[ubuntu] Replacing Windows with Ubuntu

[abillybob]

Hello All,

 

Now obviously I am not going to do this apart from two people who prefer to use Ubuntu rather than any other OS in the school although I do have to say, after using Ubuntu 14 as my daily driver now for around a week I'm really impressed by the stability of the system and how easy it all is to manage. It's all free which is a plus and they even have an Ubuntu Server (Something I haven't tried yet).

 

Nearly everything myself, staff and students need app wise can be found on the OS including things like Smart Notebook. Virtual box works well so there is no reason you couldn't get Sims to work on it in a Virtual Windows machine. It's pretty fast and because it's pretty, solid looks to be very difficult to actually "break" anything and very user friendly. Apparently there are ways to connect it to a Windows Domain aswell so that your users can login to an Ubuntu client.

 

I'm fairly tempted to run Ubuntu as a third choice on our iMacs but I have a few more important things to deal with before I have some fun. What's your experiences been like with the OS? Has anyone ever deployed the OS to use within a school - I would like to hear how it went?

 

Cheers

Edited December 15, 2014 by abillybob

[Patrick]

Honestly? In education I wouldn't bother using it as the main driver. Make VM's for educational uses in labs. It's integration with your existing AD is flakey at best and will just make more work for you.

[abillybob]

That's a shame, thankyou for your response though! I wish another OS like Ubuntu or some other Linux distro would make a Server platform as good as Microsoft's. It just always feels like Microsoft have the monopoly on that even Apple Servers are flaky!! Big shame really!

[Sephiroth]

If this is something that you're seriously considering, look into Puppet; a Debian based deployment mechanism. there are several methods of conecting a Linux machine to a windows Domain, and there are lots of 'How To' manuals online, with varying skill requirements and commandline knowhow. If you want to see what happens whrn you join to a domain, look up PBIS (Power Broker Identity Services)

 

Beyond that, you'll need to look at the security considerations, such as remote access (ssh, telnet, vnc, etc) which is easy for others to achieve, removing access to the command line (if you think it appropriate; depends on your users and your trust... personally, I don't trust users!).

 

My reccomendation for Windows applications, like SIMS, would be to roll up an Application RDP server. This has the benefit of being scalable in future and can be very useful for other things too. Only downside is licencing, but it depends how far you're willing to go.

 

I have run various versions of Debian or Ubuntu for about 5 years to manage windows domains, and have been trying to get it out as a clientside OS for almost as long. It's not an easy route, but (IMO) a very rewarding one.

 

I appreciate that you say you only want to do a couple and that mos of what I've just said is large scale, but it's worth looking at if you can get the Linux OS in the door, so to speak, as I think that it has a place in schools.

 

If you need any specific help then feel free to ask and I'll do what I can to help, though I can't promise much!

[pcstru]

Ubuntu is fine. I run a clutch of Ubuntu servers (server doesn't have any GUI) as LAMPS stacks for wordpress, xibo, nagios, mrtg etc. I only have one client set up at the moment on a notebook, specifically to run wireshark (windows machines don't like to allow cards into monitor mode) and it has one annoying feature - when the screen isn't big enough for the window, there are no scroll bars.

 

Generally I've found Linux distributions to be very good. The difficulty with moving a school over has more to do with skills availability than the stability or maturity of the platform.

[unixman_again]

We ran the Linux Terminal Server Project on the student desktops at the first school I was at. We used Fedora. The kids always said it was carp, but since they only needed an office suite and web browser, it did the job perfectly. With PAM authentication and NFS, everything just worked as it should, and gave us no problems at all, unlike the M$ systems which the office staff used for CMIS and M$ Office. (To be fair, CMIS was the main culprit here.) Staff laptops were a pain too, needing to be reimaged about every fortnight; staff would take them home and their kids would bugger them up.

