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Linux Win In Schools

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the back-to-school-with-tux dept.

Xaleth Nuada wrote to us about a Wired article that talks a school in Colorado choosing Linux over the traditional choices. The reason? Prohibitive costs for licensing, of course. The school's network is maintained by parental volunteers, and thanks to Linux, can be easily maintained remotely. And for what schools use computers for - primarily the Internet, it's a great solution.

3 of 456 comments (clear)

  1. Computer Literacy by Whyte+Wolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nice to see public schools moving towards a non-proprietary alternative to current software. Of course the reason for this now is budgetary concerns, but I can see a greater result--increased computer literacy.

    Its been my experience (as a web development instructor with a private post-secondary school) that teens these days, despite the stereotypes, actually posess less computer literacy than geeks of my generation.

    I learned DOS and UNIX on the command line. Windows and Mac will stunt your understanding of how a computer works, and make you think only of pushing around cute little icons. WIMP interfaces make people dumb. They can't understand how the computer works, so they end up relying on 'geeks' to fix their problems.

    Teach programming to everyone (Thanks to GvR) and teach kids a command line in school. Make them understand the technology that they'll use every day of their lives. Let our kids develop some computer savy and brains.

    --

    Beware the Whyte Wolf.

    With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels...

  2. Web browsing is not a strong point by Junks+Jerzey · · Score: 5, Redundant

    And for what schools use computers for - primarily the Internet, it's a great solution.

    If that includes web browsing, I disagree. Sadly, most of the technical benefits of Linux are cancelled out of the horrible web browsing software available for it. The Linux kernel beats Windows in any test imaginable, but in browser tests IE 5 walks over everthing else by a wide margin. Sure, you *can* browse with Opera or Navigator, but only if you're willing to accept that you won't be able to view a good number of sites correctly. (You can take the idealistic "I don't want to see those sites anyway" road, but not everyone does.

  3. Great... by krmt · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now we're going to have third graders screaming their heads off at each other about the merits of emacs vs. vi and Gnome vs. KDE!

    If you thought the arguments were juvenile and immature before, just wait until those first graders get /. accounts!

    --

    "I may not have morals, but I have standards."