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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 As happens over time these machines got out of date and had to be replaced, and the school has spent a lot of money buying replacements.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!
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
When you can pick up a cheap windows desktop for $500, its hard to justify a Mac. Jojo
your school website even has an MS colour scheme
;)
you're doomed, drop out now
When I first started there (almost six years ago now)...
Lane, I've been going to this high school for 7 and a half years. I'm no dummy.
I think you'll find the disproportionate number of Windows PCs is the direct result of MS' selfless donations to cash starved educational establishments. It's true altruism; the fact the children will grow up with no experience of anything other than MS products is a completely unintentional side effect, and must be a complete surprise to Bill and his merry men...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
At my office (elementary school), I'm stuck with a network made up of 98, 2K, and XP machines, and they're 95% Dell.
At UH-D, where I go to school, it's _all_ Dell and Windows XP or 2K unless you're in a high-level CS class and you've got Linux.
I blame Dell and their cheap, bulk PCs - sell them cheap, throw in Windows, ensure a monoculture and continued upgrades from their company.
On the plus side, they're now notoriously easy to reghost if something goes wrong.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
back in the days when Apple was the darling of the education field. Now that it's Microsoft, however, it's bad.
Strange.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
At my school (University of Regina) they are actually going in the opposite direction. When I started 3 years ago, all of the public computers were Windows 98 or Windows 2000 - Now they have a complete Linux lab, another restricted lab that is 50/50 between Mac and windows. I really thing that going towards open source is a good idea, just based on the cost of licensing both windows and macintosh OSes.
Windows is the more common system, and there are more applications, particularly educational applications. More hardware is supported, and people have more experience with Windows.
I fail to see why it's so surprising the school went to Windows. I have yet to come across a high school or college that wasn't this way.
Seriously, there was only one bad decision I can see here, and that was to go with windows, and I'm sure we can attribute this to laziness.
Financially, it makes more sense to ditch apple's stuff. It's considerably more expensive than pc hardware, and in your enviroment, I can't see a real use for it.
Once the decision was made to go with windows, the rest follow suit as common sense. Of course they are going to recommend against Open office, that's like adding moving parts to an already complicated machine.
Same with IE, to a limited extent. Through the use of group policies, I've managed to, at several sites, neuter it, to protect the users from themselves, and with a SUS server in place, their risk is effectively reduced. Not that I wouldn't love to hook them up on firefox and the like, but some customers won't even consider the possibility.
So..yay for entropy.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Where I went to school, almost every machine outside of the CompSci dept was a PC/Windows machine. In the compsci dept there were a number of linux, unix and pc workstations. Of course I went to a science and engineering school, which explains the lack of Macs. I think the Metalurgy department had some Macs as there were a few met programs that we Mac based. Also, the mining & geology departments had some old unix workstations that they were replacing with linux and windows 2000.
In my professional life the only places I have ever encountered Macs were graphics designers and journalists. SO for my career, the college environment emulated the real world. That isn't meant to be flame bait, but there really are not a lot of Macs in use compared to Windows machines.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
At least be honest -- Windows sucks and you'd rather use something else.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
At my school (Univ. of Arizona), there are definitely more MS-PCs more than Macs. I would assume this isn't some sort of takeover, but rather, simply because most people use Windows-running PCs. I wouldn't call this some sort of anti=(insert OS of your choice here) plan,but it just makes more sense. Simple economics also apply in this case. Most manufacturers do offer educational discounts, but I would assume under most circumstances, the PC is cheaper than the Mac....Consider
PC - $999 vs Mac - $1399
Now, don't mod me down or call my prices stupid/inaccurate/flamebaity, but just use those numbers as an example. For any college in these cash-strapped times (public or private), saving money where needed is mighty important, and if there is money to be saved somewhere, upgrading at lowest cost is probably one of the best ways to do so....Hell, if they had it their way, they'd probably not upgrade at all......
My MythTV HowTo
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 >>$200+screens.
Multi use machines are migrating to dual boot to allow the curious to get some experience and to get infrastructure sorted out, at the cost of about a week of two people's time. Compare and contrast to hardware migration cost. (Replaced machines just get the dual boot image, no fuss.)
