On 1 Aug 2002 15:16:27 -0000 "Gurpreet Singh" tonysingh@rediffmail.com wrote:
we've been trying to set up a linux lab in our coll. what we want is that our server runs on linux and the nodes on windows, every student who works in the lab has an account on the
[snip]
IMHO, this may not be a very good scheme. The reason is that all the Windows workstations on the network have to have the entire OS and all the applications you erquire, installed on every machine. You only end up managing an extra (Linux) Server along with all those workstations. If you really need to have Windows workstations, you should rather hook up the computers together and make one of the machines run a WINS service.
On the other hand, you can do away completely with Windows and install SVGA terminals all over the place that connect to the central Linux server. You get a lot of benefits out of this scheme:
- Lower cost, SVGA Terminals cost much less than whole PCs. - Extremely easy management, all you have to manage is the server. - Centralized content, so that all terminals are equal unlike Windows workstations where every students' settings will be duplicated on every workstation or students will tend to work on only the workstation that has most of their files.
IMNSHO, colleges just shouldn't have Windows because:
- It's a convoluted OS with essential features like multiprocessing, VMM and uniformity of filesystem structure slapped on as afterthoughts - It doesn't let students gain an insight into the functioning of an OS, something that's possible in Unix/Linux even without looking at the source code - Development and documentation tools present in Windows are arcane and less powerful. VC++ doesn't even implement Templates correctly. And users of TurboC++ must die in shame. LaTeX is a much more convenient and powerful tool for writing Technical Reports and Articles than the dumb M$ Word. - Unix/Linux has over 20 years of intense development and support history with no dearth of high quality study material available at much lower cost than books from M$ Press. - The more CS students graduate with development experience on M$ platform, the longer and dirtier the era of M$ dominance will be.