My first Linux experience: Overwhelmingly positive.

When/if you need to edit text files (including those "arcane" configuration
files, let me suggest "nedit" (). It started as a UNIX
clone of "notepad" at Fermilab back in the Nineties, and quickly became
such a good programming editor that the Windows people demanded that
it be back-ported to Windows. "vi" is very powerful, and "emacs" even more
so, but you'll find that both have a much steeper learning curve...

Load Abiword, it runs better than openoffice in a gnome environment and it is more similar to microsoft word. Also, you might have some fun with Comix, which is a comic book viewing program. You could download some comic book files at home (any torrent site has a bunch) and bring them in and load them up. Oh, and don't forget frozen buble, just about the best linux game ever!

If it's just web surfing I guess you could also go with Puppy Linux

please write a letter or request to adobe to port their flash to linux on the ppc - if more people complained to them maybe if they are feeling good they will port it to ppc.

I have ubuntu on an even older imac for my daughter that I bumped the ram and hard drive and it works fine and is excellent except with all the kids sites that continue to use flash and lock their content in.

I would recommend ignoring the recommendations to switch away from Xubuntu for even lighter stuff. There's a disease in the Linux community (I have it) that makes people want to fiddle with stuff. If you are happy with Xubuntu, then I would focus on improving that success.

OpenOffice is heavy (slow) but probably the best choice for your environment.
Abiword is an acceptable lighter word processor (I know students who are quite happy with it).
I'd recommend gnumeric for a spreadsheet. I've been quite happy with it.

LyX is probably a distraction. I personally use Latex for document creation, but it is a whole different philosophy, and probably not where you should start for the general person.

The nedit comment was probably good (although I haven't used that program). Another reasonably choice for a text editor is SciTE.

All of these programs should be available for Windows platforms, so students can freely install the same software at home, a plus.

The way to go with those machines is certainly thin client. However, you would have to have a server set up that would serve the workstations. Advantages are many, first off you would not be limited by the hardware of the imacs, rather you would be able to run anything that runs on the server on the workstations, at nearly identical speed to that of the server for most of the applications you would need. Of the thin client solutions LTSP is a superior open source solution wwwDOTltspDOTorg and wwwDOTk12ltspDOTorg is a LTSP distribution designed for schools and includes a wealth of educational software, a wealth of office productivity software etc. There are all sorts of tricks you can do that you cannot with standalone desktops, for instance monitor and communicate with your students real time. For how much of a server you would need wikiDOTltspDOTorg/twiki/bin/view/Ltsp/ServerSizing Best of luck with your new workstations.

I used to work for a School District as an IT Admin and we used to make whole labs running Debian Linux and administered using K12Admin, but I digress. I was going to say "kudos" for making this effort. And.. suggest that if you want to upgrade the RAM, you can probably get a free upgrade from Apple of a local supplier if you put a sign saying who donated the upgrade. This will allow the machines to operate better and your students to be a bit more productive. :)

Regarding Scribus, from their website:

[EXCERPT BEGINS]
Why are there no import filters for Quark, Indesign or other commerical DTP applications?

There are several reasons why there are no import filters for commercial DTP applications.

1. DTP file formats are very complex internally - problably the most complex on a PC. Creating import/export filters is a task far more complex than importing a spreadsheet or simpler word processing file formats. An engineer familiar with the internal file format of Pagemaker compared it to a 2m x 3m flow chart diagram with 6 point type. It was not until the arrival of Indesign 2.0 that reliable Pagemaker file import was possible in another DTP application, even though Adobe had the file format specs. Note: Not even Indesign CS can save to Indesign 2.0 format.

2. The file formats are sometimes protected by patents and are not documented publically.

3. So, is it unethical/illegal to apply hexedit to an InDesign file to reverse engineer the file format with hexedit or others for the purpose of creating the export/import plugins for Scribus?

Possibly not, but given its a closed format we would expect to receive a warning from Adobe, as we did from Quark when there was a Quark importer in testing. We do not have the legal resources to challenge large proprietary software companies. Only one developer has been sucessful at reverse engineering Quark's software and it took a long legal case to succeed.

