> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Jonathan Dieter <jdieter@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: For users of Fedora <fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2007 2:37:44 AM
> Subject: Re: how to set up VM, or is there a freeware equivalent to Deep Freeze Software
>
> On Tue, 2007-08-14 at 20:45 -0700, Antonio Olivares wrote:
> > A student logs in, does his/her work on MS Word. Finishes and starts
> > messing with the desktop, ie. changing backgrounds, surfing the web,
> > looking for ways to bypass the firewall to visit sites like youtube,
> > MySpace, etc. He/She logs out. When another student comes in, the
> > machine is restored to its original settings, original background, no
> > programs installed no stuff. Is there such an equivalent software
> > that is open sourced?
>
> I use qemu with the -snapshot option to achieve this. We have a Windows
> image that the students can (within reason) do what they want with, and
> when they shut down, all their changes are lost.
>
> Jonathan
Jonathan,
This is more or less what we are looking for. Is there a howto on setting up quemu with -snapshot option?
Quemu is in the repositories. But for Quemu to work it has to be installed on the machine with Linux on it of course. So Linux has to be installed :). I would be the ambassador between my friend and the principal and hopefully this can get done.
The other solution posted by Casey
\begin{quote}
If they won't go to Linux at all, he/she can always reimage the
machines
every night. I used to work in a place that had a bunch of public
computers and every night, they would reboot and pull a fresh, clean
image from the server. This was all automated (although I don't
remember
how) and probably ran as a scheduled task. I seem to remember that the
hdd was two partitions and the one was hidden and inaccesible and was
never able to be written to or even seen (at least by the average user)
and the other partitions was the one that was blown away every night.
\end{quote}
is also very appearling.
Doing something like this is very helpful since the machine does not have to be updated and everytime the user logs in the image gets reset and students have to start over. This is what my friend is looking for. This way he worries less about what the kids can do and more about teaching students Word Processing/Spreadsheets/and PowerPoint for Presentations.
Note: The computer lab is not for me, if It were mine I would push for putting Linux on the machines and/or running LTSP as Frank has suggested. I would also push OpenOffice on to the students. When I am at school, I pass cds to my colleagues with OpenOffice.org so that they can install, they ask for Word/Excel/Powerpoint/MS Office. I give them OO because I tell them that is free and they do not have to worry about codes.
Thanks to all for suggestions,
Antonio
____________________________________________________________________________________
Got a little couch potato?
Check out fun summer activities for kids.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=oni_on_mail&p=summer+activities+for+kids&cs=bz
