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OS options for computer hardware high school class - assistance and advice appreciated

chrisk

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Hey folks;
I'm currently teaching a computer hardware class (I was working at the Board office supporting eLearning since 2019 but my leave from the classroom expired and now I'm back and working to get things set up again as the course hasen't been taught in a while.)

I have some good activities that I do that has students taking off-lease machines apart and we also network them. these are PCs that have integrated graphics and would be about 10 years old. Intel, of various flavours of i5 typically.

Until 2018, for this course I actually used some enterprise Windows XP disks. The reasons I used them was that the license key I used didn't require any activation and the underlying activity (having students use DHCP, create and join a peer-to-peer workgroup, and then manually assigning IPs as a next step) all worked great and the students learned enough that they could easily go home and configure their home Windows environment with skills learned in class.

I'm looking for somewhat more updated options that would work in my specific use-case scenario.

Anyone have any advice that can help me meet these requirements:

1. OS that is free to use in my scenario and can be installed via optical disk or USB while not connected to the internet

2. License keys (if required) would need to be somewhat easily transferred as students may have to transition to a different workstation or use different motherboards, etc as they damage and replace parts.

3. Can't connect to the internet. I could, perhaps, hot-spot these off my own phone if needed if an activation is required but these machines cannot be connected to the school network to download updates and such

4. I would prefer a Windows-based option. I've not used Linux in about 15 years and I don't know much about it, particularly the networking stuff. That said, I'd like to have Windows as our base OS, with an option for some students to dual boot into something like Ubuntu as an enrichment activity


I think that's most of my requirements. These classes/students are not especially techy so keeping things relatively simple with options for some harder stuff for students who need it is the best way to go.

Feel free to reply here or send me a DM if that's better for you. Many thanks.
 

sswilson

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Windows 10 can be installed without activating it with (I believe) the biggest issue being that you can't change display/personalization options.

Trying to do anything these days without an internet connection is problematic though.... Drivers alone is something you'd want to teach folks about, but the days of driver disks are 10 years+ in the past.
 

chrisk

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Windows 10 can be installed without activating it with (I believe) the biggest issue being that you can't change display/personalization options.

Trying to do anything these days without an internet connection is problematic though.... Drivers alone is something you'd want to teach folks about, but the days of driver disks are 10 years+ in the past.

That's good to know. I'm not too worried about the personalization issue. Also, I can download drivers to disks/drives and bring to the class for students to use.
 

sswilson

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Windows 10 would be the obvious choice (vs W11) since W11 wouldn't natively install on older hardware.

Been a looonnnngggg time since I checked out Major Geeks, but they've got a list of "legit" short term keys....


I'm sure there are lots of other "resources" online of varying degrees of sketchiness.
 

chrisk

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Windows 10 would be the obvious choice (vs W11) since W11 wouldn't natively install on older hardware.

Been a looonnnngggg time since I checked out Major Geeks, but they've got a list of "legit" short term keys....


I'm sure there are lots of other "resources" online of varying degrees of sketchiness.
This might be exactly what i need :) Many thanks!
 

Izerous

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Because of what your doing I'd pre-make the installation media using Rufus instead of the windows media creation tool. Pretty sure Rufus can disable the requirement for an online account to allow for easier time doing a local account install. This will save some headakes durring the installations. There are ways around it with the windows media creation tool but microsoft is actively trying to make it harder and harder to execute and trying to force online microsoft accounts for installation.

Also your school IT representative should be able to create a VLAN for your class so your classroom can actually get online.
 

chrisk

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Because of what your doing I'd pre-make the installation media using Rufus instead of the windows media creation tool. Pretty sure Rufus can disable the requirement for an online account to allow for easier time doing a local account install. This will save some headakes durring the installations. There are ways around it with the windows media creation tool but microsoft is actively trying to make it harder and harder to execute and trying to force online microsoft accounts for installation.

Also your school IT representative should be able to create a VLAN for your class so your classroom can actually get online.
Ok I'd have to investigate this one as I was just reviewing the MS site on creating the ISO boot media.

I can say with 100% certainty that a VLAN isn't in the cards, sadly. I'm kinda lucky that I have what I have to do this :)
 

JD

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If the goal is to teach kids how to install Windows, then I would stick with Windows 10 for now at least. The process hasn't really changed since Windows 7 anyways, only the OOBE has. As far as I know, the Windows 10 install also has the "skip license key" button and should run fine for at least 30 days.

Using Windows 11 and "hacking" it kind of defeats the instructional side of your course I'd say. I would try to stick to official Microsoft processes.
 

gingerbee

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you can download the ISO for win10/11 with the media creation tool or just a direct download from MS and then use Rufus to build your Custom ISO.
 

Marzipan

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Windows 10, as everyone says, is the obvious choice...but you could also choose a Linux distro that would run well on that older hardware too. there are several options out there that have desktop environments (DE) that emulate Windows and Mac, to help make them a bit more familiar. Reddit has a great community called Linux4Noobs, perhaps check it out to get a better feel for your options. :)
 
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