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Software Monoculture in Schools?
The World Is Not Microsoft asks: "I've been worried by changes my school has made over the past year or so to the general computer setup we have. The school is a City Technology College, and as a result of this there are an abundance of computers around the building which everyone is free to use. When I first started there (almost six years ago now) there were approximately even numbers of Windows and Mac machines. As happens over time these machines got out of date and had to be replaced, and the school has spent a lot of money buying replacements. What I'm bothered about is that when they did this they completely eliminated the Mac population, and by the time school starts again in September the only machines we will have will either be Windows 98 or Windows 2000. What's the situation like in other schools? Is everyone else completely locked into Microsoft like we are?"
"There have been security problems with these systems in the past (mostly IE toolbars which requested content from sites which were blocked by the content filters, which caused problems for everyone), and with all the recent IE security problems I'm surprised that the people in charge aren't considering alternative systems (I know Linux would be too much to ask, but rolling out some OS X machines would be good). In addition to this, those who actually study ICT are required to use MS Office for spreadsheet and database tasks; no OpenOffice allowed."
Seriously.. Rebel! Grab yourself a Knoppix CD and outperform everyone else. Now, you have to be smart about this. It'll probably involve some after-school time practicing and making sure you can do absolutely everything your particular course requires without problems. Knoppix by itself is a very eye-appealing distro but you can do some things to spruce it up (i.e. School logo's where appropriate. Set proper homepages. Setup any printers and other networking quirks.) Having the one computer in the class that looks the nicest will quickly draw the attention of your fellow stu^H^H^Hrebels.
:). The fact that it is something you "shouldn't" be doing will only help you here.
:) Just don't ask them for support when your sound stops working.
Now, Your teachers depending on their level of expertise will probably either ask you to remove that theme or actually wonder what the heck is going on. This can be a good thing if your teachers are smart - getting them to join the rebellion will help you in your fight.
Now, this being a technical school of sorts, you probably have other enlightened persons hanging around. Polish your CD up a bit, make a funky logo to print on it and start handing it out to your fellow rebels. Having 3-4 people in a class running something different will immediately draw the attention of everyone else in the classroom (the innate nature of teenagers to all be different in roughly the same way
Now, you have a few possible endgame scenarios. First off, the administration can come down hard on you for violating their acceptable use policy. Not much you can do in this case without ending up as a martyr.
Secondly, you could get the teachers more or less on your side. As long as you get your work done, they shouldn't have much of a problem. The more converts you get, the more points you score
Finally you could achieve total victory against the software monopolist throughout the galaxy (or at least your classroom). This is when every student carries around his/her own Knoppix CD or you get a Linux-based installation on a few computers. This is a tough one, but you can always shoot for it.
So my advice is don't try and convince anyone. Show them that you can do the same job faster, cheaper, better, and somehow learn more out of it. Administrators like the first three benefits, and teachers especially like that last bit!
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When you can pick up a cheap windows desktop for $500, its hard to justify a Mac.
If you've ever used and tried to maintain a $500 cheap Windows desktop, it's hard to justify not using a Mac.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's cheap, can be locked up neatly, and doesn't require hardware prone to theft.
All the single function machines on our campus (like the library catalogue) run KDE/Konqueror in Kiosk mode now, because the cost per unit is >>$200+screens.
Multi use machines are migrating to dual boot to allow the curious to get some experience and to get infrastructure sorted out, at the cost of about a week of two people's time. Compare and contrast to hardware migration cost. (Replaced machines just get the dual boot image, no fuss.)
Eventually when apps are deamed feature complete for 90% of use the default will be switched to Linux. It might take a while, but it can be done slowly, and if a urgent move is ever required (hello, licensing 7?) it'll all be in place and ready to go.
Beep beep.
I work at a small college, there are 3 of us in the IS dept, and probably about 1000 students. We buy dells for the reason you blame them for, their cheap, however there optiplex line is all hardware compatible. Meaning, if I order a GX270 at the start of the year, at the end of the year, I can still order the GX270 with the same parts.. (most companies will change the sound card, or no longer offer the same motherboard chipset, something small like that.) Because were a small college, I use Symantec ghost constantly. I've even tought the LRC staff how to force a machine to re-ghost itself over the network, without any intervention. (The click a button, and put in a password) Saves alot of time compared compared to them submitting a support case becuase "its broken" and me slogging over to that building and finding theres just a bunch of spyware..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
At my LARGE public university, we have a few mac labs... maybe 3-4 out of around 50. We do have an active mac user group... but it seems to me.. that macs are losing out. Especially as ppl dont understand how to use macs or they dont want to. Surprisingly scary!!! I work in our campus labs... and I see that ppl would rather not use a comp than use macs.
:(.
