Pastor Doug Coats wrote: >I feel drawn into this discussion since I am the IS Admin at Heritage >Christian Academy Wayne has made mention of and I believe there are many >more out there like me. > >My first job at the school is Information Systems Administration. I am a >Pastor by training. You can imagine how many tech classes I had in my >schooling. You can probably also imagine what a small private school could >offer to a trained IS person. Very few of you would take a second glance at >my salary. I do hold a number of other positions at the school - I teach >High school Bible classes and computer electives. I even drive one of our >buses. Why do I do this? - I believe in the mission of the school. Why do >I think others would take the time to learn Linux? - Because they believe in >the mission of their organizations. > >I believe that at HCA we are coming to a cross roads. We have approximately >100 computers in use, 60 for staff and 40 for students. Probably 80+% don't >meet the minimum requirements for XP. If I remember correctly, next summer >Microsoft will stop supporting Win98 which is what 98% of our computers run >on. As a non profit we can not afford to throw anything away that works. >Since the majority of my staff uses their computer for word processing and >email I may be "forced" to start changing over our older PC's to Linux. >Even if we were to receive a number of newer machines as donations we still >could not afford the OS's for them. > >So over the past 4 years HCA has gone from 8 office computers on a >peer-to-peer network with no internet access with myself only being >part-time at the school. to having 100 computer all with internet access, a >Gateway/Firewall/Router server, two file serves (one for the staff & one for >the students), and an Email/Web server. All the servers are running Linux >by the way. I started with no Linux experience to now maintaining and >managing all of them with less and less help from Wayne. > >I do not think I am alone in going down this path. I also think others >would gladly follow if they had someone like Wayne in their lives. I simply >want to offer to someone else what Wayne has offered to our school - someone >willing to help them to get up and going. > >So I ask two things: First, if you know of an organization that could use >your expertise and you believe in their cause, please offer it. Second, if >you know of any way you can help us, suggestions, resources, interested >parties, please pass that along. > >Doug Coats > > >_______________________________________________ >TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota >http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org >https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > > > _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list