I finally feel like I'm making a difference.

[Mr. Beefy]

As some of you may know, I work at my high school during the summer as an assistant tech guy. I do anything and everything to help out my boss with the technological side of running a school. We deploy labs, image machines, make sure the network is running correctly (we're upgrading all of our fiber this summer and we'll be running gigabit to every machine in the district by August) and all of that.

Well I was prepping a Windows 7 machine that we were going to make a master image of and my boss was asking what we should use for a media player and my first reaction was VLC, because it just works 99% of the time and it's completely free.

We were going to deploy the image to a test computer to make sure everything ran smoothly but we had a problem imaging the computer (the NIC was acting up and Norton Ghost wouldn't image it) so I suggested another open-source/free program and we ended up going with Clonezilla for a while before we realized DeployStudio would work (we use DS on the Mac side but there is a minimal PC version as well), which is also free/open source and after some fiddling around I managed to make it work. So now our entire district can PXE boot to DeployStudio and pull an image off the server no matter what platform it's on.

Might seem a little basic to some of you guys but it was a good learning experience, and all my time reading Slashdot has paid off somewhat. Promoted FOSS and saved my school a bunch of money by not going the enterprise route with something like Altris (which is being discontinued anyway because Symantec bought them out..).

Nothing really else I can think of, just thought I would share as I'm a supporter of open source even though I am not a coder.

 

[explosions]

That's really cool. I've never imaged a computer, but I know that PXE booting can be frustrating, mainly with windows. Good to hear you got it working AND you promoted open source software. :tup:

 

[Bran]

A High School that is upgrading to fiber? That's nuts. My university did not have fiber, but I suppose it would be cheaper to get it in a High School rather than a College since it's smaller and probably cheaper.

Colleges usually have more money though, being funded by tuition and what not.

Weird.

 

[explosions]

A High School that is upgrading to fiber? That's nuts. My university did not have fiber, but I suppose it would be cheaper to get it in a High School rather than a College since it's smaller and probably cheaper.

Colleges usually have more money though, being funded by tuition and what not.

Weird.

My school has fiber to every classroom.

 

[Mr. Beefy]

A High School that is upgrading to fiber? That's nuts. My university did not have fiber, but I suppose it would be cheaper to get it in a High School rather than a College since it's smaller and probably cheaper.

Colleges usually have more money though, being funded by tuition and what not.

Weird.

We already had fiber running but the core switches weren't gigabit so a lot of the time we were only running 100 meg to the classrooms and shit. We've ordered like 20 3Com switches this summer and those things are not cheap.

 

[Bran]

Wow.

 

[LocutusEstBorg]

I was helping out in college and tried deploying Windows to around 10 PCs using Ghost via PXE boot. It took a whole day to write the image to all the PCs over network. Would have been faster to do it manually.

We don't have any of that fancy shit, no network connectivity anywhere except in the labs. We aren't allowed to have a computer in our rooms (yes even CS engineering). Most CS graduates have never switched on a PC in their lives. We aren't allowed to have mobile phones either, even those living on campus. We have to pay to use the internet.

There are colleges worse than this though where guys are not allowed to talk to girls. There are separate staircases for girls so that we cant stare at their behind while walking up the stairs. The buses have curtains and chains blocking the women from view. There are goons who strong-arm you if they see you talking to a girl on campus and you'll get suspended/expelled for repeat offenses.

And worst of all we have to pay a bribe of like $10-15000 to get into a joke of an educational institution like this, aside from the fees. Its almost impossible get in on merit because half the country gets 99.99% in their school exams and even if you make one mistake your rank drops by half the student population.

I regret helping them deploy Windows in the lab.

 

[yolarrydabomb]

I did this to my school, finally free them from windows 98, office 97 and give them Windows XP with Mircosoft Office 2003 (at that time) everyone loved it! no more ugly defualt green. ew!

We also use a program called Deep Freeze. its amazing!

 

[january39]

I was helping out in college and tried deploying Windows to around 10 PCs using Ghost via PXE boot. It took a whole day to write the image to all the PCs over network. Would have been faster to do it manually.

We don't have any of that fancy shit, no network connectivity anywhere except in the labs. We aren't allowed to have a computer in our rooms (yes even CS engineering). Most CS graduates have never switched on a PC in their lives. We aren't allowed to have mobile phones either, even those living on campus. We have to pay to use the internet.

There are colleges worse than this though where guys are not allowed to talk to girls. There are separate staircases for girls so that we cant stare at their behind while walking up the stairs. The buses have curtains and chains blocking the women from view. There are goons who strong-arm you if they see you talking to a girl on campus and you'll get suspended/expelled for repeat offenses.

And worst of all we have to pay a bribe of like $10-15000 to get into a joke of an educational institution like this, aside from the fees. Its almost impossible get in on merit because half the country gets 99.99% in their school exams and even if you make one mistake your rank drops by half the student population.

I regret helping them deploy Windows in the lab.

You sure that your at college? That sounds pretty harsh how you have described it :huh: , I cant think of a single college in the UK where those practice's exist.....wow.

 

[ilyace]

You sure that your at college? That sounds pretty harsh how you have described it :huh: , I cant think of a single college in the UK where those practice's exist.....wow.

He lives in India sadly.