Robert Pogson

While my employer officially likes that other OS, I have been able to install GNU/Linux on a few of the employer’s machines that had no legal OS or no way to restore the OS. I have also installed GNU/Linux on a couple of machines brought to me to see if I could fix them. One had hardware problems and files missing that could not be replaced and the other was ME and I could not install either of two versions of the driver for a nice printer from the manufacturer’s site. GNU/Linux had a driver, but the installation was difficult. I had to figure out a udev.rules script… I could not, but finally, I realized that I had placed the rule out of position and needed it to be higher priority to get it working. Voila!

This is a community with about 200 homes, so a few boxes is a few % or more of GNU/Linux usage! Students have been using GNU/Linux in the lab so they are not hesitant at all. If the choice comes down to not working or GNU/Linux, the decision is swift.

The problems of that other OS are many. Folks here often have a PC at home to rip CDs and to play music. They do not have Internet access at home sometimes and the system cannot phone home or download a driver. Freight would be about $200 for a round-trip to Winnipeg, or $100 to Thompson and some repairs could easily reach $100. There are a lot of PCs in the dump, I am told. It is chearper to buy a new one rather than to repair one. So GNU/Linux is a green movement in Shamattawa. PCs can last longer with it. That other OS is not sufficiently flexible to be viable in this place. GNU/Linux is very modular and flexible and can work anywhere.

I think an Install Fest would be fun after Christmas. By then news of the installations should have spread by word-of-mouth and success or failure determined. I have had no complaints yet. I take that as good news. FUD! It is hard to blank out all the shrill screams protesting that GNU/Linux is not ready for the desktop.

On Monday, I have a plan to install LAMP on a local box for the Band Office. They need databases to keep track of things. I will try to do the installation in class both to show students how easy it is and also to give lessons appropriate for two of my current courses, Data Collection and Analysis and Interactive Websites. By making the databases available on a web server, the Band can use web browsers on any platform to manage the database and, eventually, appropriate content can be made available to the public. I hope the PC they bring over has a gigabit/s NIC. That is fun. Otherwise, I may have to sing and dance a few minutes longer. A base install is way less than a gigabyte, so I could do this in 20 minutes or so. No KDE/GNOME. Just LAMP. I can install a few PHP scripts for demonstrations and perhaps one will be useful for the intended purposes. Otherwise we will have to use phpMyAdmin as a general purpose interface and possibly use it to generate queries for a draft of a script.

I expect a simple installation could be done in one class and after the Band has refined their requirements/specification, it will require a bit of development. Students will be able to do some of it or at least see how it is done. We have about three weeks of a half-course left, so there is not much time for them to work on it. I will have a better idea of the scope of the project next week.