06.23.09
Linux to the Rescue
I've written in a previous article about helping low-income residents with the cast-off technology schools are in the process of upgrading. Here are some ideas on how to introduce Linux to students, parents, and teachers.
I've been on a quest to find as many Linux distributions (distro for short) that run on older hardware. My goal in downloading CD images, burning CDs, and running them on some of the oldest hardware on my high school campus has been to find a use for these PCs on campus. The article mentioned above has a link to Linux Forums describing one of their writers findings in steering Microsoft Windows 98/ME users to Linux.
I've found that, by and large, Damn Small Linux was best suited for these older PCs (Pentium II/233 or 350 Mhz, 4 GB hard drive, 192-256 MB RAM, decent video, mostly unsupported audio sub-system) because of the light window manager/desktop system (FluxBox) and small number of services enabled at startup.
I have an idea I'm in the process of fleshing out: have students of technology classes on campus help me set up a small lab (10 of the above Pentium II systems), install different distros of Linux on the PCs. The students then invite students, teachers, and parents (as well as school and district administrators) to sample these systems and evaluate them for their own home use. The technology students can also take a copy of different distros home and burn CD copies of them to hand out to the dog-'n-pony show attendees.
The tech students can also sponsor an InstallFest, or Bring Your Own Box (BYOB) evening to help attendees install Linux on their own machines. This is an idea that many *nix/Linux groups use around the world, most notably in the U.S. and Britain.
Another option I have used a number of times in the past is for the school Library to have copies of Ubuntu to hand out to all interested students (and teachers) as well as having multi-disk copies of another distro available for check-out/make copies at home. I've had copies of Mandrake 9.1 (now Mandriva) in the past, but will probably have SuSE Linux available in the near future.
I've also had an Open Source Software presentation open to teachers and students in the Library computer lab where I handed out a remastered copy of The OpenCD version 2–open source applications for Windows users. I added a few extra programs such as FreeMind mind-mapping software, SciTE text editor, PDFCreator, and Inkscape SVG graphics editor.
