Questions Asked When Deploying Linux and Other Free and Open Source Software

A colleague approached me to find out what are the main issues in deploying Open Source solutions (and Linux in particular) in an organization. Here are the questions he asked and the answers that I provided.

Thank you very much for agreeing to help us out on this, alright here are these questions:

Not a problem! It is always good to know I can be of help to someone. Please note that some of these questions are too technical and the few sentences given as answers are oversimplifications of what actually is or happens.

When is open source free and when is it required to pay a fee?

Free in open source is a matter of freedom not fees. What this freedom means is that you get the source code together with the software (or you can access the source code without limitations). The freedom hence mean you can take the source code study, change, and improve its design and redistribute it to others. In addition, you can use it for any purpose. You may be required to pay for the software (if its not available for download) or pay for its customization to your requirements if you do not have the in-house capability of doing it.

With other operating systems, particularly Windows XP, they tend
to be very vulnerable to viruses, How is it that Linux is immune to
viruses?

What makes windows more vulnerable to viruses is its design especially on permissions management. Most users (including programs) can install software and also take control of the running of some software. In Linux, security and permission is king and installation of programs take a process and need change of rights. The implicit requirement to set user rights on Linux makes it less vulnerable to viruses. To some extent Linux might be vulnerable to malicious software, but since most of the control is on the user then the system administrator can control what specific users do on an installation.

How does one choose between the likes of Mandriva, Fedora, Ubuntu,
etc, when planning for deployment?

All this are blends. The rule of the thumb in choosing between them is closeness to support of a wider community using it. In case you need help or when you need to improve or do something extra with them. I use fedora because I like one or two things in it.

What are some of the utility programs available on Linux?

Utilities for? I don't understand.
But most of the blends or distros of Linux come with most of the basic software: Office Suite (open office), Email client (Evolution, Thunderbird etc), Package management (Yast, RPM,etc), Web servers (Apache). Depending on your installation choice/type, you can easily add on most of the applications that you need.

Threats to system security come not only from outside the computer
system but also from inside the community of systems users as
well. What are security measures that are taken by Linux on
unauthorised access to sensitive data by unauthorized users?

First, physical security is as important as software security. Linux-based system have the best user and user rights management system (Access Control Lists) that I know in an operating system. You can manage users to the point of what file the user (or group of users) can see, execute, or write. In short, the user access-level security is as good as you can set it to be as the administrative user.

How does Linux support kernel threads?

Much better than most of the other operating systems. Please see http://tldp.org/FAQ/Threads-FAQ/index.html for more information.

What are the most common problems that are experienced by Linux
users, or open source in general?

Mainly its a question of attitude and resistance to change. Otherwise, most of the people who have changed to using Linux and open source software have developed the right attitude towards them and get to know how to go about most of the things. Support for the users is therefore very important during the change (or introduction) phases of the software.

People are very much used to the windows environment, to make the
transition easier, what are the Linux basics that users must
familiarize themselves with?

Most of the desktop Linux distros now come with a graphical interface. Gnome and KDE remain the widely used desktop interfaces for Linux. To switch from an Ms Windows environment to a say Gnome environment, one just need to have the right attitude and perceptions and to learn the new terminologies.

How does Linux handle scheduling?

Linux scheduling does not differentiate between a task and a process e.i. Linux in its implementation does not differentiate between a thread and a task. All threads are implemented as processes that share resources among themselves based on time slices. Please check http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxkernel/chapter/ch10.html for more information.

How does Linux support Ethernet, WAN & LAN through routers and
gateways?

There are a number of resources on getting information about networking in Linux and other Unix-based systems. For a quick start, please check "The Linux Documentation Project" http://tldp.org section on Networking: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/networking.html

Hope this answers all your questions. Do not hesitate to contact me when and if you need more clarification on the issues.