On top of that... MS sells us win XP for like 5$ whereas apple sells us panther for 50$ (Through the school). As a result... most ppl buy win XP pro and use that as it is much cheaper. These guys now get used to windows... and viola... they're not gonna buy macs. Apple got it right with its 1984 ad. Big Brother IS out there trying to control your mind.
I also believe that mac OS 9 put off a lot of ppl. A lot of my classmates hated mac os 9. So, they'd rather not try out mac OS 10.3 (SO AWESOOOME) because they do not trust the mac OS anymore.
There is hope, however. I feel macs are a more personal computer type of computer. You get pretty possessive abt them:). so.. putting them in labs.. and asking ppl to share them... seems so wrong:-D
The University of Washington (when speaking of their general computing lab) has a considerable amount of Macs (G5 Towers) but 3 times as many PCs (Dell). This makes the most sense anyway; during 'rush hours', they PCs ALWAYS fill up first.
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Thankfully, I don't generally care which I use (well, since Mac OS X came around).
Here's a web site with the UW's tech specs for various labs: http://depts.washington.edu/sacg/facilities/labs/
But universities don't buy cheap $500 PCs. Working at a university I see whole departments overhaul their computers every two years with brand new Dells. Do they need them? Nope. A little spring cleaning would make them work just fine, but no, they need new computers with all the bells and whistles just to use Word, Excel, and Outlook. Dell has a great scam going with huge markups for these institutional PCs.
Yes, a home user or even a student can buy a brand new PC for $500, but for some reason universities feel they need to buy new monitors with their old (2 year) PCs, add a brand new burner instead of taking the old one out and swapping it in a new machine etc. Student discounts are great, but the university does not get these. They think they do, but they don't.
...by people in charge of budget.
They use Excel, Access, Word, Powerpoint and Internet Explorer all day, curse "the hackers" responsible for their computer's failings and pay MS like they pay their utility bills, for another essential facility.
They regard Windows as a standard.
At MyCorp, the training rooms are full of Windows boxes. But the hardcore technical people use Mac laptops that give them applications "that just work", full UNIX, and compatibility with the beancounters that send them MS file formats. Lately, various directors and VP's have been getting Mac laptops, too.
It'll be interesting to see how far down the corporate hierarchy Macs migrate: the managers acquire some cachet by mimicking the choice of IT professionals, but if their secretaries and training rooms start to fill up with Macs the exclusivity will have worn off. OTOH, aspiring middle-level managers will want to keep up with the big cheeses...
"Provided by the management for your protection."
What do Macs do for Science and Engineering that would justify spending the money on them? They're great for desktop users but they're simply not designed to be "special" for science and engineering. Right now top 40 CS school is split between x86's running redhat and sun machine's. Starting next fall they are probably going to be phasing out the sun's for either more redhat machines OR FreeBSD (yep...really looks like *BSD is dying for all you haters).
And perhaps you should rethink your entire logic about those educational discounts, dell offers them too, that completely negates your point. I worked for a university tech support program, and we could get a half dozen dells for the price of a single mac -- even with the discount.
Finally, on top of working for my university tech support (a school of near 40,000 students) who did have a few macs solely for the sake of troubleshooting for students with macs, I've worked for one of the top 3 financial software makers in the world (give you a hint, either SAP, Oracle or Peoplesoft), and one of the top pharmaceutical companies in the country in their IT dept. I've not once, note even ONCE, seen a mac. So get off your high horse about real companies use macs. It's entirely preference.
I work at a state university where the largest campus lab (over 120 seats) are 20" iMacs. The lab is on a 2 year upgrade schedule, and the other mac labs on campus (another 140 or so seats total) are on a 3 year upgrade schedule. We have G5's, new iMac's or G4 towers (with cinema displays) in all the public labs. OS X is standard (Panther after this summer).
The PC's (I'm talking labs, not faculty or department setups) on campus probably double the Mac's as there is not one mac in the Business school (maybe 200 PC's), and PC's usually are next to major mac labs.
We have a few people very high up on the IT pecking order who push hard for Apple, and we keep the technology cutting edge to stay relevant. Also high-tech media labs that do video, music and graphics really need a top of the line mac setup (industry standard), which gives mac os a foothold on campus.
As I mentioned in a previous reply, we are 75% Macs at Alma College. Yes, Macs cost more initially, so why do we use them? Return on investment (ROI). I maintain 400 Macs and rarely have any work to do and my customers are happy. My windows counterpart (whose customers are mostly administrative staff running windows apps) maintains 150 PCs, is swamped with work, and the customers are disgruntled.
That $500 difference between a PC and a Mac is quickly reduced when you take into account reduced productivity, OS crashes, spyware, viruses, and the other multiplitude of crap when dealing with windows.
