ICT education company DireqLearn has unveiled its Linux Terminal Server technology, which it says offers an affordable learning tool and is easy to secure against theft.
The OpenLab3-edu computing solution made its first public appearance at the "Innovation in Education" schools ICT conference, held at SA College School in Cape Town today.
According to DireqLearn, this follows two previous releases of DireqOpenLab since 2002. These releases are deployed in over 80 sites throughout SA, Namibia, Mauritius, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Kenya.
The system allows for the use of varied computer technologies, ranging from obsolete to state-of-the-art, in a diskless workstation configuration, designed to suit the education environment. The workstations boot off a pre-programmed network interface card, which circumvents the technical problems such as corrupt file systems and failures typically associated with local hard disk drives in school computer labs.
Computer facility security is a major problem that is overcome with this solution, says the company. All the workstations are diskless and therefore "softwareless". Should these workstations be stolen, they have low resale value on the black market.
The functionality and power of this system resides almost completely on the server, a powerful yet well-priced PC, with enough RAM and hard drive space to meet user and workstation needs, says the company. Security requirements and cost are reduced because it is only the server that needs to be fully secured, as that is where all functionality resides.
"You will be surprised at the new lease on life given to older PCs through this solution. Old PCs can perform as new, enabling schools with limited resources to bridge the digital divide," says Denis Brandjes, group MD of DireqLearn.
Brandjes says the solution, based on the open source software model, comes bundled with a range of relevant productivity applications including office applications software. OpenLab3 has a look and feel like that of other graphical desktops, he says.
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