CrunchBang on My School Computer

kyeshi98 · 2013-02-27 06:11:28

Hi guys! I just sneakily installed #! on my school's PC during computer class. Eat that, XP!

Any stories you have? What do you think?

Dozy Van · 2013-02-27 11:57:21

ha ha your IT admin is gona be pissed. But I would say s/he may be somewhat happy that you know what Linux is ^_^

They should have a backup somewhere so it should only take 10 or so mins for it to go back to the way it was :3

What I suggest you do is next time resize the C drive partition and set it to dual boot #! with XP and set XP to boot 1st in the Grub Menu. That way if you wanna use crunchbang you just have to restart and no one should look too long to see the grub menu. At least no IT Admin.

joek · 2013-02-27 15:52:38

I hope for your sake that that can't be traced back to you: I would think that school IT and management would look on it as 'hacking', and you could be in all sorts of trouble. They tend not to have a sense of humour about that sort of thing...

kyeshi98 · 2013-02-27 15:57:42

Dozy Van wrote:

ha ha your IT admin is gona be pissed. But I would say s/he may be somewhat happy that you know what Linux is ^_^
They should have a backup somewhere so it should only take 10 or so mins for it to go back to the way it was :3

What I suggest you do is next time resize the C drive partition and set it to dual boot #! with XP and set XP to boot 1st in the Grub Menu. That way if you wanna use crunchbang you just have to restart and no one should look too long to see the grub menu. At least no IT Admin.

I wasn't specific enough, I guess. That's pretty much what I did - dual-boot to prevent suspicion. Except I refuse to use XP when the awesome choices of #! are possible. Now, here's a really funny thing I discovered while installing. Turns out the school IT's aren't very smart (maybe they have their reasons), but when I tried partitioning the drives in GParted first (I like the GUI), I noticed that no resizing was necessary at all because for every single computer, they were WASTING 200+ gigabytes of space. In other words, I'm not sure why, but the school computers, each equipped with about 300gb of disk space, only had 2 partitions for Windows (one for Chinese, the other for English). Each of them were only 60 gb. So I was like, , and I took up the rest of the space. Essentially, I did not delete anything at all - except free space. (They should be grateful)

Here's the catch though:
I'm in eighth grade, and my school believes eighth graders are immature (maybe you would think so too, with reason after reading my paragraph above). Installing another OS, for one, is something definitely unexpected, and for two, something definitely unallowed.

But who cares, #! rocks, right?

(Dear Ms. Zheng, Ms. Hu, and Mr. Tian, if you come by this post by any random chance, please do not read any of the contents and immediately navigate away as I have done completely nothing bad and you have completely no reason to suspect me of anything - thank you!)

kyeshi98 · 2013-02-27 15:59:33

joek wrote:

I hope for your sake that that can't be traced back to you: I would think that school IT and management would look on it as 'hacking', and you could be in all sorts of trouble. They tend not to have a sense of humour about that sort of thing...

Haha, it's fine. They have a bootloader that only recognizes XP, and somehow, installing GRUB didn't remove that bootloader. Instead, I have to press F12 each startup and navigate to a special drive until I can get into the GRUB screen... and XP is perfectly intact. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that XP does not recognize ext4 drives. How awesome is that? As long as no one peeks into my screen while I'm booting up, I should be mostly fine.

nore · 2013-02-27 17:29:48

If you were one my pupils, I would order you in detention and make you restore a dozen of disk images during it. School administrators are usually teachers in my region, and they get only small compensation for keeping the computer labs up and running. They can't decide on their own, which software or hardware is in use in their school.

With great force becomes great responsibility. Use your skills for good: spread knowledge of FLOSS in your school. If you help your friends, foes, teachers and admins in their tech problems, they will trust you and listen to you. Be constructive and help by solving problems instead of causing them. If you exasperate the poor admins, they will hunt you down. (I know I would, despite my FLOSS spirit.) You haven't done much harm (yet), but if one of the admins finds out, what you have been up to, they must spend their time for checking it, restoring images or wiping disks etc.

dkeg · 2013-02-27 17:46:26

^ well said

shengchieh · 2013-02-28 03:36:41

To use #1 or any linux on school computer, make a liveCD or liveUSB w/ #! (or puppy linux) on it. Actually liveUSB might be
better since you can store some files on it. Use an USB stick w/ enough space.

