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Linux vs. Windows for Schools?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the licensing-fees-or-lack-of-educational-software dept.

Fiachra06 writes "I am involved in helping to maintain the computer systems in the local school (200 ~ 250 pupils) in my home village. The children range in age from 4 to 12. The 14 PC's are running either Windows 95, Windows 98, and XP Home Edition and I find this rather abhorrent. The licensing fees to upgrade all the capable machines to XP pro is unreasonable for such a small school. What would the esteemed Slashdot readers think of shifting all these machines to a Linux distro (probably Ubuntu). I have no doubt the children will have no problem adapting to the new OS (although the teachers might), the main concerns are the availability of educational software for them to use, and practicality of maintenance for people who are new to the OS given that I am not there regularly enough to be a full time sys admin. Preferably I wouldn't like to running too much through Wine but it is still an option."

1 of 553 comments (clear)

  1. Not user friendly enough yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Linux is *not* user friendly, and until it is linux will stay with >1% marketshare.

    Take installation. Linux zealots are now saying "oh installing is so easy, just do apt-get install package or emerge package": Yes, because typing in "apt-get" or "emerge" makes so much more sense to new users than double-clicking an icon that says "setup".

    Linux zealots are far too forgiving when judging the difficultly of Linux configuration issues and far too harsh when judging the difficulty of Windows configuration issues. Example comments:

    User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Linux?"
    Zealot: "Oh that's easy! If you have Redhat, you have to download quake_3_rh_8_i686_010203_glibc.bin, then do chmod +x on the file. Then you have to su to root, make sure you type export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5 but ONLY if you have that latest libc6 installed. If you don't, don't set that environment variable or the installer will dump core. Before you run the installer, make sure you have the GL drivers for X installed. Get them at [some obscure web address], chmod +x the binary, then run it, but make sure you have at least 10MB free in /tmp or the installer will dump core. After the installer is done, edit /etc/X11/XF86Config and add a section called "GL" and put "driver nv" in it. Make sure you have the latest version of X and Linux kernel 2.6 or else X will segfault when you start. OK, run the Quake 3 installer and make sure you set the proper group and setuid permissions on quake3.bin. If you want sound, look here [link to another obscure web site], which is a short HOWTO on how to get sound in Quake 3. That's all there is to it!"

    User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Windows?"
    Zealot: "Oh God, I had to install Quake 3 in Windoze for some lamer friend of mine! God, what a fucking mess! I put in the CD and it took about 3 minutes to copy everything, and then I had to reboot the fucking computer! Jesus Christ! What a retarded operating system!"

    So, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that what seems easy and natural to Linux geeks is definitely not what regular people consider easy and natural. Hence, the preference towards Windows.