[frgeek-michiana] Lab Notes - 2007/01/02
- From: Tom Brown <tbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: FreeGeek Michiana <frgeek-michiana@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2007 12:55:24 -0500
:: USB vs. Floppy
The consensus is to pursue usb pen drives. Rick has a friend at IUSB
who he can consult re the university's policy re students using usb
drives. I will contact the South Bend Community School Corp re their
policy on students and usb drives. Goose will contact IVYTech re their policy.
:: Virtual OS on Lab Server
Plan A - virtual virtualization
Rick is downloading CentOS to install on one of the hard drives in
the lab server. We will physically swap drives to provide different
OSes for training. Rick and I confirmed that LTSP runs on CentOS.
LTSP dot org has RPMs for LTSP. XFCE is also available.
Plan B - actual virtualization
Goose now has two computers on which he can experiment with
virtualization. When he finishes the mods on the volunteer database
app, he can start tinkering with virtualizing a Debian install. Asus
finally replaced Mike's motherboard, and his hot rod box is running
well. Mike can't try hardware virtualization because his cpu chips
don't support it.
:: Sqlite Applications
Goose is keen to migrate the volunteer database from Postgresql to
Sqlite. He and I looked at the Tcl code to anticipate problems.
I talked to Liz F., the social services director at the Sally. She is
arranging a meeting with herself, Capt. Jody, Goose and me to discuss
coding a web app for one of their social services: food basket drive
or family adoption. We'll probably use Sqlite for the backend db. The
meeting will be next week at the earliest.
:: Distro Evaluation
Here is our draft FreeBox distro evaluation survey. If you have other
issues you'd like to see addressed in distro evaluations, please post
them on the list. We also need to prioritize the survey items. If you
have time to rank them, please do so and post to the list.
- automounting external media (usb drives, cameras, etc)
- codecs for multi-media (music, games, movies)
- boot time
- install footprint (drive space used)
- memory requirements
- package management system
- number of packages available
- usability
- support load on FGM volunteers
- training difficulty/ease
- update ease and cycles
- dialup capability
:: Modems Arrived
There are three new modems to use to test distros. We need to order one more.
:: Preliminary Edubuntu Evaluation
Preliminary examination reveals the following:
* Edubutu, and probably Ubuntu, is sensitive to hard drive
bottlenecks and more so than lighter weight distros like Puppy, DSL
and Vector. Our test unit has a 33 MHz bus so boot was slow. After
boot, the system was responsive. The test unit is an iMac with a Power PC cpu.
* If the user is in the admin group, Edubuntu will automount usb pen
drives. Otherwise, Edubuntu will recognize the drive but not mount it.
* Since Goose put the system together several weeks ago, there are
128 or so updates available. This is an extraordinary number of
updates for a n00b oriented system. But this version of Edubuntu is
the testing version based on Debian Etch, not the more stable long
term support (LTS) version. Frequency and size of updates will be
issues with dialup connections.
* Having said the above, Edubuntu shares the Synaptic front-end to
the Debian package manager with other Ubuntus. So updates and package
installs are about as easy and reliable as it gets.
* In keeping with Debian policy on codecs, Edubuntu does not include
proprietary codecs, even if they are free as in beer. We were unable
to play mp3, wav or wma files stored on my pen drive.
* Edubuntu is gorgeous on the iMac display: sharp fonts, excellent
contrast and pleasing colors and icons. The eye candy factor is there.
* The Gnome menu system is different from what we are used to so it
took time to find our way around. There will be a slight learning
curve for support personnel.
* Edubuntu is chock full of educational games and comes with LTSP installed.
More to come as we use the system.
:: Dell PowerEdge 2500 Servers
John/Forest brought two decommissioned servers, donated by his
company, to the lab. Goose and I snapped them up to take home and play with.
- (2) P3 1GHz cpus
- (3) power supplies
- (3) 10k rpm 80 MB scsi drives with Adaptec RAID controller
- (4) case fans
- the usual ports in a tower case
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