Darrin Sculley gave us a tour of the multi-seat Ubuntu Linux lab he put together for the Byron Center Christian School. What an incredible facility those kids have!
Darrin built each computer using parts purchased over the Internet. There are seven stations, each of which is equipped with a quad core AMD Phenom CPU, 8GB of RAM, two 32GB SSDs in RAID0, and four video cards. Each station drives four 23″ 1080p monitors, keyboards, and mice for four students. The use of large, slow fans in the computers keeps the ambient noise in the room incredibly low.
The multi-seat set-up is achieved via some complicated settings in X11 and GDM. This configuration makes better use of both computing resources and funds compared to the traditional one computer per student. In fact, Darrin estimates he saved $10,000 compared to a lab based on Windows and single-user computers.
Darrin has also re-tasked the school’s old P4 computers into an additional Ubuntu Linux lab.
Darrin has created a really nice facility at BCCS, which is even more impressive considering he’s only been working with Linux for nine months. Way to go!
