Linux

[Edward Wigg]

Martin J. Cohen <mcohen at stmarys-ca.edu> wrote:
>We've been running a Web server on Linux for two years. 
>I like the idea of running Linux with X as public station clients in 
>place of Windows 3.x - for a graphical browser, etc.
>....

This idea has also occurred to me. It would solve many of the problems that
are caused by using an inherently insecure system like Win3.x/95, without
the expense of using NT. I have never found Linux too hard to set up, though
getting all the video/monitor info sorted out can be a pain if you don't
have all the specs or a set up with a canned solution. If you have multiple
public workstations with the same hardware though, you only have to do the
set up once and then you can clone it easily enough.

There are two issues that make me hesitate to actually put this into
practice: printing and downloads. 

Printing works nicely enough from Linux/Netscape, especially to a networked
postscript printer with a suitable print server, but we, like many/most
people are moving in the direction of charging for printing. Whether or not
there is a simple way to integrate unix style printing into most vendacard
printing systems is open to question. I don't know if anyone has done any
research into this; it may be a non-issue, but it is one more thing to worry
about.

Linux will mount DOS floppies, and though there are scripts that will allow
non-privileged users to mount/dismount a floppy, I see no easy way to
explain people used to DOS that you cannot just insert/remove a disk without
mounting/dismounting it as well. Maybe there is some clever work around for
this that I have not discovered -- perhaps leaving the floppy permanently
mounted and having a cron job flushing writes to it regularly would suffice.
If all else fails it would probably possible to write a special device
driver that mounted the disk only for the duration of the write, but it's
well beyond me :-). 

Unfortunately, many of these good sounding projects that seem feasible but
have no guarantee of success, take up too much precious time to try on spec.
If some one has words of wisdom about the printing/disk issues I'd love to
hear it and try Linux & X for the public.

Edward
--------------------------------------------------------------
Edward Wigg                      "Just another guy, you know?"
Evanston Public Library             e-wigg at evanston.lib.il.us
Evanston, Illinois