Indiana Schools May Purchase 300K Linux Computers

GuitarNeophyte writes "According to an article at PC Magazine, Indiana School systems may soon be purchasing around 300,000 Linpire desktop computers. Linspire, via its Education Program has a straight $500-per-school (not per-seat) cost, providing an incredibly-alluring price incentive for this to happen." From the article: "Many schools across the state have already had the chance to try out desktop Linux, and everyone seems excited to get this program going...This groundbreaking initiative makes it possible for schools to afford computers for every student, something that makes a huge impact on their overall educations."

Comments

Re:It worked for autodesk

[techno-vampire]

A very effective marketing strategy for a company looking beyond the next quarter.

You mean like Apple's been using to get Macs into classrooms and get kids hooked on using them instead of PCs?

A donated computer analyser and linuxator

[btempleton]

There are tons of discarded machines out there that can still run a good linux.

What would be nice is a distro meant to make it as easy as possible for relatively unskilled people to turn them into a desktop linux. Linspire may have a lot of that, but here's the elements I see.

A simple program, on a floppy and/or CD, which analyses the hardware in the machine, and gives an estimate of how suitable the machine is to the task. Ie. how well supported the components (chipsets, cards etc.) are, and how much performance one can expect from it.

It could also estimate what you would have to buy to bring the performance to your specs. "This machine is great but by just adding 128MB of ram -- just $20 -- it would be super." and "The machine is good but the ethernet card is one known to have problems. Cheap solid ethernet cards include these..."

And so on. School boards, not wanting to do a lot of fussing, might insist on a certain "easy to convert" rating from this program before taking donations.

Stage 2 is a distro which does a super-simple install on machines that make the cut. It knows the hardware is approved, so it's a hassle-free install, with ideally no questions asked, or barely any.

Then you would get a lot of computers converted and ready to be linux boxes.

Re:A donated computer analyser and linuxator

[HermanAB]

Ever heard of CDROM distributions?

The way to evaluate old hardware is by booting up a CD. If it works OK, then install a full version.

As a student....

[a10waveracer]

As a student in the Indiana Public Education program, I can't wait for this. I have long helped teachers out with computer problems and have even used knoppix to fix problems deemed 'unfixable' by our support staff. Now I can't wait to see how much more stable my life will be when people can't fsck everything up. But, however nice this is, the main problem in my school, as I see it, isn't the number of computers, but how they are used. Constantly broken machines that won't let you print to certain printers and teachers who barely know how to turn the computer on are a humongous drawback. On top of that, our school corporation is just NOW getting on track with Windows, teaching everyone how to do simple things like delete programs (my mother is a 3rd grade school teacher and even her kids install programs on the computers without her knowledge). I simply hope they spend much more money teaching the teachers how to use the computers.... But hey, now instead of getting people calling me about Blue Screens of Death, I get to answer questions about Kernel Panic!

The fight back from the dells and windows

[a3217055]

What will Dell and windows do? Give out Dell computers for about 300$. And windows might get on them for free or something? I know it sounds crazy but maybe they can make a loss to turn around the market. ( Investment for the future ). I don't know about Linspire but there has been great improvements in Linux desktops in the last couple of years. But for basic stuff it works, just wondering what will happen to all the apps the schools use to teach their students are there Linux ports or wine or vmware solutions that they are implementing ? One thing that will be great is that they will be able to manage these systems and have cleaner networks for there students. With the HALD and usb lot of students can bring in inexpensive memory sticks to save there work, web pages, documents etc ... I wonder how all this work out, will the school departments hire coders to write applications which will teach these new students. Or use 100s of highschool geeks to write GPL'ed educational tools :). Lot of cool things are happening and let's see what happens. -A

Really?

[misleb]

afford computers for every student, something that makes a huge impact on their overall educations."

Really? I thought it had been shown over and over again that computers do not contribute to the overall quality of education for children. And in some cases, relying on comptuters can actually reduce the quality because the basics get ignored.

Seriously, what IS the value of having computers in schools besides computer literacy? Sure, kids should have *a* computer class. Maybe a few computer labs for research. But why one computer per student? What is the value? So kids can skip lunch and IM their friends in another room?

-matthew