[Linux-aus] Linux support in schools & universities

[Barry Williams]

If there are any students or teachers/school IT support guys on these
lists I was wondering if you have tried to get your linux laptops
working on the school network and how helpful the IT information and
or support have been.

Today i finally got my laptop printing on the network, due to my lack
of trying as I would often just email any document and use a lab
computer to print as unisa appears to have no support whatsoever for
linux printing. They do offer information for internet access however.

I finally got sick of trying to find a free computer and waiting an
eternity for it to start up so I decided to try and get my laptop
connected. As I said the unisa.edu.au/ists says linux (and mac)is not
supported and there windows instructions offer little useful
information. A member of the IT staff did notice me trying to set up
my laptop seeing that it was a netbook asked if it was running XP he
said good luck. He did give me some information on connecting to the
LEAP encrypted wifi required to get access to the printers and told me
I could go to the support room to see what they could do, but I have
been there before and was pretty much told they do not support linux
and when going through the options on setting up a printer in linux
they could not answer my questions.
So I thought email might be a better option so that the respondent
would have the opportunity to maybe do a little research on their
system (not on how to connect via linux) so I could figure it out. I
asked if their printers where setup as a windows share or direct ip
printer. However I did not get an answer to this and was only provided
the ip address for the print server.
I finally figured out through trial and error that it was a windows
share and each printer could be accessed via the <ip addr of print
server>/printername. However a new user to linux would have no idea to
do that. As netbooks are quite popular with students as a cheap light
weight laptop it would be nice if IT staff could at least provide the
information required to connect a printer. Although I do see a lot of
netbooks around unfortunately most of them run windows.
Anyway what have your experiences been.
Regards,
Barry