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You can have any Linux distribution you like load up a web browser on startup, you don't have to use ChromeOS itself, so you can use whatever printing facilities are available in whatever distribution you prefer.

We have a lab with 60 linux clients, and have nearly no software costs anymore.

We run Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on all clients, but think about switching to linux Mint because of Unity.

For Imaging of the clients we use drbl/clonezilla, which boots the clients via pxe and uses multicast.
We only have one image for all clients, network configuartion is done via dhcp.
Printing is done via cups/pykota.

We use dsh (distributed ssh) to install packages and for updates.

The management of all clients is not that time consuming like it was with windows clients.

The biggest problem for our users is open/libreoffice. So many docx documents arround and the import function does not work properly with some documents.


if you have any additional questions, just drop me a message.

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Originally Posted by lownoize

We have a lab with 60 linux clients, and have nearly no software costs anymore.

We run Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on all clients, but think about switching to linux Mint because of Unity.

For Imaging of the clients we use drbl/clonezilla, which boots the clients via pxe and uses multicast.
We only have one image for all clients, network configuartion is done via dhcp.
Printing is done via cups/pykota.

We use dsh (distributed ssh) to install packages and for updates.

The management of all clients is not that time consuming like it was with windows clients.

The biggest problem for our users is open/libreoffice. So many docx documents arround and the import function does not work properly with some documents.


if you have any additional questions, just drop me a message.

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lownoize, what do you use for a server / directory master? Also Ubuntu?
It's possible to remove Unity and install Gnome on Ubuntu 11, though I have not done this yet myself.
Google Docs is a great solution and handles the .doc/.docx files very well.

Removing Unity is dead simple if you have upgraded from 10.04, you just need to select Gnome from the options menu at login.

There is a school near me that runs a complete Samba Domain for use with linux/windows desktops. The only windows server they have is for Sims.


EDIT: the Next Update in Theory Should be an LTS if following the same pattern as normal, version 12.04

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Originally Posted by misterfriendly

lownoize, what do you use for a server / directory master? Also Ubuntu?
It's possible to remove Unity and install Gnome on Ubuntu 11, though I have not done this yet myself.
Google Docs is a great solution and handles the .doc/.docx files very well.

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We use Ubuntu 10.04 LTS for all Servers:
Server 1: OpenLDAP for user authentication, cups/pykoat for printing, dhcp....
Server 2: nfs fileserver for user homedirectories, and ldap slave.

I would recomend Ubuntu LTS for Servers, because you get 5 years updates.

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Originally Posted by lownoize

We use Ubuntu 10.04 LTS for all Servers:
Server 1: OpenLDAP for user authentication, cups/pykoat for printing, dhcp....
Server 2: nfs fileserver for user homedirectories, and ldap slave.

I would recomend Ubuntu LTS for Servers, because you get 5 years updates.

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are you handling Mac client logons on Ubuntu as well?

No we don't have any Macs in our lab.
If you only need filesharing like nfs/samba for the mac users it should be doable netatalk Netatalk - Networking Apple Macintosh through Open Source.
Or you could use nfs and ldap. Here is a short howto: http://mattfleming.com/node/190

Just tossing this out there, but it might be fun to experiment with PXE booting the clients and removing the drives.