We go live tomorrow with 400 opensuse 12.1 machines.
For the students, Windows is no more … Wish us luck.
M
> We go live tomorrow with 400 opensuse 12.1 machines.
> For the students, Windows is no more … Wish us luck.
good luck!! expect growing pains…and smile through them…
i know you know this, but i am compelled to say it anyway: make certain
that no student has the root password!
they will love Linux . . . eventually…
Have a lot of fun, and send questions as needed!!
–
dd
All the best!!
That’s great. How did you decide to go with openSUSE?
Have a lot of fun!!! and don’t forget to secure your grub
Well, all things considered, that went quite well … Everything worked … I still have a job
Let’s see how tomorrow goes
M
Am 04.09.2012 17:56, schrieb interele:
>
> Well, all things considered, that went quite well … Everything worked
> … I still have a job
>
> Let’s see how tomorrow goes
>
> M
>
Which organisation is that if we are allowed to ask?
–
PC: oS 12.2 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.8.4 | GeForce GT 420
ThinkPad E320: oS 12.2 x86_64 | i3@2.30GHz | 8GB | KDE 4.8.4 | HD 3000
eCAFE 800: oS 12.1 i586 | AMD Geode LX 800@500MHz | 512MB | KDE 3.5.10
[QUOTE=martin_helm;2483687]Am 04.09.2012 17:56, schrieb interele:
>
> Well, all things considered, that went quite well … Everything worked
> … I still have a job
>
> Let’s see how tomorrow goes
>
> M
>
Which organisation is that if we are allowed to ask?
This is a great story. I’d like to know this too. With openSUSE Summit in Orlando coming up September 21-23 and openSUSE Conference in Prague coming up October 20-23, this is a story that should be told at the conference. If you can’t mention organization name, can you at least give us your region so we can figure out if we can get you to one of the two conferences?
Bryen M Yunashko
openSUSE Summit co-chair
All promo stuff needs the Head Teachers OK ( so you can guess we are a school )
I will talk to him and get back to you
What sort of things do you want to say ?
M
The process went like this … this is the shortish version as this whole process took a while
Also, as I now at home with a VERY large glass of wine I may ramble a bit 
Background - we have 400 student machines ( openSuse 12.1 ) and 170 staff machines ( staying with XP )
I originally wanted to go completely Linux but I figured that as teachers can be quite conservative a two stage
process would be better - get the students working well as they cope with change better and then sell the idea
to the teachers in a year or two. There is a whole sub story about document interchange and standards … but I
digress
As we have so many PC’s and only 3 of us ( schools everywhere are under resourced ! ) the fundamental idea
behind Linux in the first place is to build a system that we can afford and support. To that end , we don’t have the luxury
of being able to test everything to death. Not only are we doing the PCs and servers but we do the VLE, the email
our cloud, a couple of web sites, projectors, cabling … in fact anything with a plug on it is considered ours. This is
not just a rant as it had a bearing on the final choice.
When we started Mint wasn’t as big as it is now so we didn’t consider that ( we revisited that later along with our
other choices and stayed with openSuSE ) So we looked at the ‘big 3’ of the time Ubuntu, Fedora and openSuse
Now:
1 We don’t have the manpower to test extensively
2 We would like students to have the best desktop experience ie the latest or at least a fairly late release ( eye candy is a feature )
As we always make sure we have at least two more machines than the biggest class size in our IT rooms we can test
the client end easily. For example when 12.2 comes out we can put a couple of 12.2 machines in each class and let the
students test/break them. If anything bad happens we just put a broken sign on them and roll back to 12.1 in the evening. It’s
very low risk.
Server/backend machines however are a different story. If I worked in a big organisation ( as I did previously ) we would
test every release to death before rolling it out. We can’t do that so we have to rely on someone else doing most of the work
( we still test ) So that basically the client end and the server end need a different approach. Say on any distros forums
‘update x broke y’ then they will say ‘wait for update z and it’ll fix it’ which is fair enough on a client - not so good on the server.
This leads you to the idea that you need one of the following
Ubuntu on the client and Ubuntu LTS on the server
Fedora on the client and Redhat/Centos on the server
openSuse on the client and Suse on the server
You obviously could mix and match it you wanted but we didn’t
We wanted a good KDE distro. 1) because although it’s much more powerful than windows it looks vaguely similar
2) Our initial user tests proved KDE was much easier to use and much more flexible despite a million configuration options and
3) I like KDE and if you are going to put your arse on the line it might as well be for something you like
That sort of put Ubuntu out of the picture. Fedora is good, in fact our original tests were with Fedora and Centos
Since both Suse and Redhat do servers to schools at peanuts the cost isn’t an issue. What it came down to is
practicalities and support.
