Any Linux users?

[saundby]

I just use OS X's Terminal to get a command line for what we do in our classes. Provides a fairly generic Berkeley-style Unix.

We also use some OpenSolaris. For what we do in my classes, we're not in a position to get much past basic familiarization. Just getting the students to a command line prompt, and teaching them to read the screen, type in commands and parameters, and try out some basic filters, is way beyond what others teaching at my level even try. I insist on it, but then I also refuse do formal teaching of typing in class (I've had to educate the counselors and others guiding the students that a computer class is not a typing class--we use typing skills, but I don't teach them.)

I prepare the students by spending 2-3 class sessions playing a MUD. The very basic skills (that they've often never felt a need of before) of reading a screen, typing a command, and evaluating the response, are all introduced this way. Then we get into command line by looking at and working with the data files for the MUD.

This gets us through file systems and directory structures, data types, viewing files with view, more, less, head, tail, searching through files, grep, awk, and maybe even sed if we're lucky.

I wish we had time for vi in the class, but there's just not time to do it justice. I've had two students that I've taught vi outside of normal class time.

I also spend some time on Windows command line. I have do it before we get to Unix. If I do it the other way around, everyone spends more time griping about how weak the Win shell is than learning what can be done with it. I'd like to put the Cygwin tools on our school systems, but there just isn't room with what has to be there for the other classes as well as my own. So we just use the LiveCDs when the kids want a more powerful shell.

Since the most basic network programs are available under Windows in their prehistoric forms, we usually learn them there while we're doing Windows command line. We learn ping, telnet, and ftp there. We do whois, dig/nslookup, and traceroute under Unix.

Two of the favorite activities for the class are using telnet to connect to a web server, and seeing "the end of the internet" via 'nslookup -type=any vrsn-end-of-zone-marker-dummy-record.root' which introduces the subject of network types and topologies.

 

[saundby]

Just though it was worth posting a one-year-later update here.

Since our school doesn't have a dime to spend on computer upgrades, while our systems have fallen further and further below the needs of all the teachers with respect to performance, our school system's sysadmin has decided to put Ubuntu on all our systems. We'll still have XP on all the systems, and OS X on the Macs as well (five out of twelve systems in our school's lab are Macs.) But the primary OS for use in class will be Ubuntu (9.10, I believe) except for the yearbook class, which uses a Mac-only app.

Most of the teachers now use a browser as the primary app for their classes, it may be that I'll be the only one using the other OSes in class aside from Yearbook.

Our hardware has gotten to the point that I'll literally be bringing home some systems from the dump on my next trip to put together replacements for the worst of our systems. Since we felt it necessary to update IE on the school's systems XP has run so slow as to be unusable in class. Two systems are so slow that the user has to wait on screen redraws. We've turned the options down, cleaned the systems up, but to no avail.

Native installs of Ubuntu with a current version of Firefox run well, though. The two slow systems are still slow, but usable. Hopefully I can come up with something better from the dump. Otherwise, I may pass the hat among some of my consulting clients to see what I can come up with in hardware and/or money.