"End of Ten" workshop

[Mags Amond]

Tog Hackerspace workshop for convert Windows 10 to Linux, Dublin, Sept 13th:

[Adrienne Webb]

Thanks Mags, that's the situation I find myself in.

Adrienne

On Thu, Aug 21, 2025 at 11:25 AM Mags Amond <mags...@cesi.ie> wrote:

Tog Hackerspace workshop for convert Windows 10 to Linux, Dublin, Sept 13th:

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[Adrienne Webb]

Hi folks 

I attended this workshop today - many thanks to those who organised it and gave freely of their knowledge and time. 

It seems to be a ‘no brainier’ especially in a school context with perfectly good machines needing to be replaced because of software. I watched as Zorin was loaded onto a 2016 laptop belonging to a teaching colleague.  All went well and the resulting interface seems very friendly. I’ve no experience with Linux and I came away feeling it’s something I’ll definitely load onto an older machine I have at home.

Cheers

Adrienne

On Thu 21 Aug 2025 at 11:25, Mags Amond <mags...@cesi.ie> wrote:

Tog Hackerspace workshop for convert Windows 10 to Linux, Dublin, Sept 13th:

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[v...@valgavin.biz]

Evening Adrienne

I prefer Linux Mint, very feature rich and in my opinion far superior to Zorin, well worth downloading and trying out, you can install it alongside Windows and you have dual boot, wipe Windoes and do a full install.

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Very easy to setup.

I see it every week where very good desktop and older notebooks are binned because they are too slow on Windows, for browsing, editing or creating...pdf  or .doc documents Mint is perfect.

Val

Val Gavin Computer Services 

Unit 12 MGB 

Base Centre

Damastown Road 

Dublin 15

v...@valgavin.biz 

[Mags Amond]

I'm glad you went and it was helpful Adrienne.

Maybe it's something we could include in Cesicon ...

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[Mags Amond]

Good point Val - when I go to the local landfill there are definitely machines being trashed that could have a longer life 🥺

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[Chris Reina]

Hi all,

I’ve long been an advocate of Linux distros for old machines…

> also, just a note - at CESICon 2023 we did a workshop in the Maker Room on using old machines to extend life by installing a Linux distro on them.

I had 10+ year old laptops (which are still in use) as well as Chrome, Mint, Elementary and a few other distros on different machines.

We still use all those machines to provide coding workshops to students - and have all been donated for this purpose.

The process is pretty straightforward and well worth it.

Just recently at DublinMaker, I met Paul Nugent from Physics Busking and he told me their PC lab of 30+ machines (circa 2012!) we upgraded in 2023 are still running happily.

A huge cost savings on purchasing new machines for anyone.

Feel free to DM me if anyone wants more information.

Cheers,

Chris

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[John Hegarty]

In the room I teach in I have 15 desktop computers from 2012 that we use for Leaving Cert computer science. I upgraded them to 8gb of ram from 4gb and swapped out the hard disks for an ssd's. I have no plans to replace them any time soon as they are easily good enough for anything we are doing in class for JC Coding and LC Computer Science. I update the version of the operating system every couple of years. I'm currently running Ubuntu from 2023 on them.

There are good reasons to have other more specialised ICT tools for video, mobility etc. (tablets, ipads etc.) in addition to a bunch of desktop or laptop machines but for bread and butter classroom stuff the Linux computers can be a very reliable and cheap solution. The other side of the coin might be a need to invest some time engaging with a different way of doing things.

jh

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[N Spellacy]

Hi all,

Are the materials/resources for this workshop available anywhere or is the workshop being run again. I must have missed the ad for it.

I am the IT co-ordinator in my school and it pains me to dispose of many multiple devices each year due to the fact that they are "slow" and new ones are purchased. Linux Mint could solve many issues. 

Is it amenable of Office 365 use and would school firewalls, anti virus software run on it. We have a school "image that we deploy form our server. Would a PC running Linux allow this or would a server allow it to access the image.

Regards

neil

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From: cesi...@googlegroups.com <cesi...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of John Hegarty <jheg...@clongowes.net>
Sent: Monday 15 September 2025 12:11
To: cesi...@googlegroups.com <cesi...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [CESI List] "End of Ten" workshop

 

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[Aimee Costello]

Hi Neil,

We have just flexed our old PC's to Chromebooks; we are a Google school. They seem to be working ok so far! This could be an option.

Aimée

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[val]

Hi Nial

You can use office for the web via a web browser from Linux where you have access to MsWord, Excel etc, but Linux Mint comes with LibreOffice which in the most part is compatible with MS Office apps, also depending on your Server configuration- you can join a Linux distro like Mint to a Microsoft  DC AD and Active directory can control the Linux  workstation similar to Windos 10/11

Val 

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[Rob O'Brien]

I installed Zorin on my teacher laptop a couple of years ago because I was fed up with how slow Windows had become on what is an older but still good laptop. I had previously tried Ubuntu and Mint but liked the idea of the Irish distro. I find Zorin excellent in general, especially as we are a Google school so most of my paperwork is done online. My only gripe is connecting to an external projector or display, I find the display properties finicky and difficult to set up right compared to Windows.

Rob

[Mark Lane]

Curious if many/any schools use Linux in the classroom i.e. if the students use it as their laptop distro?

On Thu, 18 Sept 2025 at 12:08, Rob O'Brien <mr.ro...@gmail.com> wrote:

I installed Zorin on my teacher laptop a couple of years ago because I was fed up with how slow Windows had become on what is an older but still good laptop. I had previously tried Ubuntu and Mint but liked the idea of the Irish distro. I find Zorin excellent in general, especially as we are a Google school so most of my paperwork is done online. My only gripe is connecting to an external projector or display, I find the display properties finicky and difficult to set up right compared to Windows.

Rob

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[Rob O'Brien]

I have it on a couple of older laptops but the school got a trolley of refurbished Chromebooks and they are way quicker with longer battery life. The Linux ones are used the odd time only.

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[J Kerr]

To address Neils concerns, Teams works better on linux than it does windows if that helps.  There is no native support for Office. 

There is little perceived need for Anti-Virus software as the whole service is updated frequently with security updates, also a lot of the software comes from secure repositories that only host approved software. 

You can run windows applications on an emulator ("wine") if you still need to run some apps. 

jk

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Mr J Kerr

Hartstown Community School.