From: Ronan Cunniffe (rcunniff at domain wilde.cs.tcd.ie)
Date: Mon 27 Aug 2001 - 19:12:32 IST
Hi all,
This may well be thoroughly debated somewhere, so somebody can
point me appropriately. Otherwise, you may be forced to fire up some
braincells.
The short version:
buying + building machines for a school and running Linux and WINE
on them.
The complicated version:
It drives me to distraction of seeing schools with very limited
resources splashing out on state-of-the-art machines simply because that's
what's on offer. School management is wary of anything without a
warranty, so everything has to be either brand spanking new or donated for
free.
The donations to this school to date are XTs and 386-based IBM
bank terminals. They have two major flaws:
1) There's a long list of things you can't do on them.
2) Kids know when they're sitting in front of a Model-T, and they're not
impressed. This is make-or-break for whether or not the computers are
actually useful. If they're old enough to want designer jeans....
*Three* major flaws:
3) They're prone to dropping dead when, um, nobody expects them.
So, why not buy the bits (scan, pcdirect, whatever), assemble and
*personally guarantee* the resulting systems for 12 months. Install Linux
running WINE, and whose to know? The real saver is on paying the M$ tax.
Has anybody done this (with a .iso to prove it, and save me the work? ;-)
Is there a difference between possession with intent to supply and
personal use?
Can some money saving wrangle be done by having the *school* buy the bits?
Does anybody see any complications?
Thanks in advance,
Ronan Cunniffe.
P.S. The machines will have to run certain specific educational software,
which is M$ only, so it's WINE or dosemu. The software uses sound, so I
suspect WINE will be needed.
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