Eventually when apps are deamed feature complete for 90% of use the default will be switched to Linux. It might take a while, but it can be done slowly, and if a urgent move is ever required (hello, licensing 7?) it'll all be in place and ready to go.
Beep beep.
At my LARGE public university, we have a few mac labs... maybe 3-4 out of around 50. We do have an active mac user group... but it seems to me.. that macs are losing out. Especially as ppl dont understand how to use macs or they dont want to. Surprisingly scary!!! I work in our campus labs... and I see that ppl would rather not use a comp than use macs.
:(.
On top of that... MS sells us win XP for like 5$ 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.
t echinfo.shtml#general
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/
I work in the Computer Services department at a private school from which I graduated this June. As we speak, we are looking at ways to phase out our remaining Macs. When I started nearly four years ago, we were buying new Macs like crazy -- for multimedia and art in the upper school and for all purposes in the lower school. Now we're phasing them out. We took delivery of Dells to replace the Macs in our multimedia lab this spring, and we're getting a delivery of twelve new Dells with 17" flat panels tomorrow afternoon to replace the Macs in upper school art. In two year's time, the only Macs on campus will be ones in the lower school classrooms that we will have rigged up to run Citrix and connect to a Windows server.
Why are we doing this? There are several reasons.
1. Administration. Macs don't play well with PC networks, even with OS X on them. As we are implelmenting things like Active Directory, hard-drive-based backup of network storage, web caching and filtering, and the like, we're having to jump through hoops to get our Macs to work with these new systems. Instead of hiring three Mac specialists to maintain the machines, it's cheaper to move to an all-PC environment.
2. Administration again. We've implemented RIS of all PC machines that can PXE boot, which is most of the ones on campus. If a machine is acting funky, we just PXE boot and walk away, and two hours later, all of the OS components and applications are restored to their original state -- the hard drive has been wiped clean and redone. Macs just can't do this. Every time a Mac is acting funky, we need to spend several hours of our valuable IT time redoing it and reinstalling apps. We can't afford that.
3. Cost. Macs cost a lot. The machines that are getting delivered tomorrow are Dell Dimension 4600s with 2.8 GHz processors, 512 MB of dual-channel RAM, 80 GB hard drives, and 17" Dell UltraSharp flat panels. We got them for $800 a pop. You just can't compare a $900 eMac to that kind of value.
4. Upgrade cycle. This ties in with cost. We buy most of our PCs from Dell Refurb. We generally get them for about $400, upgrade them for another $100, and we have cheap, capbable machines. That means we can upgrade twice as often as if we buy $1000 Macs, and that translates to better experiences for students.
5. Compatibility. It's true -- there are more applications for PC and those that are cross-platform often run better on a PC. Even my die-hard Mac friends admit this. That means that if we buy PCs, we get an assurance that they will meet our needs. Also, our student-coded ColdFusion-based website barely runs on Macs -- so it's a no-brainer. PCs for all.
We have a lot of Windows machines in ee labs that use Windows software for things like programming boards as well as in labs that are free for general use such as in the main library. In the cs/software area on the other hand, there are almost entirely Solaris machines as well as a few Linux machines. This does not seem to be changing very much at all. I know that Microsoft tries as hard as they can to offer cs students free software, but at least the school has not caught on with it because well, lets face it, we are hippies and we like open source software.
...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."
Caution: burning karma ahead
They have windows because you're in a technology school! If you had Macs, you wouldn't learn as much because they would work! You wouldn't have to spend time learning how to troubleshoot Windows, which is what you're there for anyway, right? If all the computers worked, how would they teach you how to fix it? I'm guessing they don't have a 'If-it-ain't-broke...' class.
Now before you reply, it's called 'humor' and 'sarcasm'. Not to be confused with zealotry.
Speaking of Macs, I managed to crash mine the other day. If you count the time I tried and succeeded to get a blue(black on Mac)screen on the OS X Public Beta, that makes twice.
Almost without exception, IT 'professionals' I encounter who know only one operating system, like windows or macos, are noticeably poorer at basic technical comprehension and troubleshooting. Ask them to figure out a technical problem they haven't seen before, and they are more confused than people who, early in their technical education, learned multiple operating systems. Anyone else notice this?
