KDE Dot News has an interesting bit on Linux in educational environments, and specifically St. Mary's Catholic School's switch to Linux and KDE. “St. Mary's Catholic School in Rockledge, Florida has demonstrated the obvious: that KDE/GNU/Linux (KGL) is great for kids and schools. Working with volunteers from the Melbourne Linux Users Group (that's Melbourne, Florida), I.D.E.A.L. Technology and IXC Telecom, the school deployed the K12 Linux Terminal Server Project, a thin client enterprise solution.”
“K12TLSP installs terminal software on a server that powers diskless workstations (thin-clients). Applications run on the server with only the display, keyboard and mouse running on the workstations. This allows the continued use of older computers while avoiding costly upgrades. New K12LTSP terminals cost less than $200 each. Even greater savings are realized as diskless workstations have no hard drives or software to maintain. While the cost of operation is lower, users enjoy a faster and more reliable software environment.”
“A typical installation of a Windows™ OS based computer lab of 20 workstations may cost more than $20,000 while the same lab running K12LTSP would cost less than than $6,000. Reusing legacy hardware can reduce that cost to less than $2,000. “