The Role of Training and Support in eLearning Success Part IV

In the last 3 series on this topic, I have tackled the key aspects of eLearning, the training and support, and methods and procedures that we have used towards our success. In this blog, I focus on what knits all the information and aspects that arose in the previous blogs together: The technology and the people. I have decided to combine the two because:

1. Technology alone cannot form what eLearning ought to be.
2. People, without technology cannot form that either.
3. How people use technology defines its success.

In the first part of the blog, I will give a brief introduction about the structure of our eLearning Division.

The people and the technology are the resources that we tap on most. Looking at our structure you will see we have a hybrid team with different roles towards a common goal.The eLearning Division is headed by a manager. It is divided into five areas. The number in bracket represent the current number of staff in each area.

1. Instructional Design (6) supports sound pedagogy in the use of technology in teaching-and-learning, which is further enhanced by Learning Management System support of students - where I fall. 2 members of this team are fully dedicated to student training and support.


2. Digital Academic Literacy (2) which trains students in computer literacy.


3. ICT Staff Training (2) supports just-in-time learning for the use of software applications, and basic introduction to computers to members of staff.


4. Digital Multimedia (3) services supports the use of digital multimedia such as video in support of teaching-and-learning.


5. Materials Development team (2) develops of manuals and simulations to support training.

This 16 members form the strong team that is driving eLearning initiatives are UWC. In addition, through the spirit of capacity building and empowering people, we tap from the student community who help us not only in the administrative duties at the division, but also in research and training - I also started as a student assistant.

Also, we have the advantage of having the heart of AVOIR at UWC. Through FSIU, most of the technical issues relating to our elearning site are catered for.

The IT operations team also offer incredible services, and move with speed whenever we make any requests or complains on the level of services that we get. The computing facilities at the institution are improving to cater for the demands of eLearning.

Apart from the Learning Management System, we have a state of the art digital studio and student computer laboratories. The lecture halls are also being upgraded to make it easy to use recording facilities that can allow lectures to be hosted on our learning management system.

The Role of Training and Support in eLearning Success Part III

In is the third blog in this series. Part I dealt with the key issues in eLearning and Part II is about training and support. In this part, I discuss methods and procedures that we have adopted, and how they have contributed to our success.

We have adopted a number of methods and procedures to ensure that our work goes on seamlessly. This procedures are mainly administrative to make sure for example that all the training schedules are done and dispatched on time via campus communications, ensuring that all bookings for training are captured and if there is any additional information the trainees need to know is communicated to them, informing the office of staff development of the training for their records and also for catering purposes (we offer a light snack for every training that takes more than three hours), analyzing the training reports and where intervention is needed doing so promptly, reporting back to the office of staff development as well us updating our databases of the people who have attended training and most important that the training actually takes place. There are also elaborate procedures and steps that we follow in putting forward feature requests and reporting bugs to the technical departments. Other methods for success include proper documentation, sound project management, team and capacity building and marketing.

On the documentation, we create a report of each and every training, consultation, meetings with stakeholders, and things that arise during our course of duty. Also, at the end of every week, we prepare personal reports detailing out every major task that we have done, and its status. The personal reports are usually divided into administrative tasks, training, meetings, consultations, technical and seminars. These reports helps us in sharing of tasks and also when we need to do an audit of the capacity within the team. In addition, we prepare monthly reports with an audit of all the activities that have been taking place.

The eLearning division is small compared to the demands of our clients. Good project management and planing is essential. Over the last year, we have been having a number of special academic projects (also as part of our marketing) going on. These projects had an overwhelming demand for our support and its only through good project management we managed to deliver. Due to the success rates of the projects, next year we have many more projects lined up. For next year too, only proper management of our training and support will make us succeed.

Continuous team and capacity building takes place during our "Capacity Building Sessions" every Friday afternoon. During these sessions, we hold our division's meeting and a team member does a training/demonstration of some of the talents or skills she/he has for the benefits of all the other members. Also, as part of the capacity building, members are encourage to attend conferences and seminars on eLearning.