Yes, I must confess. I was a windows fanatic before I started this job supporting the Macs. Some windows people may see me as "a wierdo", but I consider myself to have become "enlightened."
My customers have almost no problems and they're happy campers. There are some things money just can't buy when you try to skimp by buying a cheap PC.
Of course thats in a fantasy land where IT budgets are well funded. When I worked at a mid sized university (15,000 students), our IT budgets were often "Zero" and the management/staff would constantly demand new services and features. My main servers ran at a load average of 4 - 5 (an insanely high load average).
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Macs don't play well with PC networks, even with OS X on them. As we are implelmenting things like Active Directory,...
Your choices for network infrastructure are the reason "Macs don't play well," which weakens most of your points. Why not choose open standards like NFS, LDAP, IMAP, etc.? Even samba can be useful across UNIX and Windows machines. You could have a Sun Fire server, a Linux server, a Mac server, whatever, and the other computers on the network would really not care one bit.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
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A car that breaks often and is easy to replace or a car that doesn't break. I know which one saves me more money in the long run. Rememeber that as an IS guy, your time is money. If every computer in your shop could, at any moment, have to be reghosted, then you're probably wasting a lot of money as opposed to setting the machine up once and letting it run for longer periods without human intervention.
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Ah, the IT/IS guy time issue. Look at the second word in "Information Service". The IS team provides a SERVICE. If the users need to be able to use Word in a Windows environment, then you give them that. Try to make it as stable as possible. That may require ghosting hard drive from time to time.
I used to agree with you, telling people, "Just install Linux and everything will be great." Then I worked at an IT help desk at a major university and saw what happens when you do something like this. We had a room full of X terminals hooked up to an AS/400. In the consulting office, there were four PCs that people could use to print. The X terminals almost never crashed. The PCs had to be rebooted almost hourly. Try to guess which computers people were fighting to use.
In my last year, they switched the lab over to PCs. Suddenly, the labs were full of people.
Life is life . . . everything else is just a stupid T-shirt slogan.
My students loved Linux. They could do more faster and more reliably. A gui is a gui. A gui that does not crash is better. Favourite apps were OpenOffice, the GIMP, and Mozilla. Students learned to set up simple servers in 5 minutes or less on some of the doorstops laying around. The grade 12 students set up dynamic webpages using LAMP. Not one student had a bad thing to say about Linux because they had seen what the other OS would do. They definitely had marketable skills and many of them are prepared to use computers more effectively at home and work because of Linux. Of course, they did express their opinions about their decrepit, old, ugly, over-the-hill teacher.
...put in a lab of 20 Mandrake Linux boxes for a special class centred around indigenous students. They loved it. They get extra street cred from their peers for using something different, and dragged other kids in to have a go.
The room's teacher hated it, because he only knew one system and this wasn't it. That caused immense problems when it came time for the school to pay for setup but doesn't appear to have hobbled the students at all.
In a related situation, I've just set up a Linux-and-thin-clients Internet not-cafe (can't call it a cafe 'coz it has no cafe licence) in a budget accommodation place in Perth. Some users whine about no IE (or no MIRC), most of them are delighted by the games and such. Many guests edit up things like CVs on OpenOffice Writer or KWord and never even notice that they're not using MS-Word. The only FAQ which causes them to blink is using Kopete for their Instant Messenger stuff, but the ones with accounts on several different IM providers are again delighted that they only need to run one program to deal with all of them. They also find having config tied to the user rather than the machine to be odd, but again are very happy with the implications (mostly privacy, permanency of storage (think Sheriff card), and not having to set up, tear down or otherwise muck around with settings every time on the way in and out).
Another local high school, not very far from where I live but which otherwise shall remain nameless, went from all-MS-clients all-Linux-servers to 100% MS sitewide on the advice of a Favoured Son. It cost them many hundreds of thousands of dollars and has yet to work properly. For the same amount of money as they've so far spent on that white elephant, they could have completely re-equipped the school at least twice over with brand new whitebox PCs running Linux.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...or anything else even slightly familiar to the users.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
So our optimum solution is this: Each location will have one or more Windows 2K3 Terminal Servers (for Windows-specific apps) and one or more Linux Terminal Services Servers (LTSP and TAO-tc). The building file/print server is an Apple Xserve which can serve AFP/SMB/NFS home directories to all our clients. Those classes which need "special" computers (G5's for Graphics and Video, PCs for AutoCAD, etc.) get high-end standalone computers - everyone else gets a "thin-client".
The thin-clients net-boot off one of the Linux or Xserve boxes and start either an X-session with the LTSP server for a Gnome/KDE desktop (home directories NFS-mounted from the Xserve) or they start a full-screen rdesktop/rdp session to one of the Windows TS serves for Win2K3 desktops. You literally can't tell that it didn't just boot off the hard drive (except it only takes about 20 seconds).
