Education Case Study: K12LTSP saves the day after systems crash

How things got started...

School's only file server/mail server/applications server(Novell) crashed during Spring Break. E-mail for staff and web access for students needed to be restored ASAP...an experimental K12LTSP server got patched into the main stream network to provide functionality for students to access the web, and Debian filled out the e-mail role.

Why Free Software?

Simplicity, management of a single server, rather than 30 client machines as well as a server takes much more time and with the limited resources this is the most financially prudent solution. For $700, 2 servers were built and configured to handle the load and services for what would eventually cost $5200 to replace the Novell Server.

The plan...

K12LTSP worked out of the box, initial RAM limitations and poor printer configuration caused server lag-of-death, and was immediately resolved the 2nd day in service by pumping up the server to 1.5 gigs of ram on an AMD 2000+ processor with two 20gig IDE hard drives. Sound was not configured as it was deployed in the library. Printer issue was resolved by utilizing CUPS instead of LPR to handle the printer configuration. The Debian machine as a part of the installation asked questions to set up the exim mail server and then adding qpopper to make POP3 clients able to retrieve mail from the server worked seamlessly.

Evaluation...

Not only did everything work expected after the 2nd day, but students loved the fact they could download OpenOffice at home and have their files transfer seamlessly between home and school without having to dish out hundreds of $$$ for another OFFICE suite. Coupled with the edutainment apps on the K12LTSP thin clients, students found a lot of enjoyment in learning. Freeciv helped ease their transition as well, in fact too well...I eventually had to remove many of the CPU intensive games as they were taking away from users who were actually trying to get classwork completed. What was amazing was the ease of transition and the ease of setup and maintenance of both Debian and the K12LTSP distros. Both have worked flawlessly since their inception, and have had to do ONE SINGLE update to each server vs. 15+ separate updates to the XP PRO machines in the same amount of time.

The Future...

The plan now is to try and get the computer apps/programming teacher to move to OpenOffice and any other programming language than Visual Basic. Eventually we would like to go with a 10-watt thin client and LCD monitors to save in energy costs, heat reduction(thus less A/C used), ease of strain on eyes, as well as saving THOUSANDS on licensing. Putting 5 clients in each classroom where teachers can allow students to utilize the technology IN the classroom.