Re: inquiry

[Matthew Palmer <mpalmer@debian.org>]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2004 at 04:47:03PM -0500, Warren Duclos wrote:
> I really find your website impressive.

It would help if you would tell us exactly which website you're referring
to.  I assume you're talking about http://www.debian.org/, or some site with
a debian.org suffix.

> Some of our students are getting into Linux and have inquired as to whether 
> I can provide an open Linux server for them to use to learn and experiment.

Well, that's easy enough to do.  I maintained a set of such systems for a
few years when I was at Uni.

> Can you or a colleague tell me:
> 
> 1. what is the relationship of the website to Yale?

http://www.debian.org <==> Yale the place of higher learning?  None that I'm
particularly aware of.  They might host a box or two for us, but they're not
listed on the Partners page.

> 2. what is the hardware you use to support the site?

The site www.debian.org is running on a dual Pentium III-700, 512MB of RAM. 
Info on all of the machines used by the project for various things can be
found at http://db.debian.org/machines.cgi.

> 3. who administers the site -- students of Yale?  or??

Volunteer administrators from around the world.  Some of them might be
students, for all I know some of them might not even be out of high school
yet.

> 4. how are costs covered -- what budget does it come out of?

Donations.  Some people donate money, which we spend on things that haven't
been donated in other ways.  A lot of the time people donate hardware, rack
space, or bandwidth.  And, as always, it's held together by people who
donate their time.

> Anything else that might help me prepare to initiate something like this 
> for the use of students -- would be appreciated.

Development of a free operating system?  You might like to perhaps encourage
your students to get involved with us, instead of reinventing the wheel.

If you're back to talking about your open-access educational server, I'd dig
up an unused machine on campus somewhere (I'm sure you'd have at least a GHz
machine going spare somewhere, talk to your tech guys), find someone with a
bit of Linux knowledge, and tell them to set it up as whatever sort of
server your students want.

- Matt