Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

38 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 Anon-Admin · · Score: 2, Funny

      IE7 is standards compliant; It even improves on the standards with all new features!
      It is free for Windows, everyone runs windows.
      It is safe, provided you run the anti-spy ware, anti-virus, anti-add ware, and a good firewall.

      See IE7 can touch it and improve on it!

      Man I am glad I run Linux!

    2. Re:What's the big deal...? by spauldo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Mozilla and Firefox are not standards compliant. They're just a lot closer than IE, and standards compliance is a priority for them.

      I'm still waiting for them to fix a bug I filed five years ago reguarding forms, which happens to be a compliance issue in HTML.

      There's other browsers that say they're more compliant than gecko, although I haven't tried any of them (or, in the case of Opera, I haven't tried it in many years).

      Still, IE doesn't even come close, at least as far as standards compliance goes. It is free, however, on every platform that it is available on, and who knows what vulnerabilities lie beneath that behemoth that firefox is?

      --
      Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
    3. Re:What's the big deal...? by gstoddart · · Score: 2, Informative
      Mozilla/Camino/Firefox is standards compliant, free and safe. I don't think IE7 can touch that.

      It doesn't need to.

      With websites which are built to work on IE using Active X, Flash, and people's indifference to standards and the like you get people using IE by default.

      Once you're the de facto standard, other things get measured by how well they conform to your behaviour. You can be compliant with all of the standards in the world, but if you don't do the things people can do in IE, in the same manner, you're SOL.

      Heck, I still have a few websites I need to bring up an IE to access much to my dismay. The rest of the time, Mozilla is my friend.

      Cheers
      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    4. Re:What's the big deal...? by ATMD · · Score: 2, Interesting

      ...but most people don't *know* about the better software.

      They don't distinguish between "Internet Explorer" and "Internet". They don't realise that IE is a discrete thing that can have an alternative, let alone that an alternative exists. I put Firefox on my aunt's machine a while ago, and she carried on using IE, thinking that I'd just installed something to make the Internet work better.

      The majority of end-users are phenomenally clueless, and as long as Microsoft keeps bundling IE as the default browser, it *will* remain on top. Sad but true.

      --
      Nobody else has this sig.
    5. 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 Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Right on. It's depressing to hear that LaTeX use is declining. I wrote my thesis using LaTeX and it was such an easy process once I learned the syntax. It was so nice not to have autoformat screwing things up all the time. Equations looked really good, too!

    2. Re:If OSS can conquer Universities... by Daniel_Staal · · Score: 2, Informative
      I wrote my thesis using LaTeX and it was such an easy process once I learned the syntax.

      And that's the problem right there. You have to learn, and read, the syntax yourself. That's a lot of work for just marking up documents, especially since Word or WordPerfect can do a decent job with a lot less of a learning curve.

      LaTeX makes some sense if you are doing lots of documents professionally, but for someone who's likely to only write a handful of papers it's overkill. And if you are laying out lots of documents professionally, Quark or a competitor is probably worth the investment. The learning curve is about the same, and it has more cred outside the geek-world.

      --
      'Sensible' is a curse word.
    3. Re:If OSS can conquer Universities... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Informative
      but for someone who's likely to only write a handful of papers it's overkill

      Every conference and journal I have submitted to provides a LaTeX style which can be used to correctly typeset a paper with little effort. Some also provide word templates, although you can generally spot papers written in Word because the typsetting is inferior.

      No one I have seen provides Quark templates.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    4. Re:If OSS can conquer Universities... by Noksagt · · Score: 4, Informative
      And that's the problem right there. You have to learn, and read, the syntax yourself.
      There are "WYSIWYM" editors for LaTeX, as well as programs which help you write it. I agree that the learning curve is what prevents adoption, but it isn't an insurmountable barrier. Another barrier is the added time of processing the document
      That's a lot of work for just marking up documents, especially since Word or WordPerfect can do a decent job with a lot less of a learning curve.
      WYSIWYG line optimization doesn't look as good as page optimization. These formats are quite fragile & don't look the same when rendered by other installations of the software & sometimes other installations won't even be able to open them. Furthermore, there is a learning curve involved in using these "properly" (with styles & contents generation). This might be fine for short documents, but these don't scale well.
      LaTeX makes some sense if you are doing lots of documents professionally
      Or even a single, complex document (such as a thesis).
      but for someone who's likely to only write a handful of papers it's overkill.
      Depends on what is happening with those papers. Many journals now strip away all formatting & so it doesn't matter if you give them a Word Doc or a LaTeX article--the two should look nearly the same in print. Sometimes, the author is burdened with making sure everything looks fantastic & a minimal amount of time can be spent to make a document that DOES look better. Some journals will only take DOC or only take LaTeX, which decides the format you should use. LaTeX still has a place in academia.
    5. 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. about:mozilla by Petskull · · Score: 2, Interesting

