Re: [K12OSN] Argument against Microsoft?

[Bill Kendrick <nbs sonic net>]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2004 at 06:32:04PM -0500, anthony baldwin wrote:
> That, and that fact that the proprietary equivalents of what I now have 
> in OSS would cost me well over $3000, while I downloaded this for free, 
> is all the argument I need.

Not that I'm helping answer my original question (how do you argue
with $27/seat MS licenses? :^) ), I thought I'd throw in that I put together
a Linux-based kiosk over the weekend.

I get to work from home now, and was given a laptop for work.  So, I often
spend my times at a new little coffee shop near my home, which offers free
wireless access.  (One of a number of places in Davis, Calif.; there are
also others which, for some reason, offer wireless for a /fee/... hmm...)

Anyway, they occasionally get customers who come in, after seeing the
"FREE INTERNET!" sign they have outside, and ask if there's a computer they
can use.  After seeing this happen a few times (esp. after the local public
Library's internet was down for a week, apparently), I decided to see what
I could do to help.

The hardware consists of:

  Pentium II 350MHz - donated (a friend grabbed about 20 of these from a
                               local tech school that was upgraded and gave
                               a bunch away)

  80MB of DIMM RAM - donated (my friend forgot to include the RAM, so someone
                              else closer to here gave me some;  someone ELSE
                              is apparently going to give me a 128MB stick to
                              upgrade, tonight :^) )

  Keyboard / Mouse - donated (same person who gave the 80MB of RAM)

  Monitor - owner's (the cafe owner had a spare, so brought it in)

  Wireless NIC - sold cheap (same person who gave RAM, kybd/mouse sold me
                             a wireless D-Link DWL-520(?) network card to
                             use, rather than have the cafe run wire; $20.00)

  Operating System - free!  (installed Debian 2.2 off an old CDROM;
                             upgraded to 3.0 over the network)

  Web browser - free!  (using Konqueror 3.1 with kiosk framework, at the
                        moment... considering Mozilla with kiosk chrome,
                        if I have time to figure it out)

  Kiosk lock-down - free!  (see above; Unix perms help a lot; also, using
                            IceWM for lightweight, un-changable taskbar & WM)


I asked if anyone had a computer to donate on January 1st or 2nd;
I had the computer on January 6th; I had the RAM on the 8th, and installed
the OS that night.  I brought the computer in on the 9th, and finished
setting it up on Saturday.

Already, someone who's keen on Linux asked if they could use SSH.
I wasn't here when she was in and asking, but am considering it, since
it shouldn't be TOO hard to provide a secured xterm to run ssh.
I can use Kdialog (part of "kdebase-bin" package in the Debian Woody backport
of KDE 3.1) to ask for username and host, and pass it to a script that'll
clean up the strings and run "xterm -e ssh ..." :^)

I took some photos, and will post them to my LUG website tonight.  I can post
an URL here, if anyone's interested.  (It's just photos of a computer and
the web browser, but... :^) )

-bill!