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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."
Exactly. The New Zealand Ministry of Education has just sold those kids' futures for the sake of a few dollars less. When they get out into the real world, what practical knowledge will their experience with Linux afford them?
I don't know if any of you noticed, but Linux only has about a 1% share of the desktop market. What is the point of teaching these kids to use a system that nobody else does?
Basic IT skills are precious in that you can put what you learn in school immediately to use in industry, because (in 99% of cases) you've learned on exactly what the rest of the world uses (ie., MS Windows / Office). Now the ministry have just gone and fucked that, meaning the as soon as these kids finish school, they're going to have to be re-trained on the job from scratch. I'm sure local businesses are going to love that.
They might as well have bought them some second-hand Commodore Amigas.
Certainly, until OS X got Expose its window management and task-switching UIs were atrocious - down around Windows 3.1/Windows 95 levels of usability.
Whether or not that made it "not ready for the desktop" is a matter of opinion. Personally I'd be more inclined to raise its awful performance as the main crippling factor.
Personally I find expose an expensive, slow and showy way to push a window behind other windows, something X11 has been able to do since days one (with twm even), but neither Windows or OS/X seem to be able to pull off.