Linux is costing me $25.35 for now

I know it's been quite a long time since I don't write anything. Between preparing for my kids birthday party, cancelling due to snow and then resetting the house for a second birthday party we haven't had much time to sit in front of the computer. That and the fact that I didn't have a monitor for the Linux PC because I returned the monitor to my parents to build the second Edubuntu box. Well I finally got a monitor from Craigslist.com for $25 bucks. So far the whole computer has cost me, well $25 bucks. I got the PC from work when they were getting rid of a few PIII, the keyboard and mouse I got from my own scrap box, where I keep everything computer related, from tiny screws to Hard drives, CDROMS and even a DVD Writer. The initial network connection was, again, borrowed from my parents ;) . It was a Linksys External USB wireless adapter, now that I have returned all that I ran a cable from the main router in the house to the Linux box ( about 15 feet away). The best part of all, the software cost me about 35 cents. I'm just taking into consideration the cost of the CD where I burned the Edubuntu Image. Not bad, really not bad for a system that is great to play and work with. I have decided to reinstall Edubuntu from scratch on the same box, this time I'll pay more attention to all steps and probably write about the whole thing. The first time was a great exploring experience, but this time I'd really like to know what goes on as part of the installation. With some luck I'll be doing the third installation tonight.

Second Edubuntu System is a go.

I went to my parents' over the weekend. I wanted to install Edubuntu in their home PC an old Pentium III, 128MB and 500Mhz. I figured that instead of throwing that one out I would just try to install Edubuntu in it, after all every time my kids go there they want to play with the computer as well. My parents are not computer people by far. If anything they just check the news or the weather on the Internet. I haven't figure out how to take snapshots of the whole installation process yet but I will post them here as soon as I can find out how to do it. Installation was as the first time pretty easy, just select a few options and hit Enter. I hit a road block when trying to go through the step "Build LTSP chroot". The status bar just froze at 50% and nothing happened for a few minutes. Then I got a Screen showing all the steps of the installation and still showing the error message. I decided to try again so I turned off the computer and started the whole thing one more time. Same deal, when getting to the "Build LTSP chroot" step the whole process stopped at 50%. I started researching on the Internet what the LTSP was and how important was to have it on a stand alone PC not connected to a Linux server. Turns out LTSP stands for "Linux Terminal Server Project". Basically is an add-on package to the core Linux system that allows for a thin-client connection. From what I understand this is a way to run a network where the client has the bare minimum equipment and the heavy processing is done at the server. The Wikipedia article has a good explanation on this without going too technical. This website " LTSP, down by the sea: a 20-terminal Linux cybertent for education" provides a great example of the technology. Basically they connected a bunch of old laptops ( first generation Pentiums running at 120mhz) to a server and from there they have a running lab with access to the internet for everybody. In any case, having found what the technology was I decided not to go through that step since the PC was not going to be connected to a server as a "dumb-terminal".I proceeded to select the next step on the list. All applications got installed in little over 15 minutes and then Voila!! a new Edubuntu installation ready to play. So, if you are installing a stand alone Edubuntu system and get an error on the "Build LTSP chroot" step, just select the next step on the list and everything will get installed as usual. I figure that if I at some point need the LTSP package then I can probably install it later. Good stuff.