K12 KLUG possibility: Demolinux possibilities

["Ralph M. Deal" <deal@xxxxxxxx>]

Patrick Mc Govern wrote back in June:

> I got a copy of Demolinux 1.0 from Bruce this week.  I think it has
> potiential to bring Linux to the desktop in a hurry!  It allows the
> user to boot into a KDE gui without an installation to the hard
> drive.  It is extremely easy and allows access to the floppy disk,
> many KDE games (14) and applications.  I opened 36 programs before it
> froze and a Ctrl-Alt-Backspace killed the programs and brought back a
> login screen. Demolinux could be used in colleges and high schools to
> provide access to Linux without the need to dedicate substantial
> resources.  If Koffice is available on later versions of Demolinux, it
> could be a valuable resource for students.  Since it is free, students
> could use it at school and home.  Once students use it in school it
> will be installed at their homes and later in their offices.

As the relatively inactive person responsible for the K12 page for KLUG,
I was delighted to find just now this review by Patrick McGovern of
DemoLlNUX which had interested me for some time as a way to get public
school teachers exposed to LINUX with no threat to their normal
operating procedures.   I had given up on the idea at my working model,
my wife's (principal) middle school (Olivet MI)  where I volunteer
because the person then running Information Servies at the Olivet
Community Schools was somewhat anal about security and would not allow
teachers access to their own hard drives, requiring they all use group
and individual  partitions on the servers' hard drives.  That person has
now resigned and the temporary person may be more open about giving
teachers some control on their own machines.

Interestingly enough, the temporary replacement person has almost no
LINUX experience and the system he inherited operates all its servers
with LINUX (RH yet)!  So I shall play a larger role in the new regime
and may be able to persuade the school  system to look closely at the
advantages of converting most of the operating systems to LINUX.  It
would be great to allow teachers to choose from their 'own' classroom
computers which operating system to use.   I had thought WINE would be
an ideal way to implemement such a system.  I'd appreciate any
information on the effectiveness of using WINE to make both MSwindoz and
LINUX easily accessible on a networked classroom computer.  Maybe
DemoLINUX would be a better way to go.

Looking forward to feedback,    Ralph    deal@kzoo.edu