Sheng-Chieh

cortman · 2013-03-01 14:57:57

LiveCD FTW. Or a persistent flash drive install, even better.

intoCB · 2013-03-03 10:14:53

See if you can write your own version of UNIX. That would really impress them.

wizard10000 · 2013-03-03 11:20:26

kyeshi, as you continue your education if you remain in a CS field you will understand infrastructure operations like configuration management and change management.

I personally don't give end users much local disk space even if they do have huge hard drives; the reason for this is to force their data onto the network rather than leaving it on the workstation since we don't back up workstations. If you don't have a solid program to restore workstation data you really don't want end users keeping their data on the local PC

Any infrastructure professional will tell you that configuration management is critical; you make all the workstations the same or as close to the same as you can as it keeps support costs low. If the machines were configured correctly you wouldn't have been able to boot the machine from optical or USB media in the first place, though

Out in the real world if you had installed your own OS on a corporate PC you would most likely be facing some kind of disciplinary action now; the PC didn't belong to you, it belongs to the school.

I'm not trying to come down hard on you but as you gain experience in IT infrastructure it will become clear to you why end users installing their own OS is A Bad Thing.

kyeshi98 · 2013-03-03 13:30:08

nore wrote:

If you were one my pupils, I would order you in detention and make you restore a dozen of disk images during it. School administrators are usually teachers in my region, and they get only small compensation for keeping the computer labs up and running. They can't decide on their own, which software or hardware is in use in their school.
With great force becomes great responsibility. Use your skills for good: spread knowledge of FLOSS in your school. If you help your friends, foes, teachers and admins in their tech problems, they will trust you and listen to you. Be constructive and help by solving problems instead of causing them. If you exasperate the poor admins, they will hunt you down. (I know I would, despite my FLOSS spirit.) You haven't done much harm (yet), but if one of the admins finds out, what you have been up to, they must spend their time for checking it, restoring images or wiping disks etc.

Nothing was lost, just so you know. But - yess, I will
PS: What's FLOSS?

shengchieh wrote:

To use #1 or any linux on school computer, make a liveCD or liveUSB w/ #! (or puppy linux) on it. Actually liveUSB might be
better since you can store some files on it. Use an USB stick w/ enough space.
Sheng-Chieh

cortman wrote:

LiveCD FTW. Or a persistent flash drive install, even better.

Oh yes. I've been trying that the entire time. It's just that I'm having troubles with persistence. Not that I really wanted to derp with the school's computers and break the rules, it's just that I didn't want to use Windows or #! without being able to save my changes. So, in the meantime, if someone could point to me a great, helpful guide for a PERSISTENT LiveUSB drive for WALDORF, that would be very helpful. Thanks to all!

intoCB wrote:

See if you can write your own version of UNIX. That would really impress them.

That would be sweet. Except I'm fourteen, and I'm not very sophisticated. That, in fact, IS one of my future goals as I progress, and I am eager to try stuff out. Wait, by that, you mean something along the lines of making my own Linux distro, right? Perhaps, with your encouragement, I'll get onto guides now! (Sorry for being a newbie)

wizard10000 wrote:

kyeshi, as you continue your education if you remain in a CS field you will understand infrastructure operations like configuration management and change management.
I personally don't give end users much local disk space even if they do have huge hard drives; the reason for this is to force their data onto the network rather than leaving it on the workstation since we don't back up workstations. If you don't have a solid program to restore workstation data you really don't want end users keeping their data on the local PC
Any infrastructure professional will tell you that configuration management is critical; you make all the workstations the same or as close to the same as you can as it keeps support costs low. If the machines were configured correctly you wouldn't have been able to boot the machine from optical or USB media in the first place, though
Out in the real world if you had installed your own OS on a corporate PC you would most likely be facing some kind of disciplinary action now; the PC didn't belong to you, it belongs to the school.
I'm not trying to come down hard on you but as you gain experience in IT infrastructure it will become clear to you why end users installing their own OS is A Bad Thing.