4. Developer constraints. It is the considered judgement of the development team that efforts to improve Scribus is a more valuable use of time.

#
So, how can I work with others who might have other DTP applications?

Use EPS, SVG or PDF as an exchange format. Scribus created PDFs can be easily imported into a number of commerical applications. SVG import is excellent for vector artwork. Scribus can import EPS files as long as they are conformant to the specs - this includes spot colors in DCS 2.0 files. The documentation has detailed notes covering these subjects.

[END EXCERPT]

I'd recommend installing Scribus, if only because it's UI conventions are close enough to the Adobe & Quark family of products that if students gain familiarity with Scribus they should be able to find their way around InDesign or older versions of XPress/Pagemaker.

I'd recommend GIMPshop over plain TheGIMP for the same reasons.

Inkscape would be another good pick. It's an Illustrator clone.

Maybe Cinelerra-CV if you'd like for them to toy with video. Your hardware would likely have trouble with that, though.

Democracy player might be useful as a substitute for corporate/gov't produced edutainment programs. You'd need to prescreen content out of liability concerns, I'd imagine, but it could be exciting to be exposed to participatory media like that in school; especially since it links the social use of technology to more productive and creative endeavors than MySpace.

There's a ton of stuff out there, congratulations on making it available to your students.

Word of caution: if you're happy with your current Linux installation, don't mess with it. You can easily end up spending a lot of time with no return. Managing expectations is important if you want to stick with Linux - be happy for what it does, don't expect it to do everything, because you are a newbie. I've seen many newbies get frustrated and give up. Try to put in as little time as possible in order to avoid frustration.

In the future you can explore Debian and perhaps some others. Debian is always going to be faster, a lot faster in my experience, than Ubuntu all else equal. It tends to give more problems, though, so it is not suitable for a new user.

For applications, the best thing is to decide what you want, then ask in the Ubuntu forums. Most everything will be available, though some applications may not look very good or be as user-friendly as you wish, in which case you don't need to use them.

I can also speak from experience that any Apple OS might look better, but it takes more resources and, more importantly, will absolutely not give you access to the variety of open source software you want. I have also found that many open source packages are "partially ported" to the Mac if at all. You can't beat Linux as a platform to run open source software.

Good luck and keep us updated, please. It is stories like your own that are important to the Linux community. Please report what you like and don't like. That is valuable information that can only come from users such as yourself. (Though you might have to ignore comments from Linux users about how you don't know what you're doing.)

One last thing. CNR is coming to the *buntus. That will make software installation a lot easier. Sorry for such a long post.

I think your approach is the way to go. The google suite of applications avoids the biggest issue with older hardware: dead hard drives. All student data is stored online, and it can be accessed from any workstation anywhere in the world.

As for software, I'd keep an emergency boot disk handy to analyze systems if/when they won't boot. See what the school's plans are for future upgrades, and if the answer is "huh?" ask for a RAM upgrade and a couple of spare hard drives. Everything else is solid state and should last nearly forever.

www.sysresccd.org - command line linux boot cd/system rescue cd. Check out the HOWTO, FAQ, and documentation to learn how to use it to diagnose a system.

As a five-year "veteran" of Linux, I'm delighted to hear of your success with the system. You've taken advantage of an area in which Linux really shines: allowing older machines to run a modern, up-to-date OS. Neither Apple nor Microsoft can fill that niche.

My only (perhaps elitist) quibble: I don't know that I would necessarily describe Xubuntu (excellent choice, by the way) as a "stripped down OS". "Lightweight", perhaps, in the sense that its desktop environment and default applications are far more resource-friendly than, for instance, systems built around KDE or GNOME; but I dare say that Xubuntu is every bit as full-featured and capable in terms of base functionality as any of the heavier distributions. And, of course, it's near-infinitely expandable.

Great piece. Thanks!

just to footnote LBRGF's comment for those unfamiliar, CNR means "click'n'run."

It is the packaging system that gives the Linspire distribution its "special sauce."

