How do you maintain your public computers?
Librarians want to know.
Librarians want to know.
I’ve enjoyed following Kevin Smith’s blog, as he explores and implements Edubuntu. We talked with Kevin not so long ago when his dreams of installing Ubuntu products were just that: dreams.
And for that reason I was pretty excited when I saw photos of the new stations with patrons busily using them. Kevin shared, “Some patrons are even seeking them out over the Windows machines because the applications, including Firefox, open so much faster.” This experience mirrors what was reported by Marian Wynn over at the Geneva Public Library in Alabama, where the only difference patrons notice is the speed, not the open source applications or operating system (for more on Marian’s experiences with Ubuntu, read the feature [pdf]).
In his post, he shares valuable information on using Open Office instead of Microsoft Word, setting up thin clients, and his attempts to lock down the computers. If you have any experiences that might help Kevin, be sure to comment on his blog, and we’ll share any solutions we hear from libraries, too.
Kudos to Kevin for persevering and implementing technology that’s bound to be a boon to his library and his patrons. And thanks for keeping us posted!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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excellent post
excellent post