[FSF-India] GNU/Linux in Schools

[Satyakam Goswami]

> 
> Hi,
> 
> 	A quick intro - I'm 20 yr chap doing my 4th year Chemical Engg. at
> IIT Madras. 
> 
>> This is a very important step. Probably the first thing to be done is to
>> provide help for installing GNU/Linux in schools having computers already.
>> Present
> 
> 	Accept every word. The problem is, as most of you will accept, a
> lack of awareness about Linux and "fundaes" in general. I was in Trichy
> recently, doing my summer job in BHEL there. They use all Windows 2K
> machines. I started talking with the people about trying out Linux and
> they'd ask me questions like after I have Linux can I still boot into
> Windows, how can there be two different OSes on the same machine, won't it
> delete all my files, and worst of all, IS IT SECURE!! It took me one hour
> to convince them to finally try Linux and the guys there are actually
> pretty happy about it. The point is, inspite of the huge media attention
> Linux is getting these days, *LOTS* of people still have no idea about it.
> So, getting people to try out Linux implies that you'll have to spend quite
> some time discussing the various issues in favour of Linux, get the
> teachers familiarised with it, lots of patience etc. It would be great if
> we could get more volunteers in this regard. I'm ready from Chennai (and
> places in and around it .. I love driving :-)


this is a good approach, it works every time for mee too :)

As for the volunteers there are two fellas from the local lug who have shown
intrest lets see how many like minded ppl can get together and work for the
cause.
> 
>> status at many places is, they just have MSWindows running and the
>> "Educational Software" is MS-Office. But without an easy to use word
>> processor, many won't switch over.  I use 'abiword' and find it very good.
>> Another aspect is the kind of machines owned by achools. Many may have
>> Pentium-I  machines still running.  RedHat 7.1 or any latest distributions
>> are not going to run on it comfortably. They can run as good X-terminals.
>> One good place to look for is the Linux Terminal Server Project homepage.
>> www.ltsp.org.  A networked system is anyway a must in schools to have
>> teacher-student interaction.
i will have a look at it.

> 
> 	Abiword is good. I'd actually suggest Star-Office. The nice thing
> about having people start off with Star-Office is the ability to have them
> save their files in native Windows formats like .doc, .ppt etc. I mean, if
> a teacher has to, say, give a presentation, the machine she'd use to give
> it would more probably than not, have Win on it. Until and unless they have
> Linux on all machines, we'd rather not assume so. Regarding the OS flavour,
> I'm pretty much in favour of LTSP. On the server, personally, I'd say Red
> Hat 6.2 over 7.1. Don't aske me why ... I just find it a *LOT* more
> comfortable, and definitely so for a newbie. Just a personal opinion.
i think we will stick on with Open Office in the true spirit of Free Software.

> 
> 	I might have made some extremely stupid/WRONG statements in
> the paragraphs above. If you find something wrong, feel free to flame me
> :-).

cheers 
S.Goswami

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