You can check Linspire's "CNR Warehouse" for an idea of what is offered.

Sounds fantastic, Ryan.

I ditched Windows for Ubuntu on my old PC when I bought a Mac, and I've found it to be a very powerful, capable and beautiful operating system. I'm glad you too had a good experience with Linux. It really looks like the tides are changing in favour of free and open source software and operating systems.

By the way, did you consider installing Edubuntu? I believe that's a flavour of Ubuntu Linux specifically designed for the classroom. I'm not sure if the iMacs you have are capable of running it, since Edubuntu uses the GNOME desktop environment, and not Xfce, the one Xubuntu uses.

It's always nice to hear how Linux is granting opportunities in education.

As many above have mentioned, Abiword is a viable alternative to OpenOffice,and much faster to run on older machines.

Another site you may want to consider is the 'Linux Equivalent Project' which can be found at

Have you ever looked into Edubuntu? It's a distro especially for use in the education system. I'm sure there are all kinds of software to support a good learning environment.

Scooter, you may have noticed that many Linux users love to help and give advice. The problem is getting us to stop :-)

It may be worth telling the kids that the software is freely available, I know some teachers that give out live-cds for their kids so they can play with all the tools they use in school at home. I also reckon that if Scribus or Inkscape or any of the other open source tools does the design job you need to do then it might be worth dumping InDesign as the restriction on the number of installs sounds like a hard one. I bet not a lot of kids have InDesign at home either.

You have to be careful because some School Districts have entered contracts that lock them into specific vendors that could make something like this breach that contract. I know of at least one school district around where I live that has a vendor contract with both Dell and Microsoft. If they use anything other then a Dell running Windows as a Desktop they will break their contract.

softwares can help you manager the grades

For the students, you probably want Content management system. Probably online wordprocessor are just fine, but have a look at or They should be able to host courses, run quizzes or tests, and manage grades.

Since they are learning English with you, you may want specific software such as which is a fun methodology to learn new words.

Hope this helps

nvu: (html editing)

inkscape: (vector graphics editing)

gimp: (pixel graphics editing)

abiword: (document editing)

guido van robot: (basic programming)

celestia: (astronomy)

Obviously there's a ton of software you could try, but since you're setting up a writing lab, I'd second the suggestion for LyX and Freemind. LyX is a graphical front end to LaTeX, which separates content from form. Anyone writing a research paper should know LyX / LaTeX exists. Once you see how software can format a bibliography for you, and insert cross-references easily, and create a publication-quality document without a lot of work, there's no going back. Even if people choose not to use the tools, knowing about them will raise expectations.

Beyond that, perhaps if you could tell us specifically what you hope to accomplish in the writing lab, and you might get suggestions that are more focused on your needs.

For instance, a database application tailored for organizing research notes would be nice, but I can't think of a specific Linux app for it at the moment.

There's also fontforge for creating fonts, if some intrepid students want to write in a font of their own design. Probably doesn't help writing per se, but might capture some people's imagination and raise their enthusiasm.

When Linux systems are set up to run single applications, an effective strategy is to have a login name for the application e.g. "browser", "google", "write", etc in the XDM window, delete the password field in /etc/passwd for passwordless logins, use a very lite WM like Oroborus or, FVWM without any keyboard controls, in the background and run the application in the foreground. Quitting the application will send the user back to the XDM login window.
Each user name would have a .xinitrc file something like this:

xsetroot -solid blue &
oroborus &
firefox

If needed each login name can be reset at each login or exit by either the restoration of a backup image or by using something a bit harder like gconf settings to stop any permanent session changes. Users of the system have to save their work on removable media or a networked account file. Users can easily be prevented from hacking the system by changing the "owner" and "write" permissions on setup/config files to another user that has a passworded account. e.g. admin or maybe root.

This is a very good strategy with low end equipment as it gives desktop responses as applications are immediately loaded from the hard drive, only one application is running per user session and the oroborus window manager does absolutely nothing but run the application.

You'll probably have to get someone to compile oroborus for you, and show you how to set file permissions to another user, but no worries, there is plenty of how tos out on the web. I even think I might have written about this before in a past life.

