University of Michigan Linux

CosmicEntity writes "A while back there was a Slashdot article about the University of Michigan signing a huge distribution deal with Microsoft. In protest, students offered free copies of Red Hat Linux 6.1 and Star Office to people as they came to purchase the MS products. Now, it seems the university's College of Engineering is openly adopting Linux, and releasing their own version to students. They call it CAEN Linux (CAEN stands for Computer Aided Engineering Network.) It's a modified version of Red Hat, with all sorts of useful tweaks (like bug fixes and patches) and security "enhancements," to protect the new machines. It looks like there will finally be support for new students hoping to use Linux, but too unsure to just go out and do it themselves. Oh, by the way, the original name was going to be "Blue Hat Linux," but it didn't stick. " I think it'd be very interesting to see what could happen if some of the universities got together and created a University Distro - designed to handle their security needs, and a shared resource site for help on running and learning Linux - what do you folks think?

It's happening already.

The same thing is starting to happen at here at NCSU, and hopefully we'll see Linux replace those darn NT machines yet. The LUG here is great about providing packages for Red Hat + NCSU-specific stuff. (well, we're sort of nearby, and whatnot. ;)

If that isn't an option at your school, at least convince them to get some interoperability. Linux plays well with others. NT can be forced to do better if you buy the right packages. So far I'm pretty happy with what they have bought, but NT is still not that reliable (it leaks memory here, the mouse dies, etc. Solaris boxes are much better).

However, at least X-Win32 and Tera Term Secure Shell are making life easier on NT. Still not as easy as it is on my Linux box, though. :)

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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].

NCSU just did the same thing

North Carolina State University has had a group of students supporting a Red Hat-based distribution called EOS Linux for some time. Just recently, the university announced that they would begin treating it as an officialy supported platform. Details are sketchy - the announcement just came out - but it's a pretty big deal for the NCSU folks. Perhaps some Eos Linux people can provide more depth.

Actually, recent versions of EOS Linux aren't distributions, but a set of rpms that you install against a specific version of Red Hat. The Eos Linux group felt it would be easier to it this way, rather than taking on all the day-to-day maintenance responsibilities of supporting a full distribution. I think this is a better model for site-specific Linuxes. It's a good discussion topic, anyway.

Last but not least - I don't know if it would be possible to build a global "University Linux" as the article suggests. The main benefit to Eos Linux, and presumably to the University of Michigan Linux as well, is that it integrates tightly with all the on-campus systems and networks. It's site-specific, and that's why you want it. It's hard to imagine how you could build a single distribution that would be site-specific at all sites.

-Graham

the MS college deal

You know, although I think it's good to give people copies of RedHat and StarOffice, I have to say that the MS college deal has been very useful to me. I've gotten MS Office for $5, Visual Studio for the same, and I've found them to be very good. I for one would like to thank Microsoft for giving colleges this opportunity, and giving away a high-quality office suite and reasonably good development tools to people that need them.

StarOffice is a good product, but when one has the choice of getting MS Office for almost the same price, I have to say that MS wins hands down. Which is not to say I don't appreciate free software - I regularly use FreeBSD. But I think that "protesting" against a deal that benefits both students and Microsoft may be stretching things a bit.

Just my $0.02 at 3:30 am. :)

-lx

Providing support would be a pain

I was head tutor (approximately equivalent to a TA) for an introductory university C programming course. To allow students to work from home, we provided a CD including the Cygwin [cygnus.com] tools and a couple of other free development tools for Windows. It drove me absolutely nuts trying to provide installation support - and, being an Australian university, there weren't enough other staff to help. This was for a simple software package, not an operating system that has to cope with the vagaries of a huge variety of hardware and the joys of repartitioning and reformatting hard disks.

While any IT student who is serious about their profession should install Linux or a BSD on their computer, without a large committment of support resources it's not practical for a university to provide Linux (or Windows, for that matter) for their students.

Perhaps American universities have that luxury. If so, maybe I should consider a move :)

Disclaimer: speaking for me only

Univerity distro

Humm... an University distro. iI probably has +2 bonus in research and -2 in probe (no prob, it's GPL anyway), gives a free network node in every site (great!), one free technology at installation time, extra drone for every four users (hmm, not good), and *may not use Fundamentalist policies* so no jihad penguins! (leave them for the Believers distro).

OTOH a Morgan distro would be good for those who wanto to IPO, and a Hive distro would be good for security (since it already comes with a Perimeter Defense).

Re:the MS college deal

StarOffice is a good product, but when one has the choice of getting MS Office for almost the same price, I have to say that MS wins hands down.

If you're not running Windows, copies of MS Office, Visual Studio, etc. are useful mainly as coffee coasters. The same $5 will get you a 5 complete Redhat or Mandrake CD's, 4 to pass on to your friends, and you can get Staroffice or Corel Wordperfect for free. Along with about 3,000 other programs. Or maybe 5,000, is anybody keeping count?

Which is not to say I don't appreciate free software - I regularly use FreeBSD. But I think that "protesting" against a deal that benefits both students and Microsoft may be stretching things a bit.

Actually, the deal hurts students because it gets them used to using MS's proprietary file formats, something that will cause them a lot of trouble later in life when they try to get connected with the rest of the world. My advice to students is to try to stick to HTML instead of MS-proprietary-format as much as you can - it's infinitely better for sending by email (documents are a fraction of the size and everybody can read them), you can post it directly on web sites, everybody can read it, etc. etc.

Postscript format is much better than MS word format - it's much more stable, can be read on more platforms, and produces good camera-ready copy. Postscript documents can be distributed as .pdf (use ps2pdf) and then Windows users will be able to read them using Adobe Acrobat.

Use MS file formats only as a last resort when you have to give something to someone who can only read MS files, and even then you should stick to Word 6 format if you don't want to have problems. Keep in mind that office suite file formats will all be changing to XML soon, even Microsoft's.

Abiword already uses XML as its file format. MS file formats are obsolescent: avoid.

Is the world ready?

I think that one of the most valuable places for Linux to continue to grow is the academic setting. Not in terms of profesors, but in terms of students using it - beyond the CS/Eng. departments. With distributions like the U-M of one, and it sounds like other unis are doing it as well, we can make our case clear to the general population. Linux is more stable, faster, and does everything that you need. With easy-to-setup packages for students, students don't have to muck with areas they don't know about, schools can admin networks more easily. The older generation is pretty set in with Windows - let's co-opt the younger entirely.

Uni. people working on this please contact me

We're working on just this at Boston University [blockstackers.com]. Our original plan, as reflected on the BU Linux web site [bu.edu] was to base our distro on Bastille Linux [bastille-linux.org] -- that was back when Bastille was in super-early development and was planned as an actual distribution. They've gone the route of a hardening script, something we'd like to avoid. (We'd like all of our changes to be to RPMs, rather than pasted on afterward, for better system upgradability and managability.)

So, we're starting work on a distro of our own, integrating ideas from Bastille with Red Hat, and adding things we need like Kerberos IV, AFS (Arla, probably), Amanda, etc. If this sounds like what you're doing, please contact me at [e-mail] [mailto]. It seems worthwhile to at least share ideas, even if we don't end up combining our work.

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