Frankly, I've seen it so often that it becomes apparent that any educational institution that proports to teach information technology and tries to squelch all but one operating system (windows, mac, *nix, whatever), doesn't encourage its students to learn to adapt to new environments and think for themselves. And the 'real world' is all about adapting to new settings as well as new technologies.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
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.
"the only machines we will have will either be Windows 98 or Windows 2000"
Lemme know what your ARIN range is. I'm running low on remailer zombies.
" Now that clones cost $600-$800 for a full fledged machine, and Apple still thinks it needs those margins. "
Wow you don't say.
Apple has nothing like that. Nope, not at all. Nope, 599.00 will not buy a 1GHz PowerPC G4 256MB DDR333 SDRAM 40GB Ultra ATA drive with 17" CRT display and stereo speakers built in.
And no... 300.00 more wont get you a 1.25GHz PowerPC G4
256MB DDR333 SDRAM / 80GB Ultra ATA drive with SuperDrive.
Well, you may have gone to school, but that doesn't mean you've got a clue. I'd get back to manning that deep fat fryer before your 17yr old manager finds you playing on the computer.
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.
Is everyone else completely locked into Microsoft like we are?
.NET. Thankfully in a few of my CSET classes I'm not restricted to windows for my programming, but in others (some for no good reason) I've needed to break out the windows partition. While I'll agree that VS isn't such a horrible piece of software, I think that promoting it's use so exclusively is probably damaging our career options.
Yeah, it's pretty much windows everywhere, at least on the desktop. At OIT (Oregon), everyone's using windows workstations and there is an unfortunate number of windows servers as well. The server part is especially bad since certain Microsoft SQL servers go down on a regular basis.
What I think is real bad though is our CSET department teaches almost exclusively in Visual Studio
Interestingly enough I think if awareness of alternatives increases we'll see a jump in the number of users of openoffice and Firefox and eventually Linux. Just today I got asked to create a PDF file from an excel spreadsheet. I just fired up Openoffice and exported it as PDF (after hassling with some options to get it looking right). When I gave it to them and told them I used openoffice they seemed genuinely interested in openoffice. So slowly but surely people are becoming aware of the alternatives.
I'm personally disgusted by the lack of diversity of operating systems here at the School of Mathematical and Computing Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington. All the new workstations are Dells with Windows XP stickers on them running NetBSD. The old machines are either other x86 boxes running NetBSD, or rapidly ageing iMacs. Undergraduates are forced to use NetBSD; graduates are limited to using Windows via terminal services, and can only get a windows box on their desk if they beg for it.
The servers used to be a diverse collection of Alphas and Sparcs running Digital's and Sun's unices, but now they're being replaces with - you guessed it - more Dells running NetBSD. A monoculture like this can only mean trouble.
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
back in the days when everyone ate apples. Now that it's Twinkies, however, it's bad.
Strange.
--
Think... or thwim
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
That's cool and all, but maybe you could just use an OS that doesn't require constant ghosting? Sounds like you've automated the task, so that means it must happen fairly often.
When you have computers in public areas that are not sufficiently locked down, they will need to be wiped periodically. If you do sufficiently lock a computer down to prevent this, you often break some functionality (yes, even in Linux). It is *much* easier (regardless of OS) to leave permissions overly permissive and ghost it when needed.
Oh, and I don't understand what "stable" has to do with permissions problems (he was describing spyware, which is unrealated to the stability of the OS, but related to the ability of users to install such software, whether willingly or not). If hours with ad-aware and other tools will restore the machine to proper operations, then the OS wasn't the problem. I can see the same thing (ghosting) being done with non-MS OSs, and I've done the same thing for non-OS MSs for the same reason he does for MS OSs.
Learn to love Alaska
Here at UC Berkeley most of the public computers are windows boxes, but so heavily locked down that all you can do with them is browse the web and the library catalogues. However in the dorm computing centers it's about 3/4 windows and 1/4 mac (cubes, G4s, or better). What i've seen though it's mostly the windows boxes that get used. On the other hand, in the CS buildings almost all the computers are linux, with only a few rooms dedicated to windows 2000. Even the intro cs class uses SPARC workstations.
