On Tue, 6 Nov 2001, Vaibhav Arya wrote:
- Admin Desktop: Student Desktop minus EE/MechE packages, plus email
clients, plus Line of Business apps (accounting, etc) And most important, Wine / DosEMU -- To be able to run existing Windows apps that they are used to.
Wine/dosemu cannot run all windows apps. I'd suggest letting admin stick with windows until these tools are mature enough. Let the college ease into linux, and then let them ask for the change. Maybe put just one or two admin machines with linux.
Also, better than having separate machines for admin/students, I'd suggest something similar to what the govt in Florida has done. They have a single very powerful server (11GB RAM), and a separate application server (also a lot of RAM). The server runs X clients, and xdm I think. Then, they have several very thin clients - basically keyboard, display and network card. These boot of a bootprom in the netcard, connect to the server, and let the user log in directly to xdm.
Advantages:
Cheaper hardware Less machines to administer (only the two servers) You can log in from anywhere, and your desktop, icons, settings, files are exactly where you left them
Disadvantages:
These machines will have to be bought, because the wouldn't be present in the average college today.
Someone has to actually try out such a set up before we can propose it to colleges. The admin who did it for Florida has a howto put up. Search for it on slashdot or kde
Philip