NYCPHP Meetup

[John Lacey]

inforequest wrote:

> 
> More seriously, though, why is this better than a local knoppix or other 
> livelinux boot? Sure it's a contender for a persistent VPN to your own 
> Linux server (there are others and some free), but isn't knoppix locally 
> much faster and easier (no system administration once the ISO is set)?
> 

NX Serever is potentially better since the only thing the students need 
is a Windows box (with a downloaded NX client), which allows me to do a 
few interesting things since they are now in a terminal server session 
with my laptop.  I run many flavors of Linux (not all at once :) on top 
of VMware on a win2K laptop which is maxed at 1GB RAM.

You may or may not have an idea of what an instructor can run into when 
they walk into a class where the systems can be in god-knows-what-state, 
and they have a course to teach.  For example, I just finished a 
security tools course that featured the Knoppix-STD CD.  We were doing 
nessus vulnerability scans on desktops where Win2K was removed and XP 
and SP2 was installed between class meetings (with no warning) and were 
then locked down.  I can run several instances of win2k as well as 
windows 2000 server using VMware and work around problems like that.

And with NX Server, I can see a potential for User Mode Linux in 
certain student troubleshooting scenarios, where they have to work on a 
system that's "not theirs".

At this point, I'll end since my cat is staring at me wanting to be fed :)

John