What are you expecting to find here?
I call Straw Man.
Everything you listed was a comodity - that is, the brand of chalk you use does not alter your chalk-drawing experience in any meaningful way. Thus, the brand of chalk you use in school does not influence your chalk purchase decisions once you leave school. Sitting in front of one brand of desk for 13 years does not mold your ass in such a way to make sitting in front of other brands of desk more difficult or painful.
> Where the heck is BSD???
BSD is dead.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
"""
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.
"""
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.
Let us not forget when Apple did the same thing 10-15 years ago. They flooded the elementary and high schools with machines, hoping students would be indoctrinated as they graduated and go with the flow. Why is everyone so hell-bent now that Microsoft is doing the same thing?
...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
What problems have you had getting the Mac working with Active Directory?
Did you even *try* to resolve the issue? Maybe not, because the second "point" illustrates a total lack of understanding.
You most certainly *CAN* boot a Mac from the network and re-image it. In fact, that's been a feature in OS X Server for a while now..both Netbooting and remote installations. Just read the documentation - it's actually pretty darn simple.
If it's taking "several hours of valuable IT time" then perhaps you should take those hours and pay attention to what the software can do. Sounds like an under-educated (or worse, Windows-centric) IT staff to me.
Stop the FUD, please.
...or anything else even slightly familiar to the users.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
At the technical college I teach at, I am the only Unix (Linux) instructor on staff. I get to teach very low level intro to UNIX and elementary UNIX systems admin classes, but nothing higher than that. There are about 8 Microsoft Operating Systems instructors who teach every aspect of systems admin, and several other instructors who are well versed in (and teach) most major Microsoft applications.
Microsoft is well aware that that people who learn on Microsoft products in school (especially college) will continue to use those products once they graduate to the real world, as paying customers. A *BIG* reason why many colleges use Microsoft products is because the colleges get these products at a highly discounted rate; and Microsoft is always glad to subsidize computer hardware purchases (of boxes that will run their product) so they can propogate their own dominance of the market.
At times I feel I am the only voice of reason in the crazed Microsoft controlled world at my school. I feel redeemed, though, when students (and those Microsoft instructors) see how cool Unix/Linux really is. Another thing I like is that just my presence as a Unix/Linux instructor gives our college bargaining power with Microsoft to get even more discounts on Microsoft products, as we threaten to move entirely to Linux. (Yeah, I can only dream...).
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As for MAC hardware and software-- unless Apple gets a program going like Microsoft has (and I think they did at one time) they won't ever compete with Microsoft.
In the past, MacOS8 was a great desktop/consumer interface, but it would not stand up to the rigors of an Enterprise level system. Microsoft is moving in that direction, as they are trying to displace the heavy UNIX (Solaris/AIX/HPux) top ends. Now that Apple has moved to a BSD (UNIX) based OS (i.e. OSX) they are now in a position to move to the Enterprise level also. But again, Apple must free up some hardware and software to schools to keep in the game.
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Why is this hard on Apple? Because the hardware is sole-source (their own hardware) while Microsoft is a software company mostly. As every hacker knows, making another copy of software is a LOT cheaper than acquiring another machine. Still, I would LOVE to see a lab of MAC gear in my college. (Are you listening, APPLE???)
Just my humble opinion.
While the Instructional Computing Lab tends to have more Windows machines than UNIX or Macs (and the Windows machines are networked using Novell, interesting enough), they do have a fair number of Macs (mostly for the multimedia courses) and at least two dozen Linux machines.
There is also a UNIX/Open Systems Certificate to be had here which involves introductory courses to UNIX, UNIX System Administration, UNIX Network Administration, UNIX Systems Programming, and Oracle Database Administration. (That last is actually not part of the certificate.)
We have a "UNIX guru" here - Abbas Moghtanei - who has been teaching here for many years (as well as running his own consulting firm with clients such as Oracle and Wells Fargo, for whom he has worked in the past), and he's not about to let the college go "Windows only".
