JaSauders

I'm curious what users out here who are using Linux in the classroom are doing about the many choices of desktop environments that are available. I had banked on using XFCE when/if we roll out more Ubuntu desktops, but I ran into a few snags. Using XFCE 4.8 on Ubuntu 11.04 has given me a little more food for thought. I like XFCE a lot, but I keep running into random bugs. Sometimes my system freezes, other times my mouse just locks up, and now and then my icons in my taskbar turn to white squares and nothing works, including the log out/shut down applet. I just get errors until I do a hard reboot. Some thoughts: KDE - I love KDE, but no thanks. I just don't feel it's stable enough to be in a production environment. It's magnitude of plasma widgets and stuff may look pretty, but I feel as though it is way too much for what I need and just isn't a good fit. Don't get me wrong, I love it, I'm just not feeling it as the main desktop environment in our scenario. Gnome - Old faithful, but changing quite a bit. Unity is a terrific option and has served me so well it's hard to look away from it. However, Unity is new. Very new. This is scary... I'd rather choose something simpler and yet very effective to use that's been around for a while before I tinker with Unity. At the same token, I've had so few issues with Unity, it really does make me wonder if I should give it a try. XFCE - As stated above, it works very well, but has given me some issues. Perhaps it just hates my CR-48 Google laptop? I don't know... but so far I'm not 100% convinced over it. Any additional thoughts?

I guess I didn't think about that. My reaction was, oh, Ubuntu, need to join Windows domain, just use Likewise Open as we always have done. *shrug*

If you're using Linux with iSCSI targets on a SAN, do you have to set up anything permissions wise on the Linux box or do the permissions sit at the SAN level? It sounds like this might be easier than I thought... Ubuntu on the domain via likewise open, install samba, configure a few things, iSCSI, and... done??

I guess my question had a few angles to it. For example, how do users authenticate? If the Linux file server is on the domain via likewise open, does it just automagically work when users try to hit their \\fileserver share? Or do you have to do additional tasks to make it communicate in that manner? On top of that, I was also curious how you guys managed shares. For example, if you keep the users working with their "homes" directory, would that mean a new share for them would be automatically populated on the fly? Whereas if you managed their shares in say, /media/storage, then you'd have to add a share each time for each user. Correct?

I'm just curious how you guys handle your Linux file servers. I assume you're all using Samba/CIFS as your protocol of choice. But what is your platform based on? Did you just install Samba and manually edit the smb.conf file? Do your users just link over to their home directory or do you export their data elsewhere? For example, at home I'm used to just mounting the drives in /media. So right now I have a pair of raid 1 drives going to /media/NAS, and within NAS I just create folders with certain permissions that I need. Do you guys manually edit the config file? Do you use a simple gui like system-config-samba? Do you use OpenFiler or FreeNAS instead? Or do you use some other web based utility to help remotely manage the file server? I think that's my main issue. I want to be able to remotely handle my Samba shares since physical access isn't always the easiest thing. But I'm having a hard time finding a decent web based GUI. Webmin isn't recommended, SWAT is dead, system-config-samba is simple but very handy for the basic stuff and has no web based frontend, and Zentyal is kind of strange since it edits system files in a very strange way. Any thoughts?

Pfft. Who uses firewire anymore? I have one system with a mini firewire port I could try, but it really doesn't make sense as to why it won't just mount as a storage device, especially in Linux. Any other camera I use does that, but this one just sits there not having a clue what it's supposed to do. It sounds like you folks are seeing your cameras mount as storage devices. Mine just flat out never shows up.

I have a Hitachi camcorder here that is a hybrid model. It's a DVD and HDD model and there are several videos on the HDD that I need to get off of it. Both with Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux I have been unsuccessful. In Ubuntu Linux if I run lsusb I get a hitachi entry as if the operating system knows the camera is there. In Windows XP, it does absolutely nothing. I'm curious what software on either platform can do the job of importing the videos from this camera via usb?

I too ran into issues with 2.99 and setting up RAID. There were some commands I had to run in shell that I found on their forums somewhere. If I had saved them I'd link you to them but unfortunately I didn't. Likewise, I ended up not using OpenFiler and going back to a standard Ubuntu system with RAID 1 running. It's simple, but it works pretty dang good. I keep wanting to try out OpenFiler due to its web gui, since it would be nice to let an OpenFiler box at home when I move out and forward the web url through the router so I can check it remotely and make sure it's working accordingly. What version are you running? 2.99? 2.3? Did you have any other trouble setting it up?

I agree. I've also heard of a program known as Puppet. Supposedly you can mass-control Linux systems to execute certain commands and do various tasks. Of course with the power of the Linux terminal, this means you have control over *everything*. I heard it compares to Casper for Macs. Anybody give it a shot? That's very kind of you, and I would love to take you up on that offer except I am what you would call "poor" so a plane ticket for that distance might be a challenge! If you don't mind I may shoot some questions your way in time. So far we're still in the building stage of trying to figure out what limitations exist and implementing ideas for alternative software, etc.