[Sephiroth]

I was looking at the LTSP on Ubuntu recently. Good fun to get involved with and very powerful whilst astoundingly simple to set up (took me about 30 minutes, though I know a lot about Linux)

[abillybob]

Cheers for all your comments guys, I am listening and taking it all in Last time I used anything Linux I was very young installed the OS and it seemed you had to be some sort of computing wizard to use it. Though now I can see it's come a long way since all of that, nice graphical GUI's, there is the odd thing you need to put some brain power behind to get installed but most things are pretty easy. If it could be intergrated with AD and work well plus you had some management so you could turn off various settings and just allow children to access apps you specify it would be amazing and then I'd seriously consider deploying it throughout the school along side windows as a test.

 

Though this dosen't seem to be the case (maybe it's just because I don't have enough knowledge in the OS) but the management side of things looks fairly terrifying and limited to what you can do. I think the OS has tons of potential and believe it could really benefit towards a school enviroment. VM's will never get used unfortunatley and never have so I don't bother as it's more work but what I was hoping to do was to bring some old PC's back to life and make an Ubuntu lab which I might still do yet!

 

I'm running it as my daily driver and I haven't come across anything in my day to day tasks that I haven't been able to do with Ubuntu that I could do with Windows or Mac except of course Apple Configurator and Apple Remote Desktop to the server but these aren't day to day tasks!

 

@Sephiroth cheers mate I'll keep you in mind if I need any help

[winng]

This may be of interest Linux Schools

[abillybob]

This may be of interest Linux Schools

 

Thankyou may give it a go in a virtual enviroment first though. Looks a bit too simple for me to trust at the moment

[Sephiroth]

This may be of interest Linux Schools

 

This is a very good solution, but is a completely standalone solution IIRC. It is a domain in it's own right and creates all of the necessary infrastructure on Linux, such as LDAP and Samba for AD and file services... Fully recommended for a new Domain or a standalone system, but I don't believe it will help the OP.

[Sephiroth]

Thankyou may give it a go in a virtual enviroment first though. Looks a bit too simple for me to trust at the moment

 

This is a very good solution, but is a completely standalone solution IIRC. It is a domain in it's own right and creates all of the necessary infrastructure on Linux, such as LDAP and Samba for AD and file services... Fully recommended for a new Domain or a standalone system, but I don't believe it will help the OP.

 

I don't mean for you not to give it a go though!

[cpjitservices]

I have done a similar thing on a corporate network, using thin clients on a Linux infrastructure.

 

Built on CentOS & Fedora.

 

Users were managed by LDAP, Samba servers were used for storage. We even managed profiles using a program call synergy. Home Directories were mounted upon login directly from a samba share which mean users could logon anywere. There wasnt really anything set policy wise as there was nothing that coul dbe changed without being in the wheel or root group so it was secure. Scripts would run directly from the server for updating the OS. Quite clever really you only have to update the OS from the server that is rolled out to clients and the OS is updated live without interruption.

Edited December 16, 2014 by cpjitservices

[wbasdtech]

Hey abillybob,

We've been running Ubuntu in some of our labs, our cyber school and soon our 1:1 machines, and it's been great. I think a lot of it comes down to what all you need these devices to do. If you need to use a directory, then it does require a bit of work. In our case, the kids are encouraged to use their cloud storage to save their files which eliminates the need to mount shares.

On the management end, Puppet works well and I'd also recommend looking into Ansible. It's a clientless management tool that utilizes SSH to push commands.

 

Like the others guys mentioned, starting small is a great idea.

[simonhayes]

I was (and still am) seriously considering doing this with some of our older PCs (except with Xubuntu which is a bit more lightweight). The only thing which stops me is the difficulty of joining them to the domain after installation. I managed to get this working once, but couldn't figure a way to map the user's home drive on the server automatically.

 

I was looking into Linux for schools but while they're OK for you to have Windows clients, they do not support (or have any intention of supporting) integrating clients with Windows servers. I did raise a strong argument for this with them but they didn't want to know.

 

If anyone figures a way to get this working then please let me know.