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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."
Linux is free. Support isn't. And if I was running a school, I would surley want somebody to yell at when things go foobar.
When the guru tried to give it away for free, he was ignored.
When he started SELLING "training" for insane prices, it became all the rage.
As a kiwi student, I'm saddened by this news, :-(
my hacking of unsecure school network systems days are over
But on the otherhand it is good to see the playing field levelled.
And as it is Linux on the desktop we're talking about, they'll be using that a great deal.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Well sure it can be free. Sex can be free too, but as those here on Slashdot certainly understand, it is sometimes just easier to pay for somebody to supply it rather than go through all the trouble of figuring out how to do it the free way. I mean if you can get it for free more power to you, but don't hold it against those who need a little help and support.
Clearly you didn't even read the whole summing up, let alone the article.
They are paying the same price for their desktops but as part of that their single license with Novell means that whatever else they are using (Zenworks, Netware or whatever) costs are greatly reduced. Good use of purchasing power IMO.
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.
Isn't the point of Linux that it's free and all that jazz? I mean... paying for it takes away a whole lot of the attractiveness IMHO.
If you mean that it's free in the sense of it not costing any money, no, that's not the point. The point of the operating system that it's been bundled with, GNU, was to provide a "free" OS in the sense that the user could do whatever he wished with it, i.e. modify it and share it with others. The sharing aspect means that it's very easy to obtain without paying for it, but that wasn't the purpose. I paid for my copy of GNU/Linux. Why? I like Linux in large part because the source code is accessible, and I think good work deserves good pay.
Freeware (in the sense of cost) has always been around in great quantity. What makes open source programs different is the *open source code*, not the fact that you can download it for free.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this theorem that this sig is too small to contain.
In a few years, people will no longer be saying, "everyone knows Windows... we expect new employees to know Windoze... it would cost too much to re-train our staff who only know Whindoes..."
It's the beginning of the end of the desktop monopoly. Kids will no longer be programmed with a view to maintaining the power structures of the status quo.
Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird -- Proverbs 1:17
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
Whatever you learn when you're a child has a shallow learning curve. Kids learn. They learn about whatever's around them. That's what kids do, and they do it *very* well.
The only problems with the Linux learning curve is with adults who didn't grow up with computers, have little or no interest in computing, and who learned Windows because they had to for work or whatever, and whose neuronal pathways have pretty much hardened in 'Windows mode'. Thankfully, there is, and will only ever be, one generation of these guys.
Gratis versus Libre
- You have free speech, but still have to buy your own microphone.
- You are free to travel, but buy your own ticket.
- You're free to choose, but pay the expenses of your own distro.
Supporting thousands of kids on desktops costs something. If you don't think so, then you try it. So who should carry the cost? These are state schools, the tax payer pays.Businesses may at times contribute, but that tends to lead to businesses wanting something back. Microsoft is happy to negotiate with schools. All they want is that the school perpetuates Microsoft's desktop monopoly.
So the freedom we need is the practical freedom to educate kids without the curriculum being written by the mega-multi-nationals.
Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird -- Proverbs 1:17
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.
RegardsSo you think the kids shouldn't be shown anything at school that they're not already used to seeing at home? What do you think schools are for, then?
the contract could be for 500 Suse licenses -- like .0042% of New Zealand's 120,000 computers. The article doesn't say. Considering that the "three-year licensing contract with Microsoft, Apple and Computer Associates signed [by the ministry] last year was worth $27.5 million" there's no way Linux is going to be the primary desktop OS for NZ schools. At $99 a licence it would only take about $12 million of that $27.5 to make every one of those 120,000 computers a microsoft seat.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
I know that you've been modded down as a troll, but you have a good point, and even though I disagree with it, I think your post deserves an answer, not a troll mod.
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?
Yes, Linux doesn't have a large share of the desktop market, but it's got a very large piece of the server pie, and is also prevalent in areas like supercomputing involved in scientific research. So the notion that learning Linux has no practical application in the "real world" is simply false. If these kids are doing tech support for the general public, yes, Windows is the system they should learn; if they're writing a program for a scientist to be executed on a cluster of Linux boxes (the job I happen to have right now), Linux is more appropriate.
However, even this is not necessarily relevant. If these kids are supposed to be learning academics (as opposed to vocational training), the operating system is really not that important in terms of how well the kids will learn. A mouse behaves about the same on Windows as on Linux, most of the skills involved in using Office are applicable to OpenOffice.org, etc. The concepts of computer science, for example, are platform-independent, no matter whether you like programming with vi/emacs or Visual Studio. So even programmers, those who have as much to do with computers as anyone, will become just as good programmers no matter which platform they learn on.
So what I'm saying is that in terms of educational value, if students learn Windows or learn Unix, it makes little difference. Also, many of these machines will be servers and computers that students won't come into contact with, and therefore they deserve an OS chosen purely on technical merits.
So, in a nutshell, what I'm saying is that the schools should get what they think is best, whether it's Windows or Linux. Their job isn't to help Microsoft maintain a monopoly just because they already have one.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this theorem that this sig is too small to contain.
And if I was running a school, I would surley want somebody to yell at when things go foobar.
Isn't that what students are for?
Windows 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.
Well you don't really pay up front for the sex, it's the support you pay for to make sure it stays on-line.
Now, they claim the same licensing cost for Novell solution but I reckon everybody is getting better deal out of it - Novell makes a buck, MOE looks cool, schools are getting good software and more importantly support, thing that Microsoft always includes in cost but never actually provides.
In short, my not too wild guess is: price is $50 mil / 2 years, the only difference between vendors is that Novell guys are happy to do some work, too.
I find it bizarre that people believe there needs to be some vendor at whom they can yell / complain / sue. If you're buying from IBM and paying top dollar for a support contract then you can expect IBM to guarantee that their program works, up to the point of writing and rolling out to you a fix specific to your particular problem.
But if you're buying from Microsoft, you won't get that kind of support. You'll get a telephone representative who'll help you to understand that the program works the way Microsoft wants it to work, and you have to work that way if you want the program to work. You'll be paying by the minute for that advice.
Nine times out of ten though, if your system goes fubar it's because "you" have fu'ed it. Complaining to a vendor won't accomplish anything.
Preach it, brother. I have been endlessly cursed by an early exposure to a Timex ZX-81 and Commodore 64, and may never recover from once having owned an Amiga. Oh, my kingdom for the ability to somehow acquire new skills that are similar to the ones I already have!
No, I want my kids learning XP and only XP, and that's been my opinion ever since the United Nations declared it the One True OS For Posterity. I don't want them to look back with shame and horror on the weird systems of their youth as they attempt to learn the Windows path 30 years from now (which will be exactly identical in to current systems - how could we ask them to cope with change?).
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Also novell was/is quite costly for schools, we were thinking of changing but the cost was just too great, if this new deal helps get more novell servers out there instead of windows servers I am all for it. But the real question is who really is going to support this? I mean you do need someone there that knows what they are doing I mean are you going to call novell every time you need a user created? A lot of the tech's that work at schools in Australia are just out of school and are in traineeships, who is going to teach them to use a Novell server or to configure a Linux desktop?
at any rate I'm glad there is finally some action from the Novell front, quite possibly the only real chance for an alternative in the business and governement sector.
So, in conclusion, generally sex is not free when you account for the entire TCI!
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.