[Year 12 Its] Linux v XP

[Con Zymaris]

On Thu, Feb 16, 2006 at 11:11:31AM +1100, Guy Flaherty wrote:
> 
> Con,
> 
> We are a laptop school, so all the students use their own laptops, mostly 
> standard Acer models, along with HP business desktop machines in the lab. 
> Just standard PC boxes for the most part. 512mb works better then 256 though! 
> The VM disk file comes in at 2.7Gb, but this is no problem with a wired 
> connection. Struggles on the wireless a bit.
> 
> I do a lot of development work here at the school, and only started teaching 
> again this year after returning from overseas. I use SuSE for all our 
> development due to tools like Quanta+, Eric3, postgresQL, mySQL and others. 
> With the IS class I decided to use Python as the language and the best IDE I 
> could find was Eric3. KDE and SuSE work very well and the students have had 
> no problems adjusting away from windows. They have been quite keen so far! 
> Having a functional shell in Linux helps a lot too.
> 
> The aim of this is for Python development and general scripting development.
> 
> Hope this answers your questions.

Yes. It does.

We're in the process of working on a Live USB-based desktop for students,
and info like this certainly helps.

The idea being that students can carry their entire 'portfolio' of
desktop, apps and data around with them, work and home, all in their
pocket. Whichever PC they sit at, they plug the USB key in and boot up to
their desktop and documents. We've also worked out ways in which automatic 
data backups can occur when they plug the USB into a school network, 
obviating any loss of work.

Cheers,

Con Zymaris

- CEO, Cybersource Pty. Ltd.
- Director, Open Source Industry Australia, Limited.
- Convenor, Open Source Victoria (A Government-funded industry cluster.)
-- 
___________________________________________________________________________
Con Zymaris <conz at cyber.com.au> Level 4, 10 Queen St, Melbourne, Australia 
Cybersource: Australia's Leading Linux and Open Source Solutions Company 
Web: http://www.cyber.com.au/  Phone: 03 9621 2377   Fax: 03 9621 2477