Ubuntu Mate commercial usage for college

Support & Help Requests
#1

I am a student at a small Bible college awc.edu and while here I have started working in the IT dept, I am the first to do my job so I am pioneering this position, however to get to the point our library has several computer for students to access the internet on, type papers on, and other such things, however these computers are running windows 7 which is OK, but a little on the heavy end for the specs of the computers, so I was talking to my boss and he said that Ubuntu may be possible and as Ubuntu Mate is what I daily use and can easily be configure to look and act like Windows 7 or close enough, this is what I’m leaning towards , however there are at least 2 things that need to be for this to happen

  1. we need to be able to lock out apps such as the control center…, preferably make them invisible, any info on how to do this would be much appreciated

  2. on logout or shutdown the computer needs to erase all changes and all files downloaded or otherwise, sort of like the guest user on Ubuntu, so I need to know how to create a user that will do this, even how to create a user like the guest user would be helpful

#2

It depends on how you want to implement UM across your network. If each machine is to have its own installation, then I guess you could simply remove all launchers to the relevant programs. Or, uninstall the programs themselves. I lack the expertise to tell you how to do this at a network level. So, if it was me, I would just manually uninstall programs/remove launchers on each individual machine if there were only several of them.

A network-based solution would be to use LTSP. This is a “thin client” network arrangement whereby an image for each client on the network is served to that client at boot-up by an LTSP server. This is a very good way of having full, network-level control of precisely what a network client machine has access to and what it does not have access to. It also means you don’t even need a working hard drive on the client machines.

Until relatively recently I used LTSP in my home network. But it stopped working when Ubuntu 16.04 LTS came out. So, I gave up on it. However, it may have been fixed since then. Indeed, the instructions have been updated on the main site so, this is encouraging enough for me to have another go myself…:slight_smile:

Full instructions for how to implement it are here:

http://wiki.ltsp.org/wiki/Ltsp-manager

1 Like
#3

A networked approach would be the best way to handle this, IMO. Gives you the most control for the least bother.

Each student would have an allocated amount of space on the school’s network for things they have to save, or if you ditch that approach at the very least make it so your machine has the latest versions of all software on the network. If student’s access to that is RO, then they cannot delete the contents of the media the school’s software is on, and with apt, dpkg and snap completely removed on each client there would be no means for students to update, remove or include anything.

#4

I do not know we may go a more Chrome OS based approach however I probably will look into a ltsp approach

#5

I have installed it on a test and i used disks to make and image, however I cant seem to get grub to load it when the image is restored

#6

Hello we are using Ubuntu-Mate right now and indeed I am typing this through Ubuntu-Mate, and although there have been many bumps along the road with all of them not fixed as of yet, we have erased things such as bluescreens although Microsoft office through play on linux does seem to crash occasionally

#7

I wouldn’t even try to teach that if you are using an open-source system; your administrator is more than capable of installing LibreOffice or OpenOffice.org and to be honest, students should learn how to use online solutions like Open365 (an online service to deliver LibreOffice tools through the web browser) or Google’s services.

1 Like
#8

I agree, however I am a student employee and I do not have control over
some of that, one thing I think would work very well would be wps-office,
it has a Office equivalent interface, but i do not know if I could get by
with that, this is really a big experiment, that so far has been successful
in some ways, and unsuccessful in others

#9

So the use of Ubuntu MATE at this college on library computers has ended, I thought that I may share some thoughts on its shortcomings in this area, Ubuntu MATE is unbeat on desktop imho, (I personally use a modified Traditional layout) however first was the issue of locking the computers down properly, although this seems to be an area where linux in general falls short currently, some could be done through dconf editor, but to people who need a gui to lock things down it just was not easy; another issue was the lack of Microsoft office on Linux, although this is a Microsoft shortcoming, and although Libre Office is good enough for most (I personally use Softmaker Office) when students and faculty are used to microsoft office and are not interested in learning new things its hard to present it similar enough that it is effective, the third major issue was the lack of ability to reliably map or permanently mount network shares, although I installed nemo it was still impossible to get the shares to unlock upon login possibly somewhat my lack of knowledge in this area. Although we ended total computer freezes for the most part, the aforementioned issues were enough of a problem that the head of IT wanted windows reinstalled to all of the computers, with which I complied. He is a Mac guy that needs a gui for everything and I don’t much care for Mac people, at least not many that I’ve met so far, I know that may be because of prejudice, but many have the attitude that Mac is the best and will not even consider anything else, just my experiences, but these are my thoughts on why Ubuntu-MATE did not work in our scenario, I hope the linux desktop improves in these areas, and hopefully one day not to distant I can help to improve it, but this experience has not changed my view at all that for personal use Ubuntu-MATE is the king of desktops :grin:

#10

The grand irony about Mac users; every Mac system bases itself off some variant of Mach and BSD, and the thought of using the terminal strikes insurmountable fear into everybody who expects Apple Just works.

Nothing Just works. Sometimes you need to fsck around with the terminal and become intimate with “Advanced” tools to do some of the most basic crap in any system. As someone who uses Windows 10, let me explain the steps necessary in changing the time in Windows so it is synchronized with an Internet server;

###Through GUIs

  • Open settings.
  • Go to Time and Language.
  • in Date & time, select Additional date, time, & regional settings in the right pane.
  • In the legacy dialog window which opens, select Set the time and date.
  • In the next window which opens, select Internet Time.
  • Select the Change settings… button
  • If applicable, authenticate this action.
  • Select a time server, then confirm by selecting Update now.

###Through a text console
####Actions prior to using a text console

  • Open services.msc.
  • Double-click on Windows Time.
  • Set startup type to Automatic.
  • If applicable, authenticate this action.

####In a text console

  • Open cmd or powershell as administrator.
  • Authentication is necessary.
  • Execure w32tm /resync
  • If it errors, execute again.

Take a guess at which one is easier.

#11

I understand he also did not have to setup the windows images and so I
think its just he really doesn’t have time or the desire to learn, I
personally think that one of the biggest mistakes in the history of linux
was the moving from gnome 2 to gnome 3, I think for a desktop environment
the Gnome 2 paradigm was much better and was pretty much standard, now we
have gnome 3, MATE , Cinnamon, and had Unity but that choice has already
been made