How We Implemented Linux in Our Ministry

"Like many other people, our church and, more importantly, our Christian school, ran the Windows operating system on all computers. We have about 15 computers in classrooms in addition to our computer lab of 25 computers. They were not the greatest computers to begin with – Pentium 3, 8GB HDD, 64-128 Mb of RAM – but that soon changed. We were given a large donation of 65 Dell Optiplex GX260s one year ago. Still not up to today's standards, but a huge improvement over what we had and adequate for our current needs.

"The problem

"We had a problem, however, in our licensing. A number of years ago we purchased a 100-volume license for Windows 2000. This would still be good for our new(er) machines, but Windows 2000 is terribly outdated and unsupported. It then became a matter of stewardship. Should we outlay a large sum of money for XP which would soon be replaced by Windows 7? Sure, the hardware cannot handle 7, but it would eventually be replaced and the cycle would start again. We are a small ministry, not a large corporation that can afford to keep up with the costs and offer our students a quality education at the same time."

Complete Story

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