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68% of UK Universities and Colleges Use Firefox

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the british-insight dept.

An anonymous reader writes "mozillaZine is reporting that over two-thirds of British universities and colleges have installed Mozilla or Firefox on their campus computers. They cite an open source survey by OSS Watch that also shows rising support for Mozilla Thunderbird, Moodle and Octave, though a decline for OpenOffice and LaTeX. Predictably, all open source offerings are blown away by Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office's 100% deployment rates."

14 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. What's the big deal...? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Mozilla/Camino/Firefox is standards compliant, free and safe. I don't think IE7 can touch that.

    1. Re:What's the big deal...? by mgblst · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Exactly. IE 7 is standards compliant, it is 100% IE 7 standards compliant.

      Of course, it still sucks, and I hate it when they force me to use ie 6 at many cafes and libraries, so I count this use of Firefox as good.

      I wonder why UK is so much better at this sort of thing that US, AUS, NZ, and other countries.

  2. If OSS can conquer Universities... by sweetnjguy29 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...then the rest of the world shall follow! These numbers are deceiving though, because although more than two thirds of UK universities and colleges have it installed, it is only installed on "some" of their hardware. It is depressing that the open source model and philosophy hasn't caught on with more force in universities, especially since it fits so well with many universities mission statements, to bring education and enlightenment to the masses.

    1. Re:If OSS can conquer Universities... by Sj0 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Then you'll still use MS word, like 99.9% of the scientific and engineering world.

      Just because something is harder doesn't make it better.

      --
      It's been a long time.
  3. Installed != Used by EnsilZah · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We have Firefox on all PCs where i study (not on the Macs though, for some reason (Art academy...)).
    But alot of people probably don't know what Firefox is, and if they do, some of them probably don't want to change old habbits.
    So, Installed != Used.

    1. Re:Installed != Used by arachnoprobe · · Score: 4, Insightful

      but: installed = usable = choice = better

  4. Missed Advertising Opportunities by SlashdotOgre · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's good to hear Firefox use is increasing, but it has always frustrated me how many people have never even heard of OpenOffice.org. While I was working at a university last year a few times I had to pick up some cables from the bookstore, and on two occasions the person behind me in line was planning to buy MS Office. In both cases I suggested OO.o -- something the person had never heard of -- and in both cases the person decided to post pone purchasing MS Office until after they try Open Office. Since it's free, I've found most people are willing to at least give it a shot; however it amazed me that I've never seen OO.o advertised in a campus bookstore. You would think that a university campus, full of students who could use that extra hundreds of dollars saved from not buying MSO more than most people, would be a perfect place to push Open Office.

    --
    Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
    1. Re:Missed Advertising Opportunities by CastrTroy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The university book store is a business just like any other. Their only interest is in making money. Most of the time it isn't run by the school, or the student union, but rather by some company who has been given an exclusive contract to sell books on campus. Where I went to school the student union had opened their own book store, because students were tired of high priced books, and no competition. However, the books were usually only 1 or 2 dollars cheaper, and they didn't carry all the books. This may be something you want to have your student union pushing to inform the students.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    2. Re:Missed Advertising Opportunities by Kuvter · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I work at a University and I think the main reason they don't push Open Office is that it's not running on their computers.

      I had a student who did a paper at home on Open Office, e-mailed it to himself, and then came to school to print it. He downloaded the file at school, but was unable to open it on our computers there. The school prohibited him from downloading Open Office (or any software) so he could not open it to print it or save it as a RTF to be later used in MS Word. Sure it was partially his fault for not saving it as RTF at home, but more problems like this could occur, because of uninformed users.

      The universities have MS Word (bundled with other programs like Excel, Access, and other programds used at the university) and pay more than enough for the site licenses, so they might as well use it.

      --
      "To be is to do." --Socrates
      "To do is to be." -- Aristotle
      "Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
    3. Re:Missed Advertising Opportunities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      however it amazed me that I've never seen OO.o advertised in a campus bookstore Why would a bookstore advertise OO.o, they can't make a profit off of it; especially not compared to MS Office.

    4. Re:Missed Advertising Opportunities by kthejoker · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And at most large public universities, MS offers a significant discount for a volume license of XP and Office. At Texas A&M, for example, it was $15 for XP and $5 for Office.

      $20 gets you all the (legit!) operating system software you need in college. And presumably locks you in to MS for their goodwill and good software.

      I won't argue about the last point, but MS already offers their software cheap enough that most kids just tack it on to their $500 book tab and don't think twice about it.

  5. Re:disappointing numbers by malsdavis · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you think the UK's 68% is disappointing, take a look at US universities and colleges.

    Within our supposedly academic institutions, Firefox appears on only a small fraction of computers. We defiantly have a long way to go to catch up to their European counterparts.

  6. On the other hand... by hullabalucination · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...just over the past year, I've had 6 Clueless Windows Users bring their machines to me complaining that "something's wrong with the Web." After the typical malware uninstall and registry clean, I then ditched the IE icon from the desktop and replaced it with Firefox (with text below reading "Surf the Web!" so they'd know what it's for) and then sent them on their merry way (along with the free edition of AVG). Casual conversations with other folks in my position (not a pro tech; just the guy all the friends and family go to first when something breaks) indicates I'm not the only one doing this. Of course, to Microsoft's Marketing Department these folks will always be counted as Internet Explorer users because the program was used once and -- HEY! it's still installed, isn't it? -- so it must be because it's being used. And, of course, I've got three boxen which started life as Windows machines and which are now running various versions of Fedora Core. And they're still, I'm sure, showing up as part of the 890 million active Windows installs on Microsoft's Annual Report to Stockholders because neither Forrester nor Gartner nor IDC has a clue how to gather statistics on machines like mine, so they choose to simply ignore an entire statistically significant data category.

  7. Re:Say what you will about Microsoft, but... by Trelane · · Score: 2, Insightful

    According to this site, A4 envelopes are either C4 (folded in half) or DL (folded in thirds).

    To print to an envelope, method 1:

    1. Open a new Writer document
    2. Format->Page
    3. Click on the "Page" tab
    4. Change the "Format" to "C4" or "DL" (if you want A4; #10 if you want US letter folded in thirds; there are other paper/envelope sizes available
    5. You probably also want to set the page to "Landscape" mode
    6. Click the "OK" button
    7. Your envelope is now ready; type on it as you wish.

    To print to an envelope, method 2 (or attach one to a document):

    1. Open a new Writer document
    2. Insert->Envelope
    3. Click on the "Format" tab
    4. As before, set the "Format" ("Size" sub-category) to the envelope type desired.
    5. Click on the "Printer" tab and verify how your printer will be printing on the envelope
    6. If desired, you can click on the "Envelope" tab to set sender/receiver addresse and you can even use the "Database" "Table" and "Field" lists to configure a list of addresses to print envelopes for. More information is available here and here (the second and first major results for a Google search for "a4 envelope openoffice" by the way)>
    7. Click "New Doc" to create a new document consisting of your envelope, or "Insert" to insert it into an existing document
    8. Enjoy!

    (I understand that you're a troll and can't help but spread misinformation, but this is for those with an open mind who found your post "insightful".)

    --

    --
    Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.