When the college set up a Computer Security Certificate program, most of the teachers were Windows oriented. So this fall we have "Advanced Computer Security for Network Administrators" - which he will teach and will be undoubtedly oriented to UNIX. It's a class on preventing hacking and no doubt will involve teams of class members trying to hack into some reserved ICL machines and others trying to prevent them. He likes class projects like that.
When I took Network Security this past spring, I demo'd the Knoppix STD (Security Tools Distribution) to the class. Somebody asked if the tools on the CD were all command line oriented, and I pointed out that while some (such as Ethereal) were GUI oriented, most network security involves servers and many servers are UNIX-based and servers tend not to have GUI interfaces, so a lot of security tools tend to be CLI based.
The college does participate in the Microsoft program where free copies of Windows 2003 Server, Windows XP Professional, Project Planner, and Visio are downloadable free by computer class students. MS has obviously discovered that many college students use Linux because it's cheap, and want to increase student exposure to MS products.
You'll notice the cash cow, Microsoft Office, is NOT on the list.
I'd like to see CCSF have an "Introduction to Linux" course which would take parts of the Introduction to UNIX course but instead concentrate on the Linux desktop, Linux applications, and enough about the CLI to allow students to be comfortable in both the CLI and GUI environments. Students could be taken from installation through tweaking and package management and given some introduction to home and small business uses such as Samba and Apache in one semester, including perhaps a couple sessions on integrating Linux with Windows in a small business (such as email servers to shield Windows machines from viruses). I think such a course would be well attended and valuable.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
It entirely depends on the courses being taught.
If the school teaches UNIX courses, you need Linux machines for people to work on.
If the school teaches multimedia courses, you need (well, need may be too strong - make it preferable) to have Macs - because that's what multimedia firms use.
If your school is crap and only teaches courses which are irrelevant to the local business community, you'll run Windows only because they're cheap.
City College of San Francisco offers UNIX and multimedia certificates as well as Windows-oriented certificates and therefore has Macs and Linux machines (and more Windows machines, of course, since more courses are Windows oriented or general.)
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A Windows machine may be usable to all, but may not useful to 100% of the student body. I just graduated from the local community college, which had all Windows machines. I would go home to do my work on my Linux box because the Windows machines would drive me insane.
I can understand why they would buy PCs and not Macs or Unix workstations or whatever, but the general idea is to teach students. In my opinion, having a "Software Monoculture" in this type of environment deprives students of valuable experience that they could be gaining with other platforms. This just perpetuates the attitude that Windows is the only OS that you'll ever need to know, and that anything else is irrelevant. I think this creates closed-minded "professionals" that just go with the flow. I'm sure Microsoft just loves that. I do not.
Again the comparison is not really fair, as the schools aren't buying $500 whiteboxes with XP home without Ghost and antivirus software. They are buying more reliable (and expensive) optiplexes with XP Pro (more $$) and buying Ghost corporate and anti-virus licenses for all the computers. The eMac is cheeper, even upfront.
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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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..., my school, is mostly Linux and UNIX (Solaris, to be exact). Sure.. we've got some Windows machines for some of the civil engineers (Who CAN'T build a bridge?), but I would say the ratio is almost 4 to 1. We've even got a few supercomputers in the building which certainly aren't running Windows!
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Let's face it: these "technical" schools aren't the best place to find people who want more than to learn how to use computers enough to find themselves a comfortable job; that's what these schools are for. He may be able to find a few of these people at his school, but I wouldn't count on it.
City Technology Colleges are a long running thorn in the British Education system, set up by the previous (conservative) government in the late 80's the current (labour) government tried to abolish them but came up against a lot of resistance so decided to create their own version known as 'City Academies'.
To cut a long story short I attended a CTC (Dixons CTC to be precise) and the schools are not in any way designed to just get people a "comfortable job", roughly 90% of pupils go on study at university (not work in supermarkets as most UK school leavers seem to do). They actively promote wider thinking and encourage pupils to look behind whats visible and learn more than would be expected in mainstream schools. In my experience a shortage of students (and, to some extent, staff) willing, and wanting, to delve into IT aspects there is not.