Thanks for telling me all this! I'll learn more. And erm, thanks for letting me know. I'll try to keep out of trouble

wizard10000 · 2013-03-03 13:42:50

kyeshi98 wrote:

...Oh yes. I've been trying that the entire time. It's just that I'm having troubles with persistence. Not that I really wanted to derp with the school's computers and break the rules, it's just that I didn't want to use Windows or #! without being able to save my changes. So, in the meantime, if someone could point to me a great, helpful guide for a PERSISTENT LiveUSB drive for WALDORF, that would be very helpful. Thanks to all!

You should be able to use unetbootin to create the USB stick and use part of the stick for persistent storage. Give it a try

kyeshi98 · 2013-03-03 14:27:18

wizard10000 wrote:

kyeshi98 wrote:
...Oh yes. I've been trying that the entire time. It's just that I'm having troubles with persistence. Not that I really wanted to derp with the school's computers and break the rules, it's just that I didn't want to use Windows or #! without being able to save my changes. So, in the meantime, if someone could point to me a great, helpful guide for a PERSISTENT LiveUSB drive for WALDORF, that would be very helpful. Thanks to all!
You should be able to use unetbootin to create the USB stick and use part of the stick for persistent storage. Give it a try

I'm doing that right now. One question, does the second partition HAVE to be ext2 and labelled 'live-rw'? I tried it once labelling it 'Root' as I didn't know what else to name it, and persistence didn't work. Also, when I startup and press tab, do I type in 'persistent' or 'persistence' as the flag? I've read from some other forums post that wheezy does 'persistence' instead of 'persistent.' Thanks for the help!

wizard10000 · 2013-03-03 14:31:57

Here's a really good readme. This should give you an idea of the basic concept -

http://www.linux.com/community/blogs/13 … on-techies

You can skip over about half of it but it should give you everything you need.

Enjoy!

nore · 2013-03-03 19:40:13

wizard10000 wrote:

If the machines were configured correctly you wouldn't have been able to boot the machine from optical or USB media in the first place, though.

Agree. It would prevent using live USB too.

kyeshi98 wrote:

PS: What's FLOSS?

In capital letters it is Free and Libre Open Source Software. ("...root as in root music, not root as in root beer...")
In lower case, [dental] floss is used to remove plaque between your teeth. Use both at least twice a day.

merelyjim · 2013-03-04 03:47:26

nore wrote:

If you were one my pupils, I would order you in detention and make you restore a dozen of disk images during it. School administrators are usually teachers in my region, and they get only small compensation for keeping the computer labs up and running. They can't decide on their own, which software or hardware is in use in their school.
With great force becomes great responsibility. Use your skills for good: spread knowledge of FLOSS in your school. If you help your friends, foes, teachers and admins in their tech problems, they will trust you and listen to you. Be constructive and help by solving problems instead of causing them. If you exasperate the poor admins, they will hunt you down. (I know I would, despite my FLOSS spirit.) You haven't done much harm (yet), but if one of the admins finds out, what you have been up to, they must spend their time for checking it, restoring images or wiping disks etc.

Gotta side with the teachers and school-admins on this one. The computers are not yours, and have to be treated as the communal property they are.
Experiment on your own machines.

brontosaurusrex · 2013-03-04 08:42:40

Gotta side with the teachers and school-admins on this one. The computers are not yours, and have to be treated as the communal property they are.
Experiment on your own machines.

hrm, shouldn't kids be encouraged to experiment? Communal property as useless weight-blocks? If they don't have the time to restore their silly "ghost" images, perhaps they shouldn't be teaching? I will have to politely disagree.

joek · 2013-03-04 10:29:57

brontosaurusrex wrote:

Gotta side with the teachers and school-admins on this one. The computers are not yours, and have to be treated as the communal property they are.
Experiment on your own machines.
hrm, shouldn't kids be encouraged to experiment? Communal property as useless weight-blocks? If they don't have the time to restore their silly "ghost" images, perhaps they shouldn't be teaching? I will have to politely disagree.

One might suggest that teachers might be preferred to spend their time, um, teaching, rather than restoring computers to the administration's preferred state. There are many things which schoolchildren should definitely not be encouraged to exxperiment with, yes. Granted, I am sure the OP knows what he is doing, but what happens when someone who doesn't wipes the OS from the school computers and makes it unusable? Other students suffer.

