I'll second Koha. It's pretty easy to stand up, runs on a MySQL backend, and is fairly feature-rich.

Since I don't have any mod points and none of the other MCE posts are getting any attention... LinuxMCE is much, much more than just a media center. It was originally PlutoHome, which was designed as a home automation suite. I'm guessing the name changed due to the primary use of the product, but the automation features are still there. Since I currently don't have it in my budget to do any automation I can't speak to how well it works, but I have read that it supports most automation hardware out there. The hard part becomes finding the right hardware solution for you. From what I've read, X10 is fairly outdated and a bit frustrating, but none of the newer technologies/specifications have really taken a lead. I'd say read up on a number of the more modern specs and see what fits your need. A quick Google for home automation turns up a lot of useful information. I'd start with Wikipedia's article on home automation. It has a lot of basic information on the various protocols, specifications, brands, etc.

The University of Notre Dame does provide at least minimal support for Linux, giving instructions for setting up both NetworkManager and wpa_supplicant for wireless. VPN access is provided via MS VPN and Cisco VPN. I have vpnc working perflectly for the Cisco VPN. As for classroom requirements, I'm not sure what software is used across campus as I'm an employee rather than a student, but I do know that there are a number of professors and/or departments that use Linux in some way, shape, or form.

Not everyone works in a large corporation...sometimes the 2 servers company A owns needs updates, and they're not going to have a whole WSUS deployment set up for those 2 servers and 10 workstations they own. I've worked in many environments where it's necessary to have a working web browser on a server.

I'll give you that sometimes the maintainers of packages for Gentoo do lag behind...but if you're willing to edit a Makefile for BSD and pass that on to the maintainer(s), why not submit an ebuild? Or short of that, I've found that it's easier to compile from source sans package-system support in Gentoo than your standard binary system since it's a lot more likely you already have the necessary dependencies for compilation.

Apparently nobody caught the Wired article on this a couple of months ago?

The Petabyte Age