One of the problems facing schools that are trying to do more with computers is that they need more computers. Computers are expensive and school budgets are limited. The reality is that you’re just not going to get your school to buy a whole lot of computers.
So what do you do? Well, someone pointed out to me that possibly 80% of what we do on a computer is done online. We reseach, play games, work through simulations, and do e-mail. We can even do simple word processing and spreadsheets on online sites like Google Docs and Zoho.
Well, it doesn’t really take that much of a computer to run an Internet browser. Some very old machines can run some fairly up to date browsers if that’s all they’re doing. However, Windows is not capable of operating in really old machines. Yet a lot of variants of Linux are. Windows, as well, is pricey, but Linux is free.
What I’ve been experimenting is putting a version of Linux on a CD, and running all the functions of your computer right off the CD. (It’s called a Live CD.) Running Linux off a CD means you can disconnect your hard drive. That means you can’t get viruses. Disconnecting your hard drive also means you don’t need a fan. That means you have a very, very quiet computer.
So I have a plan. I get Linux on a CD and run it on old computers that I put back into classrooms and put them on the Internet. It should be simple, right? Well, in my arrogance, I thought so. I tried the nice package at Live Kiosk. It ran on computers at home and one at school, but failed to run on any computers I used to demo it for our Vice Principal.
Then I tried the rudely named Damn Small Linux. That worked pretty well (and it worked when I demo-ed it for our VP), but it’s pretty limited. Its version of Firefox is not a really good one.
Okay, moving up in the world, I tried an expanded version of DSL, namely Damn Small Linux – Not. This version of Linux has a really nice little web browser called Sea Monkey, and did just about all the simple tasks I wanted it to. The only problem I ran into was that instead of running DSL-N off a CD and leaving the computer I was testing it on unaffected, I managed to write it to the hard drive and write it over top of everything else already on that particular computer.
Our computer tech at school was really good natured about re-imaging the computer I messed up and putting the right programs back on. I, however, felt really foolish since, theoretically I shouldn’t have been able to mess up the computer I so badly messed up. I’m still not sure what I did wrong.
Still, the idea of running old computers off a Linux CD and thereby giving them a lease on life is a good one. The problem, so far, has been my execution.
The search for knowledge continues.