Introduction
I must say from the outset that I am not an expert on network operating systems in general, nor Linux in particular. Everything I have learnt or picked up has been by using the software in an everyday situation at Caedmon School, Whitby.

My primary function in school is as an ICT, D&T subject teacher and ICT Co-ordinator. As most of you reading this article will appreciate this actually means taking responsibility for anything to do with the school network and computers in general. It was whilst wearing this cap that I had occasion to install and use the Linux operating system.

Caedmon School
Caedmon School is a key stage 3, mixed Comprehensive School for pupils between the ages of 11 and 14. At the end of year 9 pupils transfer to Whitby Community College. Each year all year 7, 8 and 9 pupils receive 3 lessons of ICT per week for a 6 week period. All our lessons are 50 minutes duration. We plan to teach a GCSE short course in ICT next year to our more able year 9 pupils.

Linux
Linux is a multitasking, multi-user UNIX like operating system with the added advantage of being incredibly cheap, free in fact if you download it from the Internet or get it from a cover disc CD. A typical price for a Linux distribution on CD-ROM is around £35. As Linux is distributed under the open-source licence agreement it can be copied as many times as you like. Because of this there is no issue with buying additional licences as more users are added, you simply do not need a licence.

There are various distributions of Linux available. Redhat and Suse are probably the biggest at the moment. We are using Redhat Linux at Caedmon. This came on 4 CD-ROMs, but you only need a single CD for the installation. The additional CDs contain various applications, including the excellent Star Office. This is a free office suite that I feel is as good and powerful as Microsoft Office with the added bonus of being free. In addition it can open any Office 97 file we have tried so far. We are giving serious consideration to equipping any further ICT suites with Star Office.

The Installation
Linux is a completely different way of working compared with Windows, so there was, and still is a considerable learning curve involved, but worth it in the end. When I saw it, it reminded me of the old days of DOS, remember all those command line instructions? Well Linux is a command line operating system in its basic configuration. You can install various window managers however, which makes it more intuitive to use.

Linux comes with a whole range of servers and applications. The one I wanted was the Apache Web Server. I chose the Redhat distribution because their web site carries a huge amount of information and resources. Installation went fairly smoothly, but it is not as easy as installing Windows. You will get your hands dirty with the technical stuff but the Redhat manual leads you through it very well. The installation process has been a failing of Linux in the past. However more recent distributions have made the process considerably simpler.

I chose a Pentium III machine with 128Mb of RAM for the server hardware. It can however be loaded on machines of very much lower specification. The whole process eventuality took about an hour. I say eventually because there were a few dummy runs and mistakes along the way.

There are several ways to install Linux but the simplest is to install it from the CD-ROM. You will need bios that allows booting from the CD-ROM, but most modern bios do these days. To start the installation process you simply put the CD-ROM into the drive and switch on. The installation program will now take control and prompt you for the various set-up options. This was a very painless process in general. You will however need to know an IP address and subnet mask for the network interface card. I originally had the latest D-Link DFE 530T interface card installed on the machine and nothing I did could get it to work. I exchanged this for an old D-Link DFE 530 we had left over and it worked first time. It seems that Linux drivers are slow to come through from the manufacturers. The via-rhine driver that comes with Linux was fine for the old D-Link card.

After installing the basic system you have a fully working network server (for £35!!!!), but it is text based, command line stuff. Which is great when everything is up and running and in everyday use. But it is easier to use a Graphical User Interface (GUI), particularly if you are new to Linux. Redhat comes with the main 2 GUIs, KDE and Gnome. The installation program will prompt you for the one of your choice or you can install both and switch between them. I went for the Gnome version, for no particular reason other than I liked the sound of it. This is a Windows type environment which we are more used to.

As I have mentioned, Linux comes with a huge selection of services and servers. With Redhat the Apache web server was installed by default, as was the Samba Windows server needed to run it. Samba is a service that allows your Linux machine to be seen on a Windows network. All services on a Linux machine are controlled by text based configuration files that at first glance look terribly complicated. I did find however that all the default values seemed to work fine. The only thing that needed changing was the domain name at the very top of the Samba configuration file. This had to be changed to the domain name of our school network to allow the Windows NT server to see the Linux machine. If you are going to access the Linux machine for file storage etc. you will have to change the password type to encrypted.

After the Apache web server was running it was simply a matter of copying over the Intranet files to the correct directory on the Linux machine. Now when a user puts the address of the Linux server into a browser by entering http://gandalf/ in our case, Apache will server up the index found in its root directory. On a Redhat distribution this is found at /var/www/html/index.htm.

Conclusion
It did take quite a while to get to grips with Linux, and a lot of late nights initially, but I feel that it is going to be worth it in the end. We presently have a Windows based e-mail server which I hope to replace with the Linux mail server. When we eventually get our broadband Internet link I will also be running the Linux firewall, again for free, no ridiculously expensive Windows based versions to buy. I feel that Linux has a lot to offer schools in the future but it will require a very steep learning curve for staff initially. I have included a brief list of the technical stuff I have picked up whilst installing and running Linux, together with some useful web sites I have used.