TheBeerFiles, TellingITasitis, Australian iT News, Global iT News, iT RSS News Feeds, Telecommunication News

The Beer Files has now joined forces with ExchangeAlert to become iTWire - Australian Telecommunications and IT News . For the latest News and Views from Australia's ICT sector. iTWire UPDATE archive

Today on iTWire
iTWire - Latest Headlines

'iPhone as modem' tethering hack revealed! Want to use an iPhone to deliver data to your notebook or other device? Apple and the phone companies didn't want us to have this capability, but smart users have... AT&T develops speech recognition service for iPhone and other devices AT T has demonstrated a speech recognition web service that can be used in conjunction with devices such as the iPhone and other smartphones, and web-connected set top boxes. Apple keeps users in the dark about iLife security update Apple has released what appears to be a security update for its widely used iLife application suite, but aside from a vague reference to security content the company... Clean solar energy from Sahara could one day provide electricity to Europe The European Union is considering a giant energy project in which enormous numbers of solar panels and arrays would be placed in the sunny desert of North Africa’s Sahara to... Linux answers the age-old question, "Why is my network slow?" For every person who has said, Let's network these two computers there are many more asking Why is the network running so slow? Yet, the ethereal... iMessage to Apple: iPhone OS 2.0 sucks Hi Apple! I love the iPhone, but you’ve seriously screwed things up with iPhone OS 2.0 – an operating system that is reminding me of the original OS X 10.0 and the... Popular iPhone applications are a waste of time Why would anyone queue for hours, pay top dollar, suffer at the hands of activation servers that didn't work and all to get hold of an iPhone 3G just to... Watch discarded NASA tank zip across your night sky NASA announced that the Early Ammonia Servicer (EAS), a backup pressurization tank, which was thrown out of the International Space Station back in July 2007, has descended to an orbit... Manchester United tops the Internet football league Football is a popular sport in England, in fact for many it is something of an obsession and one that has spread to the Internet and way beyond English borders.... Google to gobble up Digg for $200m big ones? A Google acquisition of Digg for at least US $200m is being rumoured, but the big questions revolve around whether such an acquisition could be the death of Digg, or a new... Sensis lets search engines index Yellow Pages content! Sensis has finally seen the 21st century light, letting search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live Search and others access “the biggest local business database” in Australia – for the first... The Linux file system In my last article I talked about working with shortcuts in Ubuntu Linux (content/view/19437/1162/). In this article I want to explain the basics of the Linux file system and where you... Wii wins speed record! The Nintendo Wii is officially the fastest selling console in Australia, breaking half a million sold barrier almost six months earlier than the PS2. Rival camps form to link mobile devices with broadband Following the formation earlier this week of the TransferJet consortium to develop ultra-wideband radio technologies that will enable high speed data transfer between mobile devices, the WiMedia Alliance, an established... Another Mac cloner appears to taunt Apple legal eagles Another Mac clone maker, Open Tech, has arrived on the scene to provide Apple's lawyers with another target. Open Tech may be trying to stay out of trouble by avoiding... When satnav and stupidity mix, the results are not pretty Just how stupid can motorists be when it comes to satnav? The answer, according to a new survey, is very stupid indeed. How about so stupid that one motorist drove... Texas plans to blow itself green State officials in Texas gave the initial go-ahead to construct the largest wind-power project in the United States. The $4.93 billion project will add to Texas being the number one... U.S. study finds women more likely to remove tattoos According to a Texas-led study, over twice as many unhappily tattooed women will get their tattoos removed than men. Their primary reason: “just decided to remove it. Free WordPress App comes to iPhone App Store One of the most popular free blogging tools, WordPress, has just released a blogging app for one of the most popular smartphones, the iPhone. It’s available free of charge to download now,... North Star dims for a century, suddenly gets brighter After about one hundred years of growing increasingly dimmer, the North Star (Polaris), according to international astronomers, is now growing brighter. Why it’s happening is a mystery to astronomers.

Open source industry group offers free server software to Australian schools

PDF

| Print |

Wednesday, 29 June 2005

Open Source Victoria (OSV), an industry cluster of more than 60 open source and free software providers, has responded to a group of IT teachers who want a simple way to test and deploy Linux servers in schools with a free server software CD.

OSV has developed a free product called LiveLAMP, which is a bootable CD that turns a spare computer into a Linux development server for students to practice and publish programming exercises in over a dozen languages with hundreds of development tools.

"IT administrators within the education sector can have difficulties adopting emerging platforms such as Linux," said OSV education spokesperson Donna Benjamin. "Time poor, they struggle just to keep up with the needs of a school IT network. Justifying the time to setup and maintain a professional development server on which student programmers experiment can be difficult. This is why we are developing the LiveLAMP instant Linux server solution."

According to OSV, LiveLAMP can turn any PC into an instant server capable of supporting up to 1,000 students doing work on over a dozen programming languages and hundreds of development tools. Technologies covered include PHP, Python, Perl, MySQL, Ruby, PostgreSQL, C++, C, Pascal, Fortran, CVS, Apache, Lex/Yacc, text editing, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, XML and many more. LiveLAMP will fully integrate with their existing Windows, Apple or Linux systems. OSV estimates that purchasing proprietary
versions of this software for 1000 students and teachers would cost each school over $10,000 if they had to pay for it.

"Secondary school teachers who want to deploy Linux in their IT labs often find that their IT staff "Don't Do Linux". With the LiveLAMP CD, we've made the process absolutely painless. With the CD in hand a teacher just needs to find a surplus PC. To run the LiveLAMP server, simply insert the CD-ROM into the PC and press reset. A minute later, the LiveLAMP system has created 1,000 student accounts on that PC and is now running as a server. All the programs run from the CD. Students can log in and start using the programming tools. That surplus PC then becomes a Live Linux server for the other machines in the lab," said Benjamin.

Con Zymaris from OSV leads the LiveLAMP development effort. He has over 20 years experience in working with open source technologies.

Zymaris is enthusiastic about this project. He notes that one of the few remaining hurdles that Linux and open source technologies face in the marketplace is a lack of user familiarity. "With the LiveLAMP project, we hope to make it a trivial step for any school anywhere to trial a Linux server which comes with most of the major programming languages and tools used by industry. We are therefore simultaneously introducing new users to Linux as well as introducing exciting and powerful computer technologies to school kids. Both will help grow Australia's ICT skills-base while improving kids' education."

OSV is funding the development of the LiveLAMP CD and will facilitate its distribution as a downloadable ISO image and through peer-to-peer file sharing networks. Releasing LiveLAMP under an Open Source Licence means that anyone, not just schools, can harness the opportunities it presents.

The LiveLAMP project is scheduled to deliver its first release candidate in July 2005.

< Previous		Next >