    about:mozilla "And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror." --Mozilla, 7:15

  4. 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

  5. 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 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.

  6. Say what you will about Microsoft, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    I can say this pretty emphatically that MS Office is exponentially better than the OSS equivalent, OpenOffice.

    I migrated to OpenOffice in an attempt to make my PC software more legit, and man is it horrible. The interface is like the MS Office of 1994. They made the most innocuous things, like printing a standard A4 envelop, an effort in futility. After days of futzing with the built-in envelope template, altering my printer paper settings, and manually adjusting margins, I just gave up and googled for an answer. To my dismay, this was apparently a very common problem in OpenOffice. So I hunted, downloaded a template someone else had the patience that I didn't have made, and used it instead. I have it saved just in case.

    This same task in MS Office? File > New > Envelope. Enter the addresses and print.

    I'm a huge advocate of OSS, but in this case, OSS is light years behind.

    1. 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.
  7. 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.

  8. In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    In other news... widespread use of communist software leads students to piracy, joblessness, and anti-Americanism.

  9. Remaining tech chic by Lance_Denmark · · Score: 2, Funny

    What?! Firefox is becoming popular? Oh man now I am going to have to use Opera in order to sneer down my superior nose at what browser people are using.

  10. Re:disappointing numbers by LindseyJ · · Score: 4, Funny
    We defiantly have a long way to go to catch up to their European counterparts.

    Indeed...
  11. Omgili is your firend. by MarkusQ · · Score: 2, Funny

    Seriously, when you see a word like "Moodle" that you don't know, why don't you just Omgili for it?

    --MarkusQ

  12. Why is Windows 100%? by olddotter · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think that at engineering schools, at least half the PC's would be running Linux or other x86 Unix varient. At my old school that was the case the last time I walked through a lab.

    When I was in school there was near 0 support for anything PC related. Everything was Unix or Mac. Last time I went back (2 years ago) it was pretty much all Linux as far as I could see.

    --
    Think Deeply. ...
  13. Re:WTH? Moodle and Octave? by jd · · Score: 3, Informative
    Octave is an Open Source program for maths and mathematical graphics. It is comparable to Matlab or Mathematica. It has been out for almost two decades. I wouldn't be surprised if early versions were scrawled on the walls of caves by stone-age cultures. As a result, it has a very strong following, albeit of mathematicians in strange flowing robes. The programming language is a mix of C, LISP and medieval Latin. Having said that, it is very, very good.


    Moodle is a course management system. What a University would want with one of those, I don't know. Half of my lecturers never turned up on time and one simply photocopied the course textbook as notes and read from it during lectures. Even those I had some respect for (one was a Dr. Who fan) were hopelessly disorganized and seemed to prefer it that way.


    Now, I am a little surprised they said more about LaTeX (which is in decline because the friggin' developers aren't developing! I've never seen people drag their feet so much) than they did about Open Groupware (an Open Source Exchange replacement that is very respectable), Beowulf/Mosix/OpenMosix/Kerrighn (which turns a barely-used lab into a giant supercomputer wihout stupid license modifications), or ReLaTe (an Open Source videoconferencing + whiteboard suite developed by the University College of London for remote teaching).


    There is a LOT of aspects to Open Source I would love to know if/how the Universities are aware of. I happen to think LaTeX is superb and wish Firefox would parse the markup, but I don't think it's an area of Open Source that schools, colleges or Universities need to focus on. What I do want to know is what they ARE focussing on and what they DAMN WELL SHOULD focus on.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  14. That does it. by jd · · Score: 2, Funny

    I am going to create a search engine called glappershnoodlifrica, which will index only projects with utterly stupid names.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  15. My university uses Linux by iogan · · Score: 2

    on pretty much all the computers. Does that mean we are cooler than these places?

