[NTLUG:Discuss] Linux Lab

[Mike Owens]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 9:31 AM, Kenneth Loafman <kenneth at loafman.com> wrote:

> Let me know if any of this could be useful.  Are you doing this as a
> charity?  Tax writeoff maybe?

Yes, this is all volunteer work. I am not selling anything. The router
and KVM would certainly be handy. How old are the laptops? The basic
criteria for laptops/PCs is that they need to be able to run a vanilla
Ubuntu install. If they can manage that, then they're good. It
apparently doesn't take all that much. I set up a lady's laptop last
week which was an older model with 512Mb RAM and it seemed to work
just fine, even with Compiz. I would just install these and offer them
to whoever in the class needs them.

A good way to wipe the drives and test Ubuntu capability would be to
just drop in an Intrepid CD. If it makes it to the desktop, you're
good. Then just open a console and use do:

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda (or /dev/hda depending on your drive)

before you go to bed. By morning, your data should be toast. I'm sure
there is probably a better way, but that's what I've done before.

Thanks for your support.

-- Mike