On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 12:26:45PM +0200, Andrej Bauer wrote:
> I would use batteries and would recommend it to my students if there
> were any chance they would succeed installing it. In other words,
> batteries is too hard to install. This may not be so on Linux, but
> what about Windows (99% of my students use Windows only)?

Give them a live CD.

There are various online projects where you can create live CDs with a
custom set of packages via a webpage.[1]

A live CD is actually better than relying on them trying to install
something under Windows, because you're guaranteeing a consistent
environment.  And you can provide them with customized bits too (like
the coursework!)

If you provide the live CD as both a physical CD and a downloadable
ISO, they can even run it virtualized so they don't need to reboot.

Rich.

[1] Fedora's tool is command-line based: you can use
'appliance-creator' or 'livecd-creator'.

http://thincrust.org/ace-examples.html

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat