Linux has been making inroads into K-12 education for years, but Microsoft's move to require an audit of 300 school districts nationwide has brought Open Source into the educational limelight. As schools analyze alternatives to hefty licensing fees, LUGs and Linux-in-education organizations are pointing out that Open Source solutions are better suited to the educational environment, and are only a fraction of the cost. "We're seeing the stand alone desktop PC as a colossal failure in schools." says Paul Nelson, Technology Director for the Riverdale School District in Portland, Oregon. "After several years of installing PCs in classrooms, it is evident that schools do not have the staffing to support them and keep them running. Often infected with viruses and subjected to student abuse, these systems can quickly turn into a useless but expensive pile of junk in the back of the classroom." A traditional desktop PC environment often costs more than $1,000 per system -- and that's a price that Nelson and others say is too high. A better model for schools, says Nelson, is the thin client. With diskless workstations running K12LTSP, an educational variant on the Linux Terminal Server Project, workstations can be locked down, making them tamper-resistent and immune from computer virii and malicious code. Without the requirement of a high speed processor and a hard drive, K12LTSP systems run well even on older hardware, and systems obtained through computer recycling programs like STRUT prove to be ideal low-cost but functional clients. The average cost of new hardware required for a client workstation running K12LTSP, says Nelson, is $200 -- a fifth of the cost of the traditional setup. ... http://www.linux.com/articles/22950 -- P Πριν εκτυπώσετε αυτό το μήνυμα, σκεφθείτε το περιβάλλον! Ένα χαρτί λιγότερο! - http://karounos.gr/blog/