how dumb is this idea?

[Patrick Flaherty]

Have you played with portable apps (http://portableapps.com/)? Libre office
works on windows and linux. Past that, maybe something hosted (like google
docs, but maybe a bit more Free).


On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 12:59 PM, David Rysdam <david at rysdam.org> wrote:

> My kids and I are 100% Linux at home. (My wife has a Mac, which none of
> us touch unless we absolutely have to.) At school, it is unfortunately
> obvious the kids use Windows. Also, starting in middle school, the
> school expects every kid to carry a USB drive back and forth so they can
> work on projects.
>
> I've had some problems providing support for this, to put it mildly. For
> something like a paper, the solution is obvious: write in plain text and
> dump into Word at the last minute. (The solution is obvious, but no
> child of mine has listened to me yet. That's something I don't think
> GNHLUG can help me with.) But for something like PowerPoint, the
> solution isn't so obvious. They have to be able to edit it in both
> places, during in-class work periods and as homework.
>
> I don't know what the school expects people to do if they can't afford
> Office at home.
>
> However, I just had an idea. You can get 128GB USB drives on ebay for
> ~$20 now. Why not install an emulator-based (as opposed to bootable)
> "live CD" image on there that they can then mount the rest of the USB
> drive with and edit their work in Linux *even at school*?
>
> They probably won't be able to get on the network with it, which is fine
> since the host Windows OS could handle that.
>
> Transferring documents (for printing, say) may be a problem, although I
> assume the live CD images somehow manage it. Oh wait, to reap the
> benefit you'd have to print *from Linux* which probably won't work even
> if you had the right printer driver set up. Well, print at home, I
> guess.
>
> I don't think security would be a problem unless there's now some way to
> prevent someone from starting an app off their USB drive.
>
> The only real issue I can think of horsepower: Does the school hardware
> have the oomph to support this hack? I'll have to ask my kids what the
> school has.
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-- 
* Patrick **Flaherty  *|
* w:* 978 983 6597      *e:* patrick.flaherty at weather.com
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