Xubuntu is a nice choice. I use Ubuntu Edgy (6.10) myself with XGL & Beryl. Beryl is a 3D Desktop environment. Try looking up Beryl on YouTube.com, theres lots of cool videos demonstrating the use of Beryl. There are a lot of educational tools you can download for your classroom.

Back when I was in high school, I was active in my Cisco Networking class that I had enrolled in, both my Junior and Senior years. I had convinced my instructor at the time to let me install Linux on a few spare machines we had laying around, and he approved it. So off I went installing RedHat 4.2, which was the latest at the time. He loved it, and so did a lot of other students in the class.

Linux has come a long way since then. I'd like to say I appreciate you introducing your students to the world of Linux. We need a lot more people like you.

ScooterDMan,

Congratulations on the great job putting those machines to use!

Since these are PPC-based machines, there aren't that many distros supporting them. Have you tried Debian-based Xubuntu? Even Xubuntu is downgraded to unofficially support.

Debian Etch weekly-build images for PowerPC. You can find these images here by using rsync in the terminal as follow:

rsync cdimage.debian.org::cdimage/weekly-builds/powerpc/iso-cd/
MOTD: Welcome to the rsync archive at Academic Computer Club, Ume\#345 University.

drwxrwxr-x 28 2007/02/14 16:49:25 .
-rw-r--r-- 1673 2007/02/14 16:25:33 MD5SUMS
-rw-r--r-- 666961920 2007/02/14 16:09:32 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-1.iso
-rw-r--r-- 678309888 2007/02/14 16:02:29 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-10.iso
-rw-r--r-- 678408192 2007/02/14 16:03:08 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-11.iso
-rw-r--r-- 677892096 2007/02/14 16:03:45 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-12.iso
-rw-r--r-- 614031360 2007/02/14 16:04:20 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-13.iso
-rw-r--r-- 680964096 2007/02/14 16:04:56 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-14.iso
-rw-r--r-- 675581952 2007/02/14 16:05:36 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-15.iso
-rw-r--r-- 679600128 2007/02/14 16:06:18 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-16.iso
-rw-r--r-- 679378944 2007/02/14 16:07:01 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-17.iso
-rw-r--r-- 679108608 2007/02/14 16:07:50 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-18.iso
-rw-r--r-- 679686144 2007/02/14 16:08:42 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-19.iso
-rw-r--r-- 675618816 2007/02/14 16:13:10 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-2.iso
-rw-r--r-- 679698432 2007/02/14 16:10:22 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-20.iso
-rw-r--r-- 624281600 2007/02/14 16:11:12 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-21.iso
-rw-r--r-- 679575552 2007/02/14 16:12:00 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-22.iso
-rw-r--r-- 427872256 2007/02/14 16:12:34 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-23.iso
-rw-r--r-- 678641664 2007/02/14 16:13:43 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-3.iso
-rw-r--r-- 678273024 2007/02/14 16:14:29 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-4.iso
-rw-r--r-- 656148480 2007/02/14 16:15:10 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-5.iso
-rw-r--r-- 665118720 2007/02/14 16:15:51 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-6.iso
-rw-r--r-- 662087680 2007/02/14 16:16:34 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-7.iso
-rw-r--r-- 679661568 2007/02/14 16:17:11 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-8.iso
-rw-r--r-- 674635776 2007/02/14 16:17:48 debian-testing-powerpc-CD-9.iso
-rw-r--r-- 679403520 2007/02/14 16:22:16 debian-testing-powerpc-kde-CD-1.iso
-rw-r--r-- 677732352 2007/02/14 16:25:33 debian-testing-powerpc-xfce-CD-1.iso

To down load xfce image, do this from the terminal: (all in one line)

rsync -avP cdimage.debian.org::cdimage/weekly-builds/powerpc/iso-cd/debian-testing-powerpc-xfce-CD-1.iso .

That is a dot (.) after a space at the end. It means the current directory where the terminal is open.

Just another option to evaluate. :)

Good luck!