Supporting a Windows XP/Red Hat Linux dual boot environment

Customers of public computing sites and faculty who use the public computer classrooms to teach want diversity in computing. Inevitably, there's a group that does not want to teach exclusively using Windows, or the industry they are teaching about is not Windows based. To accommodate those customers, Information Technology at Arizona State University's (ASU) East Campus supports a Windows/Linux Dual Boot Environment in several classrooms.This paper will examine the Linux public computing environment, how it works, how it is secured, how it utilizes the same central authentication and shared customer specific file space as the Windows and Macintosh clients, the challenges of supporting it, and what it provides that the Windows side cannot. This paper will also examine why faculty use it as a teaching tool versus using Windows exclusively.