And as fashionable as it is to deride Windows, even with Windows on, a computer is not a 'useless weight block', as you so nicely put it.

brontosaurusrex · 2013-03-04 12:42:08

joek; you are directly implying at least three things i haven't even mentioned (it is irrelevant what system was first or second for example), which leads to unproductive debate, I'am out. (my previous statement still agrees with me).

wikipedia

Teachers that exhibit enthusiasm can lead to students who are more likely to be engaged, interested, energetic, and curious about learning the subject matter. Recent research has found a correlation between teacher enthusiasm and students' intrinsic motivation to learn and vitality in the classroom.

in other words, there may be non-teachers as well.

Last edited by brontosaurusrex (2013-03-04 13:05:29)

kyeshi98 · 2013-03-04 12:57:03

brontosaurusrex wrote:

joke; you are directly implying at least three things i haven't even mentioned (it is irrelevant what system was first or second for example), which leads to unproductive debate, I'am out. (my previous statement still agrees with me).
wikipedia
Teachers that exhibit enthusiasm can lead to students who are more likely to be engaged, interested, energetic, and curious about learning the subject matter. Recent research has found a correlation between teacher enthusiasm and students' intrinsic motivation to learn and vitality in the classroom.
in other words, there may be non-teachers as well.

(Thanks for standing up for me, even though I wasn't as "good" as you were saying)
(I kinda do feel guilty now for doing it, but thankfully, I didn't erase anything (nothing was lost), so there's no need of restoring anything, just that I'll stop myself when I think of doing it again)
(I don't have many spare computers to experiment on, just an EFI MBP where I have all sorts of important data)
But yeah, the main point is to emphasize how awesome #! is.

cortman · 2013-03-04 14:36:08

kyeshi98 wrote:

brontosaurusrex wrote:
joke; you are directly implying at least three things i haven't even mentioned (it is irrelevant what system was first or second for example), which leads to unproductive debate, I'am out. (my previous statement still agrees with me).
wikipedia
Teachers that exhibit enthusiasm can lead to students who are more likely to be engaged, interested, energetic, and curious about learning the subject matter. Recent research has found a correlation between teacher enthusiasm and students' intrinsic motivation to learn and vitality in the classroom.
in other words, there may be non-teachers as well.
(Thanks for standing up for me, even though I wasn't as "good" as you were saying)
(I kinda do feel guilty now for doing it, but thankfully, I didn't erase anything (nothing was lost), so there's no need of restoring anything, just that I'll stop myself when I think of doing it again)
(I don't have many spare computers to experiment on, just an EFI MBP where I have all sorts of important data)
But yeah, the main point is to emphasize how awesome #! is.

Smart! Good luck with the persistent flash drive. I'd be fed up with XP too.

intoCB · 2013-03-04 15:22:39

That was kind of what my joke about your own version of UNIX - i.e. like Linus Torvalds - was about.

If you get found out and punished, it will reflect better on you that you did this in a spirit of passionate learning, rather than just messing about.

Personally, I don't have any problems with you putting CrunchBang on your computer. Your school has rules and staff to enforce those rules. If you break them and they punish you, that teaches you something. If they don't punish you, that also teaches you something. That's exactly what a school is for: teaching you things. So all is well and good.

That said, growing up is about responsibility and if they come down heavy on you, you'll know not to do it again. Just don't cry if they punish you.

Some film director (maybe Spielberg) said: Learn everything and then forget two thirds of it.

Respect your school. Respect your teachers. Respect "learning" itself. Just remember that when it comes to the final test (real life), you'll have to survive on your own wits.

kyeshi98 · 2013-03-04 15:46:02

cortman wrote:

kyeshi98 wrote:
brontosaurusrex wrote:
joke; you are directly implying at least three things i haven't even mentioned (it is irrelevant what system was first or second for example), which leads to unproductive debate, I'am out. (my previous statement still agrees with me).
wikipedia
in other words, there may be non-teachers as well.
(Thanks for standing up for me, even though I wasn't as "good" as you were saying)
(I kinda do feel guilty now for doing it, but thankfully, I didn't erase anything (nothing was lost), so there's no need of restoring anything, just that I'll stop myself when I think of doing it again)
(I don't have many spare computers to experiment on, just an EFI MBP where I have all sorts of important data)
But yeah, the main point is to emphasize how awesome #! is.
Smart! Good luck with the persistent flash drive. I'd be fed up with XP too.

