Linux in Schools

[Linux_Tigris]

Hey pplz.. At work (a high school) we have a spare couple of 133's and i think that it would be good for kids to have a taste of Linux.. What would u recommend for 133's with 1.5 gig hard drives?

[DMR]

The 133s will do just fine, but since you're talking about high school kids, I'd take another approach to your question:

Instead of trying to find a distro with a small enough footprint to fit on the 1.5G drives, upgrade the drives. I just got a couple of 40G Western Digital 7200 RPM drives for about $120 each; I can't imagine how cheap 5 or 10G drives would be. If you can't buy new drives, try checking out local computer sales/swaps, or hunt around on e-bay.
The reason I suggest this is that if you're talking about introducing high school students to Linux (which, IMHO, is a Good Thing), they should have full-blown, real-world installations to learn on. In other words, systems that have all the extra goodies installed- a few different desktop environments to experiment with, office apps such as StarOffice and AbiWord, a couple of different browsers; networking applications, etc., etc.
If you go for a small install to fit the 1.5G drives, you'll have to pare back on some of these options, which won't really give the students a well-rounded exposure to Linux.


-of course, this is just my $0.02 :)

[Hatecrime69]

you could let the elite students try and learn linux (or expand their abilites). with getting a bigger hd, most bioses of that time maxed out at 8gb (don't know if this matters or not, haven't used linux in a while now) You could try slack for the very good students, or mandrake (you might want to try the i386 version for it) i'm currently trying to think of what linux distro to install on my compaq with a p100 (witch i (re)built in my computer repair class this year ;)) My school had tons of old computers that wern't being used (some were 386's and their might of been a 286 or 2, me and a friend also found an old sparc (i think, might of been a sun also) :D with a huge hd (as in lenght, width, height) but we couldn't figure out how to even turn the thing on (or where input connectors were) :)

but then again my high school (just graduated this year) is one of (or the) largest high schools in pa ;)

[whm1974]

Instead of trying to find a distro with a small enough footprint to fit on the 1.5G drives, upgrade the drives

DMR, keep in mind that the school may not have the budget to upgrade. Now while I agree that the students should have a "real word" installion to work from, even a paired down installtion of Linux is better then nothing.

Bill Meadows

[kuber]

How the hell is 1.5gb not enough for a 'real world' linux installation?

What are you using, mandrake?? :p

Seriously, students would learn a lot more about linux if you installed a .5gb installation of slackware than if you upgraded your drive and put some hold-your-hand distro like mandrake/redhat on it!

[Linux_Tigris]

Well the most annoying thing is that money that COULD be spent on better computers is spent fixing old ones that students break..

The old 133's are the best computer which i can put linux on due to 45 new computers we have just bought which have replaced the 450s which replace the 300s which replace the 133s.. so we have 133's spare now..

So its either 133's or 486's.. and they only have 500MB hardrives..


i would like willings students to have a positive experiance with linux.. today at work i tried RedHat 7.0 with Gnome.. belive me that did not work at all

[dvdnut]

this is the problem with the linux community

there are 2 worlds

the "generally happy with using mainstream distros and kde/gnome desktops"

and the
"get down and dirty with slack or debian and spit on the rest of them

not helping the linux world this bickering now is it, better to help each other.

if the school wants a mainstream distro help them with its setup not go directly into a less friendly distro like slack and deb, you want to encourage them lightly not force feed them cli immediately, the numerous amount of times ive seen posts with frustrated users unable to comprehend the clie is amazing.

be nice or dont help at all

[TeRG]

If you really want to give them an experiance in linux you can get a decent computer at www.lan-plus.com (http://www.lan-plus.com) for around $600
buy it for yourself and bring it in the school during the school week and keep it at your house during the weekend and summer.
:Dyour figure somthing out :D

[f'lar]

RedHat 6 or mandrake 7 will fit easily on a 1.5Gb drive with plenty to spare, you may just have to go through and be choosier with your packages. Going back to older versions of the distro will also help avoid installing programs like KDE2 that will want a machine with something more than a 133mhz processor in it.

[Dirk]

Check out <www.pdxlinux.org>, as they have a great K-12 site from their site.

[pipoy]

i'm not so good with linux..but kuber was right 1.5gb is enough for linux installation. besides RH6 full installation is just 900mb... and also try making a bigger swap if u have a small memory installed on ur 133's. but try using slackware is nice but just choose the particular applications or services u want. anyway its not good to make one pc that covers all the services...well this just my opinion.... hopes that helps u... :cool:

[irlandes]

Originally posted by Linux_Tigris:
<STRONG>Hey pplz.. At work (a high school) we have a spare couple of 133's and i think that it would be good for kids to have a taste of Linux.. What would u recommend for 133's with 1.5 gig hard drives?</STRONG>

I have no idea why some guys think you can't put Drake 8.0 on 1.5GB, with no Win at all. I have a 233 MHZ laptop, with 4GB HD, dual boot half and half. I have Star Office, which the kids won't need (245MB). I have LaTeX and LyX, another large slug, which the kids don't need. I have koffice, which they may or may not need, and probably don't. There is a lot of other stuff they don't need. I do not know if KDE2 will work on a P133 or not, but it's nice on 233 MHZ. I may have a bit more than 1.5 GB, but as I said, SO alone takes 245MB.

Give Drake 8.0 a try, starting with the minimum installation size. After you check it out, you can install whatever packages you want to add, by re-booting on the Install CD, and running update, then selecting sections you want. Since it's only for training, you can run near full on the HD if you wish.

IF the kids have time on the computers, let them build it, heh, heh. They learn faster than older guys do, anyway.

[antitrustworthy]

I wish I had Linux at school growing up. We were luck (lucky....heh) if we got to play on some Macs. Everything is always Windows. I agree with the Drake suggestion though. You dont want to overwhelm kids and give them a bad taste for Linux at an early age. You might as well be walking them straight to Redmond. Give them Drake or Redhat. Make sure you keep some of the things kids are going to like such as games and such....just to hold their attention. I say teach them Gimp and Star Office. Show them browsers they havent seen before like Konqueror, Opera, stuff like that. 1.5GB is plenty to do stuff they would appreciate and learn from. Nothing against Slack or Debian or anything else, but I know a lot of kids that if they try something that is "too" difficult and confusing, they will avoid it like the plague. This has been the humble opinion of a biased user.