So at each location (barring the few high-end standalones) we have maybe 2 windows servers to manage, secure and patch and maybe 1 or 2 Linux boxes to manage. All the clients have no moving parts and never need to be upgraded or touched - they are literally disposable. They get their configuration from our centralized dhcp server and all accounts are single-signon with kerberos through Active Directory (PeeCees won't play well with OpenLDAP :-\ ).
The only downside is that these workstations can't run the myriad mac software titles the schools have invested in. Our solution to that is to use the new CD-ROM-less eMacs. For $599 we have a bullet-proof all-in-one workstation that we net-boot off an Xserve to OS X. Home directories are auto-mounted on the desktop using Apple's Active Directory Plugin. For those users who want/need to access Linux software they can click an icon in the dock to open an X session to the Linux server and run Gnome full-screen. If they need to use windows apps they can click an icon and instantly have their desktop replaced with a windows RDP session. Same credentials, same home directories, same printers, cross-platform.
When it comes right down to it, the eMac as a terminal is the BEST choice. It can function as both a Linux and Windows desktop and run Mac apps as well and costs $599. An Intel-based thin-client costs about $200 plus a monitor ($150) = $350. It is about half the price and can "do" both Linux and Windows (and never needs to be replaced) it just can't run Mac Apps. Whereas a low-end Dell workstation with monitor runs about $600 + virus subscription + patchlink license = $630 and can ONLY run windows (I haven't found a good FREE X11 "client" app for windows yet). On top of that, assuming we don't turn it into an expensive thin-client in 4 years, it will have to be upgraded or replaced. Not to mention the headache and overhead administering stand-alone Windows boxes with their ad/spy/virus/warez problems. There's no contest.
My philosophy is you should use the best tool for the job. My primary workstation at work is a low-end Fedora Core 1 box. I don't need much because I always have multiple sessions going to the LTSP/WinTS servers (which are really fast). I also have a G4 TiBook with OS X for my mobile solution, because, again, I can literally open a fullscreen session to Linux or Windows as well as run ARD to admin Xserves.
Our students will graduate knowing how to use Macs, Linux and Windows, and be ready for ANY market. Meanwhile we are able to better manage and can afford to upgrade only a few servers. This will give our students and faculty a much better experience and, who knows, maybe even give them the courage to go home, blow away their windows box and install Linux.
Hey, it COULD happen :-)
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Yes, the school district I worked for paid about $1100 for each dell and maybe $200 for the software on each dell+support. But they also had to hire 26 part time technicians at about 20 grand a year. That is $520,000 a year just to pay the people to support the PCs. When the district was mostly/all macs, no school had a dedicated support technician, the teachers did all the fixing themselves.
The math didn't quite work out. Buy 200 macs for the district per year (rotating replacement schedule), maybe pay $200 more on each mac (not actually the case, they were cheaper up front), and by that math we would be spending $40,000 per year more for the mac hardware vs the $540,000 for dedicated people to support the Dells. Going with the Mac is a savings of half a million dollars. A half a million... Your tax dollars at work.
FWIW, the pay rate is not actually like that any more. They had to increase the hours to full time after the first experimental year. Part time just wasn't enough to support all the PCs at each school every day.
I installed the OS on a Del PPro machine in my basement in 1998, at the same time as I installed it in a new case to accomodate more hard drives. Right next to it is an AMD 5x86 system that I built out of used parts in 1996, and it's been running continuously since 1997 when I set up a new OS. It hasn't even been *rebooted* in 1.5 years, and that was because of a power failure. I have a color turbo NeXT station still running the NeXTStep install from the early 90's, and it works fine for webbrowsing and text editing, albeit a bit slowly. My wife's Win '98 box is 6 years old, on the second resintall of Win '98 from about 2 years ago.
I suppot Macs, windows machines, and Linux at work. Old MacOS is fine, as long as nothing goes wrong - then it can be difficult to find the problem. OS X is a little better, but still tries real hard to hid stuff. It's no more stable, properly configured, than a properly configured Win 2K box. The Linux machines, all on white-box hardware that I personally assembled (just like the windows machines) are all rock stable. However, most any of them can be made to run well if there's someone competent configuring them (and watching over them, in some cases).
I can build a white box system for under $500 that will perform comparably to a $1500 Mac. That gives me 3 full system replacements for the money, though if I go up to about $800 the components are mostly warranted for longer than the Mac and neither will probably fail, anyway. OS X is kinda nice on bleeding-edge hardware for people who don't have real work to do (ohh, look at the pretty transparent terminal and drop shadows!), but I'd rather spend the money on donuts.