K-12Linux in Schools - K12-Linux NetPC

Here's a classroom server. If it looks like this is a typical teacher workstation, well you're right, that's exactly what it is. We used a PC similar to what you might buy for a stand alone workstation and turned it into a mini-terminal server perfect for a teacher and 5 or 6 K12LTSP diskless workstations. It's been up since September and is used as a workstation/server every day. Our budget for this box was $1000 ($400 monitor + $600 for the server).

Server Software: It's running K12LTSP 1.1. That means it has Red Hat 7.1 with all the Ximian updates. The teacher can choose KDE or Gnome desktops and Windows98. Software includes StarOffice 5.2 , AbiWord , Win4Lin , Win98, ClarisWorks and Office 2000. Why Windows too? This teacher had many files saved in ClarisWorks and was not ready to learn a new OS. She was willing to work with her kids at learning Linux but she wanted the security of a known OS at the same time. We spent $79 for Win4Lin, $95 for Win98 and another $100 for licenses for ClarisWorks and Office 2000. The use of proprietary software increased the cost of the workstation by about 20%.

Hardware Specs: Intel 815 based motherboard, 1 gig Intel PIII cpu with 384mb ram, 20gig ATA/100 IDE hard drive. Intel 10/100 NIC onboard and one additional Intel 10/100 Pro PCI network card. HP DeskJet 870 printer, Samsung 15" LCD monitor, HP5200 scanner. The USB keyboard you see is a "mystery board" we got from the STRUT program (Students and Teachers Recycling Used Technology) as an Intel donation. It's VERY cool but I don't know if you can buy them. Why is it that some of the best test products never make it to market? ;-^)

We selected the Intel D815EEA2 motherboard because it had 4 USB ports, is very reliable and we knew the sound, video and network card would work with Red Hat 7.1. The 15" LCD panel uses 30% of the energy a CRT would use and it takes up a fraction of the space. Space in our classrooms is always an issue!

Network diagram Network Setup: This classroom is in an older part of the building and it only has a CAT3 connection to a 10base hub. We can't afford to update the wiring and we didn't want all the terminal traffic to slow down the other users so we installed a 100base hub in the room and used a second NIC on the server to build a private LAN in the classroom. The server mounts /home via NFS over the 10mb connection. This means that all the terminal traffic is isolated from the rest of our school network and the connection to the mini-classroom server is through the 100base hub. (This is the default configuration for K12LTSP installations...)

The result is very fast access to applications from the local server and good access to home folders over the 10mb NFS share. Since this configuration is replicated in the other rooms the same home folders are available to students and teachers all over the school as they roam from room to room or to the computer lab. We export the same share (/home) with Samba and Netatalk and that means they get their files on Macs and Windows workstations as well. Any PC, any OS, anyone, anywhere... they have the same access. Authentication is via LDAP so we don't even have to keep track of passwords on all those servers! ;-^)

Amptron BookPC

Clients: We (re)used monitors from the STRUT program. They are 15" Triniton CRT's from Gateway. Our clients are BOOK-PCs from Amptron with donated Celeron CPUs from Intel. Total cost for each client was under $175. We loaded the boot rom into extra space in the Award BIOS so they offer true diskless booting. Boot time from power-on to login prompt is about 20 seconds. We bought the Amptron
clients two years ago. Currently we're buying Intel D810emo motherboards and using InWin FT620 cases for a very quiet and reliable client for under $150.

How fast are they? Since the applications run on the PIII 1gig Intel cpu the clients are VERY fast! We could run more clients from the teacher mini-server but we don't have enough room in the classroom. The total cost for all hardware and software was under $1800 for 5 workstations (4 clients + 1 teacher server).

Management: I have not had to enter this classroom for maintenance at all since September when we installed the computers. (Well, they did unplug the hub once but I won't count that!). All updates on the teacher server have been done remotely via secure shell. In addition to security updates I updated AbiWord and added OpenOffice packages.

Migration to Linux Desktop: As with most school technology staff, I just don't have the time I need to train and support teachers. So I've only been able to answer a couple of questions and show the kids how to find their home folders. We talked about free pizza and free speech and which is worth more in the long run. Explaining what Open Source is all about to 4th graders is not hard. They understand the idea of working together and sharing. The kids know they are all beta testers and they are up to it. They explore every menu and option of the Gnome and KDE desktops and now these 10 year olds know more about them than I do! The teacher is now using all Linux apps and I don't see the Win4Lin session open unless she's using ClarisWorks files saved from her Mac years. It's interesting to note that this teacher uses a Mac at home, spent 4 years learning how to use Windows and now is pretty happy with Linux/Gnome after 3 months.

Client Software: What happens in this classroom is typical of what you'd see in many grade schools. The exception is that we've been able to provide greater access to technology and information. Every student has an email account and a folder for publishing on the web server. The kids are learning about Oregon history and they do a lot of writing and research on the web. They create presentations with StarOffice and PowerPoint. It's nice that the files can move back and forth accross platforms. The kids all save their writing in *.rtf format so they can work at home. AbiWord is the WP of choice because it's so fast and easy to use. They all know how to send files via email and they use the web interface to our Linux based IMAP mail server. We've made AbiWord and StarOffice available for them to use at home on their Windows machines and we have both programs on our Windows workstations too.