Marketing and changing of mindsets is very important. We have to convert the traditionalists to use eLearning. Our approach to marketing reach-one reach-all. When a lecturer shows interest in using eLearning, we encourage him/her to setup a project. In this project, we offer all the necessary resources, support and training. We work to make sure that the project is a success. Once this project is successful, we ask the academic, now the champion to lobby within his/her department. The champion schedules and invites us for a meeting with the department. During these meetings we
informally discuss the fears, expectations, promises, challenges, etc of eLearning with the academics. It offers us a chance to not only listen to our potential clients but also to know them. This of late has been driven by the successes that have been reported by other departments. We also offer incentives in the form of laptops to the champions.

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The Role of Training and Support in eLearning Success Part II

I start this part with a quote from Micheal Fledstein's Blog, a reflection/reaction posted by Stephen on an article appearing on the Communication of the ACM. The blog article's title is "The Sesame Street Syndrome".

In the final paragraph Stephen notes

The misuse (or not) of technology in lectures is merely a symptom of a wider malaise in university teaching. Giving academics a “fair fight” must mean giving them all of the resources, training, time and support needed to be effective teachers, not just the bare minimum needed to be
boring lecturers.

The fair fight being quoted here arises from the perceived lack of control of the learning process by academics. It is seen as a problem when students are using the wireless technology in the classroom to do things that are totally unrelated to what the academic is offering.

Our approach to giving the academics a "fair fight" is training them for a mind-set shift. From seeing students as only passive recipients of knowledge to seeing them as active creators of knowledge. Training them to pass the control of the learning process to the students (the shift from the sage on stage to the guide on the side).

Training and Support
On training, the eLearning division in liaison with the office of staff development sends out monthly training schedules. The training times are varied and flexible to cater for the different timings and
schedules of the target client. On timing we have main training scheduled between 9.00-12.00 and 2.00-4.30 on weekdays, lunchtimes on Wednesdays (except when we have an elearning seminars). We only offer student training on request from the lecturers although we do a 10-15 minutes demonstration on how to navigate the eLearning site, on invitation to the lecturers' lectures. In the training, we have included other components like image editing. Image editing was introduced when we discovered that our clients needed to use graphics but they did not know how to scale them for the web.

The characteristics and strategies of the support that we give are:

• On-time - We have an email address accessible to all members of the team where the campus community contacts us on. During office hours, a request is processed within the hour it is received. During weekends however, response may take sometimes but occasionally there is someone within the team who checks the emails. We also have a support telephone line that is maned always during working hours. In addition, the ICS helpdesk forwards to us all requests from the campus community that are related to eLearning. Our on-time support makes sure that we build and maintain a level of confidence with the stakeholders that -"we are with you throughout the learning process".
  
  
• Clarifying the issues with users. It is important as a support division to understand what the users' concerns are. In the support environment we at times receive calls that we do not understand for example we receive call that the "eLearning site is not working", at a time when we are using it. We therefore, have to understand what the users' mean by and their perception of what is "not working". In some cases we find that the users have an incorrect url, or there are settings within their computers that are not properly set, or the network is not working from their offices among others. In line with clarifying the issues with the users, we show the them alternatives that exist - without over-burdening or confusing them. Again, we reassure the users that we are with them and update them regularly on the issues they have raised.
  
• 
  We also provide timely follow-ups to find out how the academics who have attended training, and showed interest in using eLearning are doing. The follow-ups are mainly on email. During this follow-ups we have found out that some academics at times get stuck and do not know how to ask for assistance.
  
• Apart from the academics, we provide student training and support. This is critical for the success of eLearning as students are the recipients and main consumers of the eLearning products. It is a cumbersome process but manageable.

Apart from the training, we have departmental visits where on invitation by eLearning champions in the departments, we go to introduce eLearning to the departments. This visits are not so detailed in nature, but we use them to informally discuss the fears, expectations, promises, challenges, etc of eLearning. It offers us a chance to not only listen to our potential clients but also to know them. This of late has been driven by the successes that have been reported by other departments.

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