    --
    Nyhetsankaret.com -- det bÃsta av Sveriges Nyhetssido
  16. 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.

  17. Ray Of Hope by buckhead_buddy · · Score: 2, Informative

    The anonymous reader wrote:

    "Predictably, all open source offerings are blown away by Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office's 100% deployment rates."

    But that isn't quite what the survey said. The OSS survery reads

    "Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer are deployed by all institutions on most desktops."

    One notable exception to this would be Internet Explorer deployment on any Macs. Internet Explorer was insecure and underdeveloped after the Puma version in Mac OS X v 10.1 went live. It was no longer bundled on new Macs or OS X install discs when Tiger shipped.

    • Sept 2001 - IE 5.1 bundled with Mac OS X v 10.1 was first non-preview OS X version.
    • June 2002 - IE 5.2 dropped support for non-OS X users.
    • Jan 2003 - Safari released (for Macs OS X v 10.2+)
    • June 2003 - IE 5 new feature development ceased.
    • April 2005 - IE dropped from the OS X Tiger bundle.
    • Dec 2005 - All "IE 5 for Mac" development ceased.

    While a number of Microsoft products are obscenely widespread despite its quality and security flaws, it isn't 100% in use out there. I know it's not a really big deal, but perhaps a small ray of hope may keep some developers and users from pulling the trigger on a dark an lonely night.

  18. Keeping Firefox up to date on Windows by Sits · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I happen to be an admin at a UK university and the thing that bugs me is how to keep Firefox up to date on Windows (on Linux this is a non issue). Because of this sole point, I am unlikely to roll it out across our Windows labs. What are folks doing when the people using the machines don't have the rights to install software globally? More explicitly, what are people doing when they don't have Zenworks or Active Directory for software distribution? Do you just reimage/ghost all your machines?

    The answer is doubtless obvious but I'm more than happy to be clued in.

    1. Re:Keeping Firefox up to date on Windows by greenechidna · · Score: 2, Informative

      Frontmotion produce an msi file that ca be roled out using active directory. File available here Features: * Active Directory deployable and upgradeable. * Desktop Icon and Shell integration similar to IE. * Set Default browser as an option (INSTALLLEVEL=1000) * Macromedia Flash plug-in preinstalled * Detect and upgrades non-MSI installs. * Can upgrade 3rd party MSI's from patpaul/MIT, Webheat.co.uk, and ZettaServe. * Able to properly perform uninstalls and restores system associations

    2. Re:Keeping Firefox up to date on Windows by haeger · · Score: 2, Informative
      Perhaps this is of some use to you?

      .haeger

      --
      You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
  19. Portable Firefox by Noksagt · · Score: 2, Informative

    You might try Portable Firefox. This doesn't require installation & is set to keep all needed files in a subdirectory. You could keep it on a USB stick, your roaming profile, some other network drive, or individual workstations.

    Installed is better, but there is a work-around for some users (though certain workstations may be configured such to not allow unknown apps to be executed or allowed network access).

  20. Re:I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but... by paintswithcolour · · Score: 2, Informative
    "and the United Kingdom = Great Britain"

    What on earth gave you that idea? United Kingdom != Great Britain

    There's a reason why it's called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Great Britain = England, Wales, Scotland + outlying islands. United Kingdom = Great Britain + Northern Ireland. And the British Islands = United Kingdom + Crown Dependences (e.g Channel Islands, Isle of Man).

  21. Track changes in LaTeX by Noksagt · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Myself (and a number of my fellow students) love the 'track changes' features in Word.
    In collaborating with many authors, I've found that this is often accidentally left off, so it is really of marginal benefit.
    When writing academic papers in LaTeX, I had a tough time understanding how the edits my advisors made improved the paper.
    Not only can you use 'diff' on .tex files, but you can store them in version control repositories (such as cvs or subversion). This kind of change control really can't be matched in Word documents. (I currently keep revisions of Word docs in subversion too, but it is less optimal than working with a text format.)
    The visual nature of track changes
    Try latexdiff. The visual markup works quite well.

    However, I do agree that I wish this could track multiple revisions & color based on the commiter (a'la Word) & that there was a more formal mechanism for "human-readable comments."