“Sisler High school is the largest high school in Manitoba, with approximately 1,600 students and 120 staff members on campus. The school offers many computer courses at different levels, ranging from computer programming and office skills to vocational subjects, such as trouble-shooting personal computers, networking and advanced operating systems. In 2002, due to a letter from CAAST (Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft), the school spent more than $50,000 to make sure we had all the necessary licenses for our software.” Read the rest of the article at LinuxJournal.
A Computer Lab with No Windows, Part I
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
he doesn’t seem to effectively back up his data. he only backs up to the 2nd hard drive, but that data is not very crucial anyway
His point about computer science is quite correct. In our CS program, Linux experience is pretty much required. Aside from the Java classes, the majority of courses are taught on Linux. For much of the academic world, Linux is just a logical addition to the UNIX (eg. Solaris) that they already use. In anticipation of this, our advanced CS course in high-school was taught on a lab of Linux machines. You can bet that this experience was very helpful to those students who took that class and later went to get CS degrees.
The computer labs in my college don’t have any kind of windows either, they are in the basement and have nothing but Mac’s.
Cool teacher. If we all though like that, we wouldn’t have a massive federal deficit.
Brief and educational. There are many who aren’t aware about what Linux can do or the Linux Terminal Server Project. Such articles (preferably with some digital pictures, like this one) are needed to educate the public about the advantages and cost-effectiveness of Linux. Excellent article I enjoyed reading. I look forward to Part 2.
What happens if an app or process crashes, or is badly written, and starts using 100% of the cpu? If there are a load of students writing programs for the first time, I would imagine it would happen quite often. (Though Java should be fairly immune to this?).
I wonder if he is using ulimit, or just keeps an eye out for rogue processes.
You just kill the process that’s taking up 100% cpu time. Java isn’t immune from this. All you need is an infinite loop and *bam*, you’ve got 100% CPU time used.
That was hands down the COOLEST linux article I’ve read! I hope he details in general how his setup runs in part 2.. A setup like that would be great for a home setup!
our highschool had a linux lab. Were stuck with Win98. 🙁
I’m in one of Winnipeg, Manitoba’s smaller high schools… why do the big ones always get the cool stuff and cool techers? =(
“What happens if an app or process crashes, or is badly written, and starts using 100% of the cpu?”
Depends on the configuration. The sysadmin could have setted certain limits users or groups via PAM: /etc/security/limits.conf
It is explained here:
http://www.zevils.com/cgi-bin/man/man2html?limits.conf+5
Speaking of which, check the examples of limits.conf:
[…]
#@student hard nproc 20
#@faculty soft nproc 20
#@faculty hard nproc 50
[…]
#@student – maxlogins 4
[…]
🙂
One of the most sensible and comprehensive articles I have read on computing for a VERY long time. Just goes to prove what can be done with old hardware.
Lucky students.
I enjoyed the article but I’m not sure why the mention of the CAAST letter. Was the lab build in response to that? If you just paid $50,000 to make your software legit, why would you immediately throw it all out and then start from scratch with something else? I’m confused…