From talking about construction of reverse osmosis filters to acting as a gentle catalyst for FOSS seems quite a big step. For Baxter, it all seems quite natural.

He says once Linux was shown to be capable of running Moodle without any problem, there was no need for any advocacy at Kyneton. "That convinced everyone that Linux just worked. Staff started asking me for things - Photo Gallery, Blog Site, Calendar, resource booking system. So I donated my old ML350 (dual P3) and installed phpGraphy (they just drop photos in a Samba-mounted drive), Wordpress MU (now hosting about 100 student blogs accessible from the web, so helping with privacy concerns) and Web Calendar (multiple calendars for subjects or activities).

"The end result of this is that my old school understands and appreciates FOSS and some teachers have started using it in the classroom," he says.

At home, he is a Mandriva user. "I use Mandriva 2008.1 as my desktop since it just suits me. I have tried almost all of the major distros but come back to Mandriva. It does annoy sometimes because there is a lot of extraneous rubbish that slows things down but it is easy to use. I use Mepis on my old laptop because it is not as resource hungry. For servers I use CentOS or RHEL. I have tried Debian but it doesn't do it for me. I know that isn't a very good answer but it's the best I can come up with. I can install and maintain a Debian system and Mepis is on a laptop but I find everything in Debian is just a little harder for me."

His use of Linux hasn't influenced his entire family. "My son uses both Windows and Linux. He's mainly into to WoW (World of Warcraft) and now that Is installed with CrossOver Office he does not use Windows much at all. Other family members believe that it is too hard to change."

Baxter enjoyed spending some of his spare time getting the school system going - that was his motivation. It all happened during his third year of teaching, at a time when he was on a very steep learning curve too. "It was the hardest job that I have tried. So when I needed to recharge the batteries I would sit in front of the keyboard and work away. I enjoy working with computers so the extra time I put in wasn't a burden."

And, he says, the target audience, the students, were mainly interested in the fact that things that worked. They didn't notice or didn't care that they weren't using Windows.

He has some advice for those who are thinking of taking the first steps in the introduction of FOSS into schools. "Try to find something that is happening in the school or about to happen that FOSS will make easier. I believe it is a waste of time to try to convert people to FOSS if the existing system suits what they want to do. Most people do not care about freedom or monopolies. They just want to do their job with the minimum of effort."

And he sees this as the main hurdle to the adoption of FOSS in schools.