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Linux Desktops in New Zealand Schools
nigelr writes "The New Zealand Ministry of Education has signed a deal with Novell New Zealand to provide SUSE Linux desktop licenses in schools. The article claims that while the price for a desktop license now matches what Microsoft charge, the new deal will significantly reduce the over all cost due to reduced charges for existing Novell products used in schools around the country."
http://www.nbr.co.nz/home/column_article.asp?id=12 417&cid=3
My take - I'm a student at Perth, Western Australia. My school recently got a whole bunch of iMac G5's, and Panther, and they are a nice set of machines. I run a heavily customized ubuntu/Gnome 2.10 setup at home and I would have to say that OS X is all that it's cracked up to be. It has a great interface and file/folder management system (finder), is stable, and seems to be easy to administrate (given that the sysadmins seem to do little work :D).
It's a great choice for a school desktop, due to it's ease of use and solid support base. I use Linux at home and prefer it's data management capabilities, but there will always be a place for OS X in my heart.
At least until the GNOME team creates an expose-like function
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
The problem is, no matter what kind of platform you use, the ease of maintenance has a pretty big impact on how much it costs. The 'free' part of Linux is nice for individual users or companies who have full-time IT staff, but for a school I think using a distro where they get support is a good choice. School IT staff is usually running tight as it is. Plus, now those kids will have a chance to learn something besides Windows at a younger age. I'm sure they'll get Windows exposeure elsewhere, so now they won't be locked into the 'Windows is all that I know, so let's use windows' pattern later.
There's a big underswell push for Linux in schools happening around the UK too...
Times Educational Suppliment ran it a few weeks ago. You needed the paper version for the full article but this is a good summary and primer: http://www.tes.co.uk/2094985
Now... Can everyone who has kids in the UK start asking the teachers about this at their next school visit?
It's a pretty well known fact that if you TEACH *CHILDREN* to use Linux and not Windows from the start, it will filter up through the years and (with any luck) become the system of choice in the home too... Then the last 'bastion' will be industry... and with 1000's of up and coming children leaving schools with skills fully developed in Linux, the old excuse of 'training' kinda starts working against Microsoft. 'Cause none of the kids use it (nor want to). It's the same trick Microsoft used (Free O/S etc for schools).
Hope I haven't failed to explain in enough detail all of this, and you can all 'join the dots' and see where this might be going.
So... Start hassling your teachers NOW. I personally *am* getting involved in a new school to get all their computers on Linux from the start. When it opens in September.
If you're *serious* about wanting to see a less monopolostic computing environment, but don't know where you should put your effort in to help... This is the place... IMO
Visit London Scalextric Club
I guess the point here is that instead of having a solid Debian or a powerful Gentoo GNU/Linux, institution, companies, schools, prefer to have technical assistance and a commercial product in general, which will then be open source.
Do not forget that together with the SuSe package (that I do not really like myself) it comes a very well organized guide oriented for that distribution in particular, plus they have a phone number to call if they want professional help.
On the other hand, if the system adminnistrator was good enough to do everything in his own, he could have install e Debian through the whole netowrk, asking help to the community when needed. But that doesn't happen often, so you get these commercial packages.
I do not think that this is a problem, as long as it is Linux and not some creepy linux-similar distribution with tons of closed source application is fine to me.
RegardsWindows might remain the dominant desktop, but the people I'm describing - the computer illiterates who bought windows in their droves because they knew no better and didn't care to know, and who made Bill as rich as he is today, and are the people plaguing the net with spyware-infested, unsecured, Windows boxen today- will die out eventually.
As for the DMCA - the mechanism by which I'm guessing you think that works - content providers DRM their files and then don't license open source developers to write programs that can read it - depends on a few things:
1)US judges ruling that cracking a DRMed media file for the purposes of fair use and/or interoperability is against the DMCA (though the DMCA explicitly says otherwise)
2)Proprietary Linux/Apple companies NOT being licensed to write DRM-capable media players
3)The Disneys and RIAAs of this world still retaining their stranglehold on the mass entertainment media in the face of competition from random people on the internet and/or piracy.
4)Consumers being sheeplike enough and malleable to upgrade all their DVDs and CDs to the digital video/audio format of the month, whenever the content providers demand.
5)The DMCA, or something like it, being extended to the 96% of the population of the world to which it doesn't currently apply
It's emininently possible that all of these things might occur, so you could well be right, but it's not a foregone conclusion - I reckon patent lockups on internet servers, clients and protocols, (making using Linux a jarring experience compared to Windows) is a bigger portion of the threat meself.
But time will tell.