A safe and cheap student PC

A Safe and Cheap Student PC

(Released to the web October 9, 2008)

Your kids are getting older, and as they progress through grade levels, the demands placed on your home computers are growing too. Homework requires heavy internet access, expensive proprietary software, and constant attention from you. If you are diligent, you have provided an internet connected PC for their use but placed it in a public area of your home where you can control its use. Cyberbullying, internet predators, viruses, malware, and lots of similar threats are real. If you have more than one offspring or if you need the use of that internet connected computer yourself, coordinating computer time is becoming a problem.

Faced with purchasing yet another Windows PC, plus all the Microsoft Office and other required software, you might be blanching and wondering where the money will come from. What if you could have another PC made available in your home for a little effort and for under $250--complete? What if there was an added bonus of a safer and more stable system?

Such a safe and cheap PC exists, and it is much easier to implement than you might believe. You may have heard of the Linux operating system, which has a lineage that can be traced back to the scientific computers of yesteryear running versions of the Unix operating system. Stay with us, now. Linux is open source software. Simply put, open source software makes the source code of the programs freely available to any programmers who wish to improve it. The Linux operating system has been a part of this movement for a long time, and in recent years there have been dramatic improvements in desktop versions of this operating system. A distribution of Linux is a particular group or organization's version of the operating system source code, and there are lots and lots of distributions available today. Suse Linux and Red Hat Linux are two well known distributions. Another very popular distribution today is the Ubuntu distribution, which itself has sub-versions available.

Modern desktop Linux distributions are head and shoulders above what they were even two years ago. There are two popular Windows-like desktops available, Gnome and KDE. There are untold numbers of applications for Linux, including web browsers, email clients and Microsoft Office clones. All of this software is free.

Here is where it gets interesting. A simple download from the internet can get anyone a complete Windows-like operating system, word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation software, and web and email clients--all for free. The hardware requirements are minimal compared to what current versions of Windows requires. A Pentium 3 or 4 PC with 512Mb of memory and merely 20Gb of disk space is plenty. Hardware like that is available used and refurbished for peanuts. In fact, it is easily possible to purchase capable off-lease computers for $80-150 with these specs. Add a nice monitor, and a new keyboard and mouse, and you are still under $250. All the rest is free.

But, why would Linux be safer? There are a few reasons. First, the kernel, which is the fundamental guts of the software, is more stable than Microsoft Windows and more forgiving of misbehaving application software. Second, the networking features and system permissions of Linux are more protective and more stable than under Windows. Third, there is a cultural deference given to Linux by the "bad" programmers out there creating viruses and malware. They often use Linux themselves and they prefer to focus their sinister efforts on more widely used Windows-based systems.

To be sure, there are specialty applications which do not run under Linux yet, although many proprietary software developers do offer Linux versions of their products. However, for anything that a public school student could want or need to do on their computer, it is possible on a Linux-based machine. Plus--and this is important--applications like OpenOffice.org, which is a Microsoft Office clone, can read and write files which are fully compatible with Microsoft software on another PC. A student can create a Powerpoint presentation or Word document at school, bring it home on their flash drive, and read it just fine in OpenOffice.org under Linux.

There are other advantages. A dual-boot arrangement can allow Windows and Linux to be used on the same PC. Linux has a low bar for adoption because the desktop windowing features are substantially similar to Microsoft operating systems. Linux has easy methods to add new software applications to the PC. It will search the internet for you, locate the appropriate software, and download and install it for you. No fuss. You can even use a printer connected to your Windows networked workgroup at home.

Just how difficult is this process of creating a Linux home PC? Here are the steps taken in a recent effort by this writer to build an internet-connected PC for use by students:

The first problem is to locate suitable hardware. Lots of vendors on the net offer refurbished or off-lease computers from the corporate world, and many have the required 512Mb of memory and 20Mb of disk space. After checking out vendors like http://www.hcditrading.com, http://www.tigerdirect.com/, http://www.geeks.com/, and others, it was determined that the PC itself would be about $80-150 for what we needed. We picked a refurbished HP model, which included the Windows XP operating system, delivered for $150. We had an existing monitor, but a new one could be purchased for as little as $30. A new keyboard and mouse purchased locally at a big box store completed the system. Total expenditure: $175.
Next, we needed to pick a Linux distribution, download it, and burn an installation CD with the information. We chose the KDE windowing system over Gnome, because it is most like Microsoft Windows. The Ubuntu Linux distribution gets high marks these days, so we chose that. They can be downloaded together as a package here: http://www.kubuntu.org/. The package also includes the OpenOffice.org application software, saving us an extra step. After downloading the file to a local hard drive, we used our standard CD writer software to burn an installation CD for the new computer. That CD can also be used to temporarily boot Linux on any PC, which is a good way to test for any hardware compatibility issues.
When our hardware arrived, we connected everything together and set up the Windows XP operating system. Setting up Windows XP is not necessary, but we wanted to try a dual-boot arrangement just for the fun of it. Next, we inserted our Kubuntu installation CD and followed the instructions. That process has already been documented here. The installation disk has a utility to repartition the hard disk, and the installation of Linux that follows is painless. Within 20 minutes we had a working Linux system, which is much quicker than the Windows XP setup time.
Next, we wanted to add the popular and worthy Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client our students were already using previously on a Windows-based system. All we had to do was click the task bar start button, click "add/remove programs" and then let the Adept installer locate the two programs we typed in. The system installed them for us, and then we configured the email client for our internet provider and personal addresses. While we were there, we also added some games to the system to encourage a little playing around for our students.
Printing was a concern, so we used the printer utility in Linux to locate the shared printer on our existing Microsoft Windows home workgroup and connect to it. A driver for our Lexmark laser printer was not listed, so we used a generic PCL driver which worked just fine. This process went more easily on the Linux system than when we setup a new Microsoft Vista machine the same day and attempted to connect to the same printer.
Our students quickly took to the Kubuntu Linux system, and we made modifications in desktop appearance to suite their taste. Some things need only a single click instead of the double-click required in Windows, but that difference our students picked up in short order. We tried writing a word processing file in OpenOffice.org and then transferred the file to a Windows-based machine running Microsoft Word. The file was perfectly compatible. We took an existing Powerpoint presentation created on a Windows based system and read it on the Linux system using OpenOffice.org, and, again, it worked just fine. In fact, our students seemed to prefer the OpenOffice.org presentation software over Microsoft PowerPoint. Emails to friends and some web surfing followed, and our student tests were complete.

There is a benefit to exposing our students to software and systems other than Microsoft Windows, since the process encourages exploration and allows them to think of software as a tool that can be modified to suit the user's needs. The Linux operating system and all of the software discussed in this article is free and it is supported by a large and vocal online community. Help is usually a few clicks away if needed. For under $250, and for perhaps even much less, a safe and reliable system which is fully compatible with student needs can be built. In fact, as our schools upgrade hardware to try to keep up with the requirements of Microsoft Windows operating systems, we might well consider installing Linux on the PCs otherwise left behind and thereby add new life into the hardware. The price is right, the benefits are clear, and the added safety is a bonus.

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