Connecting clients to servers in both systems is pretty similar but Yast makes things quite a bit easier.
OpenSuse also takes a more pragmatic approach to things like codecs, fonts and binary blobs. The world
isn’t always a clear cut as RS would like As my ‘customer base’ is 1200 11-18 year old girls, pink backgrounds
and wobbly windows are a big selling point. In fact, last term when we were doing out final tests and training
a year 8 said to me when we were demonstrating KDE ‘I’m in love with this computer’ so I figured then that
we had made the right choice both in openSUSE and KDE.
Support is another issue. If you compare the support for the three setups we found openSuse the best ( not
always the most polite ) but the most effective. ( I refer back to my rant ) Often during this whole process I
asked some really dumb questions ( hopefully not because I am dumb ) but because we are run off our feet.
I always got an answer, often prefixed by ‘you are an idiot’ but an answer nevertheless.
Our final setup is openSuse clients and Suse file servers, ldap servers and web servers. Of all the set ups
we tried this was the easiest to get working. With nearly 600 machines and all the other stuff we are always
going to be flying by the seat of our pants so to speak. With Windows you go out and buy a Mark Minasi Windows
blah blah book and read it from cover to cover and you are pretty much good to go. Linux is different, at the
end of the day openSuse is the one we felt most comfortable with. If something nasty happens that’s outside
of my knowledge I feel confident that I’ll quickly get help.
Summary:-
KDE
Integration with the server end
Forums
Yast
best wishes
M
> I still have a job
way to go!!!
–
dd
Congrats on your triumph! The limited size of your department might have been an advantage in this case; instead of going through a myriad of channels and red tape, you got the idea rolling almost immediately. I couldn’t do that at the college I work at. We have a Linux lab and some VMs, but there isn’t much more in the short-term future.
Great story! Post follow-ups on how things go (student reception, any teachers converting, system stability, compatibility, etc.)!
Wow! I guess you were very much involved in creating this. You should be proud of that (together with you fellow system managers).
:shake:
Awesome! Such a large deployment! (I’m in an office of 20 people so this is like 20x!)
Hi
Awesome 
Can you add a link/information here?
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:In_use
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 12.2 (x86_64) Kernel 3.4.6-2.10-desktop
up 20:52, 3 users, load average: 0.27, 0.29, 0.25
CPU Intel i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | Intel Arrandale GPU
On 09/06/2012 08:36 PM, interele wrote:
>
> ‘Suse’ (http://tinyurl.com/cfdzfc4)
SO cool…
please, as you work though the rough spots keep notes…and, maybe
someday when it is all smooth (and you are forever finished with having
to deal with malware and the required anti-malware updates) you will
publish the lessons-learned and shout the praises for open source
software maybe in a blog, or in our how-tos <http://tinyurl.com/5v6ssca>
or or or …
or, maybe you wanna talk with the openSUSE marketing team…(in my
opinion, they [someone] ought to GIVE you SLES licenses for your servers…)
WOW, here is another cool page
http://www.whsg.info/index.php/open-source-software
i think it is GREAT that the students will learn first hand how really
great FOSS is!! thank you for your efforts!
–
dd
that is good news. we recently replaces our OS with ubuntu 12.04 in out class room. fo the demonstration purpose
On 2012-09-04 20:56, interele wrote:
> Background - we have 400 student machines ( openSuse 12.1 ) and 170
> staff machines ( staying with XP )
ROTFL! Yes, I can imagine the teachers resisting. I have a few friends in teaching (Spain).
One of them is technically minded; the school system where he is, is supposed to be Linux
based, with the exception of the administration computer. Now and then a computer “disappears”
and reappears as a Windows machine (pirated), specially in the teachers-only rooms. X’-) .-)
And yes, document sharing can be a problem. The teacher hands out a file.doc made in office,
and the students have problems importing into openoffice/libreoffice (even when they use
Windows they are not supposed to use MS office).
Several regions of Spain go the route of Linux for schools, with differing success/failure
stories. The theory is one thing, reality another.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)