Is anybody running an open source POS system? Our current POS system is very.. well... it's bad. And if we upgrade we'd like to go the open source route as we might be porting from Windows down the road. If I could find a solid product that is Windows and Ubuntu based, that would be great, so I can try it now and implement it later if it works. But worst case scenario, a Linux-only variant may work fine too. Anybody running one?

I agree with you entirely. I'm not looking at Linux to replicate Windows. Why would I want to do that? What I'm aiming to do is provide a desktop interface to the end user that can get the job done. Linux can do that. Easily. About the Libre vs MS Office thing, I agree there too. Web based Office apps like Google Docs are terrific, but still limited in functionality. Our students get pretty crafty with some of their assignments, and sometimes the web based version just. doesn't. cut. it. I think offering Google Docs and Libre Office, as we're aiming to do, is a solid 1+2 punch. That way you can offer a natively installed office suite that works great, and you also have the convenience of the online suite. There ARE students out there with computers, yet no internet, so handing off an .exe to them for Libre Office to take home and install is very significant. That way they can utilize software at home that we're using in house. I think the future is going to be very exciting. I see absolutely huge potential with open source/free software in education.

Man... somebody must have gotten a fat budget to move from something as affordable and lean as an LTSP setup to MAC systems... youch!

I installed this on my CR-48 laptop, which I was skeptical about how it would run seeing as though my Netbook wasn't the quickest with Ubuntu 11.04. Then again, once I put Unity 2D on, that little netbook responded better. I won't lie, when I open 10 programs the processor usage pretty much flat-lined at 100% for a bit, however I found myself able to multitask without feeling bogged down once things settled. Even if I have all programs running I can navigate from a Writer doc to a spreadsheet doc and back to Chromium and be playing music, etc. Considering it's packin' a 1.66ghz Atom, it certainly impressed me. And graphically Unity 3D seems to work fine. I directly compared 2D and 3D and I haven't seen any differences in processor usage or general handling of how it renders graphics on the screen. I'm sure I could put Ubuntu Server on it and save a bit of overhead but.. eh.

Absolutely. While I am a Linux fan, if Windows does the job, we'll use it. If Mac does the job, we'll use it. After all, it's about their education - not my ego. That said, I have a pocket of Linux systems that are actually running as thin clients, so I'm testing out two birds with one stone here. I just had a conversation with some teachers about it and the opinion was overwelmingly positive, with one teacher even saying "I think this should be the platform across the board." Oh, okay. Wow. That's powerful. That said, it still has to do the job at hand. And so far, it has... very well. But in these days with the economy tanking (at least in the US) and with all time highs of educational budget cuts, it really puts into perspective for a lot of business managers and technology managers of districts "How can we do the same job, yet pay less?"

Well, of course it depends who you ask. If you ask me, it's an absolute "yes". But that's just because I believe in the philosophy behind open source software and I've nothing but extreme success with many open source applications. Not to mention cost savings and whatnot. The thing is, I think it'd be easier to "flip" most businesses than to flip school districts. Schools tend to latch onto a certain set of applications and curriculum and never let it go, making it politically harder to switch than it should be. And THAT'S why I was curious if anybody has dropped the bomb and converted a district... Technically, it'll work. Politically... that's the question.

This may be biasness speaking, but I avoid Apple like the plague due to their closed minded unintuitive business model. My vote leans to the far right - Android.

That's because it is. I've always used AVG and Avast (rare occasions) on my Windows boxes. It's never let me down. Even on older hardware when scheduled scans start with AVG I don't notice.

Really? Wow... our experience was the exact opposite... Sorry to hear it was a bust, but we will continue to use Google Docs for as much as possible into the future. It's been a blessing in our environment.

It came to my attention that teachers are really using SmartArt on our Office 2007 systems. The thing is, MS Office is too expensive to continue buying so in the future we will be tinkering with Libre Office on a grand scale. I'm curious if there's an alternative to SmartArt on Libre Office. Does anybody know or have any idea of something that compares to SmartArt that's already part of Libre Office?

Has anybody been in a Windows environment and made the move to entirely using a Linux variant? I'm curious to hear what kind of undertaking it was, and what kind of issues arose besides the obvious differences of interface changes and Libre Office instead of MS Office, etc.

I used to hate it, but now I love it. For weeks/months at this point I've tested both Gnome Shell and Unity. While I really like both, Gnome Shell drives me crazy in a production environment with high multitasking. Sure, alt-tab is great, but for switching tasks via mouse it's irritating to have to zoom out and back in with the overlay every. single. time. without. alternatives. I feel like Unity makes more sensible use of task management. But so far 11.04 is really appealing to me. The more I use it, the more I like it.

+1 to delprof.

Agreed. I went to a WDS conference and it crashed during their presentation... I ended up staying with FOG and began using the FOG Service for renaming computers on the fly. It's proving to be extremely, extremely handy.

Ouch! If I were you I'd fire up a torrent for it.

Chances are it's not the final release, however if you run sudo apt-get dist-upgrade you might be able to pull the final files down with it that make the beta the final release. That's at least what some IRC users told me when I asked about it earlier. Besides, this late in the game with you having gotten a daily build, there's almost no changes that would have taken place as it was surely on a feature freeze (and only open to bug stomping) when you grabbed that daily build of it. As we speak I'm installing it on my CR-48 here...