locking down the desktop

[Richard Doyle]

On Mon, 2008-01-21 at 08:01 -0800, btabor wrote:
> All students log in the same (see the same desktop).
> Then they can navigate to their network folders.
Why did you set things up this way? You wouldn't have overly cluttered
desktops if you'd used the default configuration, with separate desktops
for each user.

> Obviously, from your "do you make sure they wipe themselves properly"
> comment, you
> do not understand the importance of not letting hundreds of teenagers save
> whatever they
> want to their school desktops.
Our old lab used Windows 98 computers, which developed cluttered
Desktops until we installed DeepFreeze. This solved the clutter problem,
but created lots of other maintenance issues. The source of the clutter
problem was that the desktops belonged to the individual workstations,
and would accumulate debris as different students logged on and off.

Edubuntu is different. The desktop and its accumulated debris belongs to
the student, not the workstation. Some students keep messy desktops,
just as some students keep messy lockers. We lock down the menus and
background image, but don't attempt to control student desktops. It
works quite well.

>  I am very new to Linux and trying to learn as
> I go. I thought
> signing up for this listserve would be helpful, but if you are just going to
> poke fun......I am thinking
> that this might not have been a good idea.
Gavin is perhaps the most generous contributor of time and expertise to
this list. His comment was really quite mild, as such things go. A more
appropriate response would have been to either ignore the comment or
laugh it off. It is your responsibility to adapt to the culture of the
list, not the other way around.

>  I am just trying to figure things
> out and do the best
> I can. The high school computers with Edubuntu on them are looking a mess
> and everyone is
> complaining because the kids can save to the desktops, I was just trying to
> figure out a way to
> solve a problem that others have asked me to solve. If you feel the need to
> make insensitive comments, then I guess I am looking in the wrong place for
> answers.
That may be. Perhaps you should consider hiring someone to assist you.

> 
> 
> 
> Gavin McCullagh-3 wrote:
> > 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On Mon, 21 Jan 2008, btabor wrote:
> > 
> >> Students can save to their individual network folders if they need to
> >> save
> >> something.
> > 
> > Do they have accounts though, ie is this the user's own Desktop folder or
> > are they logged in as some sort of guest account?
> > 
> >> They are cluttering their desktops with "stuff" that they do not need at
> >> school (non educational).
> > 
> > Do you make sure they wipe themselves properly too?
> > 
> > You could just make the Desktop/ folder read-only and point firefox at
> > some
> > other directory (eg /tmp) for downloads.  This is stuff they can undo, but
> > it sounds like they probably just need steering away from the desktop.
> > It's difficult to make items in someone's home directory uneditable as
> > they
> > own the parent directory so they can always take ownership effectively if
> > they know what they're doing.
> > 
> >> I'm wandering if a deep-freeze type script would be the best way to go.
> >> Any thoughts?
> > 
> > I've no idea what that means.  You could just have a nightly script that
> > moves all files off the desktop into /tmp.
> > 
> > Gavin
> > 
> > 
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> > 
> 
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>