About 6 months ago i taught an intor to linux class at the Leicester High School (i was an IT intern in their technology dept). i burned 20 copies of Slax (the live cd distro) which is slackware based, and made all the students use their flashdrives to back up their personal settings (web pages, favorites, backgrounds, etc. ). the students loved it, with the exception of trying to install software. KDE 3 is one of the easiest GUI's to use, and the looks will captivate every user. the students liked the fact that it was almost like they had their own laptops (flashdrive + cd = all their personal info, files, & settings). i demonstrated how a linux install worked on one computer, and then we all used our live cd's to learn from. my boss in technology was very happy that no files were even installed on the schools computers. i would personally use live cd's to teach from, then maybe bring in one computer to show people how the install works.
-Jonathan Beall
>From: "Martin, Eric" <MartinE@worc.k12.ma.us>
>Reply-To: Worcester Linux Users Group <wlug@mail.wlug.org>
>To: "'Worcester Linux Users Group'" <wlug@mail.wlug.org>
>Subject: RE: [Wlug] Re: Another distro Question
>Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 09:42:48 -0400
>
>I've done a Stage3 with GRP (all you do is the kernel with stage3, and GRP
>is precompilied Oo.O, KDE, gnome). It's quick, it works, but I prefer to
>use Stage1 and distcc for speed. I like the fact that I can rip kerberos
>support out, etc. I'm gonna d/l SuSe and Slackware tonight, see what I can
>see.
>
>Eric
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: gboyce@badbelly.com [mailto:gboyce@badbelly.com]
>Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 9:27 AM
>To: Worcester Linux Users Group
>Subject: Re: [Wlug] Re: Another distro Question
>
>
>On Thu, 19 Aug 2004, Chuck Haines wrote:
>
> > Slackware for beginners, ugh, I'd say not. If you want a good
> > beginners distro, go with Gentoo (though it still has a little
> > learning curve for installation and setup) or get one of the distro's
> > that does more for you like Fedora Core 2 (which I'm running and like
> > a lot), Mandrake or Suse. They make much better beginner friendly
> > distro's. Remember, you want to make the switchover easier on users,
> > otherwise they won't make it. IMHO, Slackware would be too hard to
> > learn for a beginner (but don't get my wrong, I love Slackware, just
> > not for a beginner).
>
>I consider Gentoo a good learning distribution for people who want to get
>to know Linux (layouts, etc), but I'm thinking that a course at public
>schools will probably have low end hardware to work with. I'm not sure
>how much learning they'll do while they wait for their packages to compile
>on the older hardware. Glibc itself would take at least a class.
>
>Has anyone tried installing Gentoo using pre-built packages? I know it's
>supposed to be possible, but I've never tried it. I'm not sure how usable
>it really is.
>
>--
>Greg Boyce
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