Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Monday, July 28, 2008

Contacting Prospective Volunteers

Summer has been slow for Free Geek CF, and we've been remiss at returning contact attempts. We'll be contacting everyone that has attempt to volunteer with us, this week.

Sorry for the delays.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Edubuntu LTSP Classroom Installation

Yesterday, Free Geek Central Florida installed the educational version of Ubuntu, Edubuntu, in a Linux Terminal Server Project setup at Interventions Unlimited -a school for kids with learning or behavioral difficulties. The school works with mostly children with Autism.

The system consisted of:
  • The Edubuntu LTSP server - a desktop HP, 2.8 Ghz PIV (w/hyperthreading), 512mb (soon to be upgraded to 4 GB), 160 GB hard drive, 2 network cards
  • 6 Thin Client computers ranging from 350 MHz PII - 800 MHz PIII. We tried to make sure all Thin Clients had at least 256 MB RAM. No hard drives in the computers.
  • 6 good CRT Monitors, keyboards, mice.
Except for the cabling, all the equipment came from discarded or donated computers and part.

We started at 12:30pm

The "Freekers" (Free Geekers) started the setup by bring in the computers and placing them where they'd need to go in each room.
Next, plugged everything in, and made sure each thin client had power and attempted to boot to the network. We didn't have the network setup just yet, so they couldn't log in. Luckily, everything booted right up.

Without Shawn, we might have never completed the network cable plant part.
Once the network was up, we setup user accounts, and made sure each thin client could login to the server. We would have like to test the overall load on the system, but the server only has 512 mb RAM right now, so it would be taxed enough. With 4 GB of RAM, it will work just fine, even with twenty thin clients.


Everything just worked.
More pictures to come. Keep watching our flickr site.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Volunteers REALLY needed

As we're still a decentralized unofficial organization, we are in real need of some volunteers to pick up and store equipment. Contact me at bodycoach2@gmail.com

With the recent addition of a full time job for me, my time for Free Geek is greatly limited, but not compromised. This organization is still a very important part of what I want to accomplish.

As our Edubuntu classroom project moves forward, we're finding the difficulties of trying to PXE boot with older network cards. We've learned a lot in the last few weeks.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Updates

In the fall semester of 2007, the Capstone class helped create the Free Geek Central Florida website. This weekend, we did some updates to make our site look a bit more in line with the other Free Geeks around North America.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Our New Blog

Welcome to Free Geek Central Florida Blog