Hello plus question

[Kyrre Ness Sjobak]

>On Mon, 2004-08-02 at 15:32, James Marcinek wrote:
>> For users of Fedora Core releases <fedora-list at redhat.com>
wrote: 
>> > I'm new to this list, so "Hello!"
>> > 
>> > I'm currently in the process of discussing the possibility of
turning our
>> > school into a Linux based school, with lab and office computers
running
>> > Linux.  I'm seriously considering using Fedora, because it seems to
have
>> > pretty up to date desktop packages, looks nice, and the install has
a good
>> > selection of packages as is.
>> 
>> Fedora might be good for the desktop; however you might want to
consider
>> something like White Box Enterprise Linux (Open Source version of Red
Hat
>> Enterprise Linux 3.0) as a server based solution.
>> 
>> http://whiteboxlinux.org/
>> 
>> > 
>> > The Principal of the school has a serious eyesight problem, and
must use
>> > screen magnification software to use his computer.  For windows,
decent
>> > full-screen magnification packages cost, at least, $400.  he
currently uses
>> > a package called ZoomText 7.1, which originally cost him $395.  How
they
>> > have an update that's another $150.  Shortly another update that
costs even
>> > more is coming out.  On one level, I can see how a company who's
only
>> > product is a screen magnifier would need to charge a bit to stay in
>> > business, since it's a vertical market, but still...
>> > 
>> > I opened the Assistive Technology Support preferences box, enabled
support,
>> > but the Magnifier and Screen Reader choices are grayed out.  I did
a little
>> > digging, and it seems that gnopernicus must be installed.  Based on
further
>> > research, it would seem that this package is part of the 'core 2'
system,
>> > but it doesn't appear to be available in the Add/Remove Programs
(Package
>> > Manager?) tool.  I've checked the details for every category, and
nothing.
>> > 
>> > Can anyone help me find this, since having decent screen
magnification will
>> > definitely influence his opinion.
>> 
>> You might have to look browse on the CD for the rpm that you're
looking for:
>> 
>> ls |grep -i gnopernicus
>> 
>> Once you find it just install it via the rpm command:
>> 
>> rpm -Uvh <the_name_goes_here>
>> 
>> HTH-
>> 
>> James
>
>That will probably not work well.  gnopernicus has a dependency on
>gnome-speech, and thus yum install (with a proper yum.conf) will handle
>the dependencies much better than trying it by hand.

>I checked the install CDs and gnopernicus is located on CD #3, so if
>Steven is comfortable with handling rpm and dependencies then he can go
>for it that way. 

Not that it has anything to do with your principals eyesight, but more
about running a school on Fedora Core. I am posting this because i (as a
student at the school) am doing just that, and therefore i may share
some experience.

We (Valler videregående (something like high-school in Norway)) are
running a small test on how well Linux would be applicable on running a
school. For this test, we are using Fedora on 10 stand-alone computers -
most of them dual-boot with windows, sitting in the PC labs, on
thin-client(/print) server also running FC, and at last a Debian
(file)Server.

HW-wise, we have not had any problems. The problems we have had, has all
been related to the maturity of the fedora desktop system. Such problems
has been the bug in nautilus which mad fam blocking ejection of cd-roms,
floppy-disks, usb-keychains etc. Another thing is the whole
"mount-thing" - you got to tell people that you MUST unmount stuff
BEFORE plugging it out. And that you can't just use the "eject"-button
on the cd-rom.

Another thing is browser plugins and browsers in common. Today we
install Opera on all machines (*lots* of the students love Opera), and
mozilla is of course installed - but it will probably be replaced by
epiphany (quicker and better gnome-integration). But how-the-**** do you
chose where the paper comes out? Shure, no problem in a
single-pc-with-usb-printer environment, but we got 3 - installed (of 5
in labs + a couple of teacher-printers). And then there are plugins -
most notably the Java and flash. Java? No problem, get the sun jre from
DAG - and everything will function just right. But flash? Jeah, no
problem. But the rpm uses a interactive script,in which i must agree to
the license terms. Which in turn eliminates any use of an
non-interactive (read cron) script. mplayer and mplayer-plugin? Hmm.
Maybe i'll add livna to yum.conf. Don't mix yum and apt - i had the xmms
mp3-plugin from apt (freshrpms) block updation of xmms which in turned
made yum refuse to do anything.

When talking about updates - be shure to turn on the nightly-yum-update
in serviceconf (and squid on the router!) - and leave the pc's on
always. But what about when you want to distribute an rpm or some change
to all pc's? Keeping them in pace which another is very important. And
going around telling people to get of the computer makes people...
annoyed. So what to do? I wrote a nifty little bash-script which runs at
night, and i am happily sharing:

http://solution-forge.net/source/unprotected/admin-script-final.tar.gz

What about user-administration? Put'em in an LDAP database. I use
Directory administrator: http://diradmin.open-it.org/index.php (compile
it - forget about the rpm) - but if someone knows something that takes
care of:
- Automatically creating homedirs and setting the permissions
- Easily creating large groups of user-accounts

Then you put the home directories on NFS. But there is a
wide-open-security-door as large as a black hole - NFS has never heard
of authentication. And without access to the DNS, i can't use netgroups
either (or?)...

And then, when you finally have everything fixed up - the next version
comes around the corner. Shure, FC2 was a welcome replacement in may,
but ill shure can wait to reinstall with FC3 when it comes around the
corner in October... But when you install things: use CD1 and
NFS-installation. Huge timesaver. And as soon as anaconda pops up, pop
the cd out and move on. I just wished that kickstart worked for fc2 -
instead of deleting ALL partitions and THEN asking what to do... (i set
it to "delete all Linux partitions". Me thinks it misunderstood me...)

Another nusiance with fc2 is that you have to specify nfsversion=nfs2
(something like that. i don't remember the exact wording) in fstab. Then
there are an old (?) saying - the admins problems is the admins
problems. The users problem is also the admins problem, and as long as
the admin is an user, this makes user-problems worse than
admin-problems. That is true as long as you don't have an BOFH like me
as sysadmin. But the last mentioned problem is an install-problem, and
therefore just a small x2 problem (admin + only-once)

What i think would be a good ideas for fc2, would be:
- a bugzilla "component" where you could complain about distribution
policy. Such as choosing moz over epiphany (gnome standard) as standard
web-browser.
- A semi-official mirror for dogy-licensed things (everything from mp3
to java and maybe even nvidia rpms) - something like Debian
non-us/contrib - and that could be toggled at install and later.
- Yum gui frontend (or maybe switch to apt4rpm? its quicker, and has a
great gui (synaptic)
- Other, more in-depth great changes would be a field in rpm-packages,
which would tell yum/apt where to get latest versions - so such packages
as the latest ntfs driver (etc.) would be automatically downloaded when
upgrading the kernel or running yum update
- Better integration between yum/apt and rpm - so that rpm got yum/apt
to automatically fetch dependencies when needed.
- A d*** Norwegian spell-checker in OO!

But after all - fedora is a great distro and OS - rapidly getting even
better! :D

Kyrre Ness Sjøbæk, student and BOFH

(hmm... think i just found a bug in evolution - if i try to paste "Re:
Hello plus question" to the subject field, (using control-v) and it
insisted putting it in the body of the email...)