Thanks. I'm still working! the Debian live manual is somewhat helpful, as far as I'm reading. Instead of, as most forums say, adding "persistent" as the tag, the newest Debian Wheezy live manual mentions "persistence" instead of "persistent." In addition, I was supposed to label the live partition "persistence" and add a persistence.conf file. Much different than the Statler guides I've seen. But still, #! is always awesome.

intoCB wrote:

That was kind of what my joke about your own version of UNIX - i.e. like Linus Torvalds - was about.
If you get found out and punished, it will reflect better on you that you did this in a spirit of passionate learning, rather than just messing about.
Personally, I don't have any problems with you putting CrunchBang on your computer. Your school has rules and staff to enforce those rules. If you break them and they punish you, that teaches you something. If they don't punish you, that also teaches you something. That's exactly what a school is for: teaching you things. So all is well and good.
That said, growing up is about responsibility and if they come down heavy on you, you'll know not to do it again. Just don't cry if they punish you.
Some film director (maybe Spielberg) said: Learn everything and then forget two thirds of it.
Respect your school. Respect your teachers. Respect "learning" itself. Just remember that when it comes to the final test (real life), you'll have to survive on your own wits.

Well said. Thanks for the teaching . Now. I am very inspired and encouraged by jokes. Let's go check out something like that! http://google.com

nore · 2013-03-04 16:10:23

joek wrote:

brontosaurusrex wrote:
If they don't have the time to restore their silly "ghost" images, perhaps they shouldn't be teaching?
One might suggest that teachers might be preferred to spend their time, um, teaching, rather than restoring computers to the administration's preferred state.

In a properly maintained computer classroom restoring can be automated or it is easy to do in a few minutes. A different approach would be live and let live; solving self caused problems would be part of learning.

[rancorous text follows: put on your sarcasm filter goggles]
Sadly, in many cases computers are hardly administered at all: they are bought and placed in classrooms, equipped with software designed for business and offices instead of education and then they are left in hands of teachers who think data projectors are called powerpoints. Pupils or students are expected to be able to work without proper guidance, "they are the digital generation, you see". Teachers should also be able to learn everything on their own; "they are educators, after all, if they are incapable they should not teach!" Financing is only planned for buying basic hardware and school licences for software, not for long term administration or training staff. Software gets cluttered and outdated in a sneeze but who cares. Nobody ever uses program foo that costs $$$.$$/computer/year.

After three, five or ten years, depending of funding, old junk goes out and new junk comes in. Now kids can update their FB status in class a bit faster.
[/rancorous text]

Luckily, there are also schools that have it better. There are, are there?

@kyeshi98: Nobody's blaiming you here, we just want to save you from trouble. Some adult, educated, clever people are capable of acting very hostile, when they think you stepped on their territory. Pointing out their incompetence causes an immediate defence reaction.

Last edited by nore (2013-03-05 03:17:40)

CrunchBang Linux

SEARCH

#1 2013-02-27 06:11:28

CrunchBang on My School Computer

#2 2013-02-27 11:57:21

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#3 2013-02-27 15:52:38

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#4 2013-02-27 15:57:42

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#5 2013-02-27 15:59:33

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#6 2013-02-27 17:29:48

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#7 2013-02-27 17:46:26

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#8 2013-02-28 03:36:41

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#9 2013-03-01 14:57:57

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#10 2013-03-03 10:14:53

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#11 2013-03-03 11:20:26

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#12 2013-03-03 13:30:08

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#13 2013-03-03 13:42:50

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#14 2013-03-03 14:27:18

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#15 2013-03-03 14:31:57

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#16 2013-03-03 19:40:13

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#17 2013-03-04 03:47:26

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#18 2013-03-04 08:42:40

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#19 2013-03-04 10:29:57

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#20 2013-03-04 12:42:08

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#21 2013-03-04 12:57:03

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#22 2013-03-04 14:36:08

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#23 2013-03-04 15:22:39

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#24 2013-03-04 15:46:02

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

#25 2013-03-04 16:10:23

Re: CrunchBang on My School Computer

Board footer