Call for help - school with mixed Linux, Windows, Mac
John Ingleby
along with Richard, Ian, Chris, Steve, Jo and others, and more
recently I've been teaching part time at a small independent school.
I'm now writing to ask for help, specifically from anyone with
hands-on experience of getting Windows, Macs and printers to play
nicely together with Linux thin client servers.
Three years ago, with help from a local Linux guru, we set up a
network using donated machines running CentOS, including two K12LTSP
classroom servers and a central LDAP/file server. We did succeed in
getting a few Windows machines to log in, but they've never been
really satisfactory as networked machines.
The school has finally entered the 21st century and we're receiving
demands to increase the IT provision from several departments.
Unfortunately, one or two teachers who come from state schools are
calling for the "industry standard" network. While respecting their
opinions, I naturally believe we should continue developing a mixed
environment provided we can make it work really well for everyone
including Mac users.
Please reply off list if you have hands-on experience of a similar
mixed environment and would be willing to advise us on pulling it all
together. I have to show that we have access to the necessary
expertise, and if I can stave off the "industry standard" brigade, we
may be able to make a modest payment towards time and expenses.
With best wishes to everyone,
John
Chris Puttick
You have a samba server and the Windows clients can't log in? Or can log in but can't access the same file shares as the Linux and Mac clients? We don't have Macs but have Linux and Windows cohabiting reasonably well, with majority of backend services Linux provided.
Printers is all CUPS/SMB - everything can print to those; if you need quota on a per user I believe you need an ident daemon installing on Windows, but the Macs and Linux clients should work fine.
And frankly, users without indepth expertise (meaning know of more than one way to meet their needs) do not have any right to call for a particular solution; they should describe their needs and the experts provide solutions; i.e. opinions I respect, but only if they are informed ones. The concept that teachers (for example) are the best people to select technologies for use in schools is highly misguided and why we have had little progress in education ICT, and BSF and its innovation sapping approaches to ICT. I got pointed at some "innovations" recently which looked remarkably like stuff that was being done 5 years ago. Turned out the innovation was building it all on Microsoft technologies...
Anyway, happy to help if no one more qualified can :)
Chris
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Ian Lynch
> Well, I'm industry and the standard is changing ;)
>
> You have a samba server and the Windows clients can't log in? Or can log in
> but can't access the same file shares as the Linux and Mac clients? We don't
> have Macs but have Linux and Windows cohabiting reasonably well, with
> majority of backend services Linux provided.
>
> Printers is all CUPS/SMB - everything can print to those; if you need quota
> on a per user I believe you need an ident daemon installing on Windows, but
> the Macs and Linux clients should work fine.
>
> And frankly, users without indepth expertise (meaning know of more than one
> way to meet their needs) do not have any right to call for a particular
> solution; they should describe their needs and the experts provide
of ICT. It positively calls for diversity of experience and is
critical of mindless adherence to terms like industry standard that
means bright children keep repeating the same old powerpoints they
were doing in primary school.
The biggest developments and trends are Cloud and web based
applications. Indeed the EU and the UK expect all children to have
e-portfolios on-line this year.
Why not contact the OSC? If you save on licenses and put that into
support soemone there I'm sure would be able to give you help. If
there is no money then there is no money for "industry standard"
licenses either ;-)
Steve Lee
FOSS, but it gets the word out there.
http://blogs.gartner.com/mark_driver/2009/12/08/open-source-predictions-for-2010/
Relevant to this topic are:
Recommendations
* Differentiate the specific requirements for meeting minimal
levels of quality of service (QoS) for individual open-source projects
based on maturity and adopter profile.
* Integrate commercial open-source support strategies into broader
enterprise software asset management initiatives.
* Plan for changes in historical open-source licensing and
business models driven by emerging software as a service (SaaS) and
cloud-computing infrastructures.
and perhaps
Key Findings
* More-conservative open-source adopters will require a more
robust commercial support channel for open-source solutions than
technologically aggressive adopters. In these cases, users must often
accept compromises between the “open” nature of the OSS model and the
competitive realities of commercial software providers.
Steve
2009/12/18 Ian Lynch <ianr...@googlemail.com>:
nigel barker
John,
I have the set-up you describe, only debian-edu, not centos. I survived a bod-initiated instruction from the head to “make everything windows'“. Maybe ican answer some questions.
Nigel
John Ingleby
list is still active and widely read (even apparently in Japan!). The
Ofsted and Gartner reports make good reading, and I will definitely
use them in my meeting with the Trustees.
I will reply individually to those who have generously offered their
help, for which I am also very grateful.
Meanwhile, Happy Holidays everyone!
Best wishes,
John