Education Case Study: GHCA, a private Christian school, deploys desktops, servers, and curriculum that is Linux / FOSS based.
Houlton
ME
United States
Grade Range:
K-12
Website
Submitted by:
Michael Surran
Email: computerlab
ghca.comHow things got started...
Our original computer lab was built using second-hand, donated computers running Windows 95 (which came with these computers). Due to age and use, these computers began to fail. Instead of going through upgrades every couple of years with donated equipment, we chose to pursue purchasing all-new equipment. Being a private school, we do not have access to the funding a public school has, so we needed to find ways to keep the costs at a minumum. By purchasing bare-bone systems instead of pre-configured computers, we would save over $200 per computer (and this does not consider additional software costs).
Why Free Software?
Linux was chosen because of its stability, cost of ownership, and freedom from license restrictions imposed by other companies such as Microsoft. This freedom gave us much more flexibility in how and where we implemented our software.
The plan...
We used Mandrake Linux to totally replace any proprietary software both on our servers and our workstations. This enabled us to save many thousands of dollars in the upgrade of our computer lab. In fact, we would not have been able to upgrade our lab if we had to use proprietary software. Linux and open source software has also saved us money in man-hours due to its increased stability and flexibility to customize to our needs. We were able to set up Linux the way we wanted on one computer and then clone the hard drive to all the other computers in the school, something that is illegal to do with most proprietary software. This saved us considerable time and money, and continues to do so as we do not have to hassle with software licenses and the rather expensive upgrade path imposed on schools by Microsoft.
Evaluation...
Linux has exceed my expectations in stability, power, and ease to use. Students have embraced the technology much more readily than I had anticipated. After two weeks it was not uncommon to hear a student ask "Where can I get Linux?" Open source software solutions (such as Open Office, GIMP, Mozilla, etc.) have done an excellent job in the classroom environment. Gone are the days of constant crashes, lost reports, and other technical problems that plagued our old lab. There have been some problems. The largest problem is that the vendor of the motherboard of our workstations (SiS) does not offer Linux driver support. This mainly affects our ability to use OpenGL with the on-board SiS730S AGP video. Thankfully there is a gentleman who is working on his own to develop a driver for this chip, and we have had some success after tweaking the settings. The other small problem has been switching some of the staff over to Linux. While students love a new challenge and unexplored territory to charter, it is sometimes harder to "teach an old dog new tricks." However, I am finding that as the staff become familiar with the OS, they like it more and more. Some of our staff struggle with exchanging Word documents with their colleagues using Windows. This usually only occurs when fancy formatting is applied to the document. On a whole, the switch to Linux has been a great experience. As the system administrator, I love the power and flexibility I have to administer the computers. My biggest challenge has been learning the OS, but it has been one of my most rewarding studies. I would recommend Linux to any school looking to save money, increase stability, and free themselves from restrictive end user license agreements.
The Future...
We wish to continue implementing Linux throughout the school as we add more computers. We are also looking to embed Linux in a more advanced security system and also in simple robots when we start our robotics class in the near future.
