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22,000 Indiana Students Using Linux Desktops
Anonymous writes "Indiana's Department of Education has moved 22,000 students onto Linux desktops, and it's looking like that's only going to accelerate with SLED 10, Linspire, and other distributions getting better."
Now there is truly more than corn in Indiana!
Hey, wait a second, isnt that the number of "terrorist targets" they claim to have?
What's a sig? Pete Brubaker
but does it run...
oh wait, i guess it does.
When I RTFA, I noticed that yes, they are using one flavor of Linux now but what worries me is that they're "planning" to use more flavors in the future, ranging from Ubuntu to Freespire. I don't have anything against it but if it is under the state grant program, it should try to standarize on one or two flavors of Linux. I think they're getting too excited on this and not thinking of the small consequences when 22000+ students are divided into 10 or more Linux flavors. Although they said those are "future" plans, I really would like to see them standarize. (or it is just me that wants them to use Ubuntu, hehe...)
Using Linux in colleges provides two benefits. First, colleges can provide very powerful applications such as blender, bluefish, etc to college students without the cost involved. Secondly, if these students, after using Linux in college, begin to realize the stigmas about Linux are wrong, they are more likely to use the distributions on their own, if at least to run the software they are used to using, thus expanding the OSS community.
Klingon Software is not released, it escapes, inflicting terrible damage onto the enemy as it does
Fortunately, each of these students will now get to conceive their own linux distro as part of the curriculum.
Funnypics
Can someone please explain to me the relevance of all these "Switch" stories. Maybe back a few years it would have been news but nowadays people are switching every day. Newsforge had a story a while back on why switching isn't news anymore. Maybe /. should take a hint from its sister site.
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
After growing up and going to high school in Indiana, this is a surprise to me because our school was VERY outdated =S... of course this was a few years ago and it was in a town of about 7k people.
All that to say that 22,000 students using Linux probably translates into ~150 Linux desktops in the better funded schools.
But maybe Indiana has a better public school system than California. Wouldn't be surprised.
The heavens do not fall for such a trifle.
./configure && make && make install
When I switched to Linux I have noticed an instant productivity gain. Not because it is better, more secure, faster or anything, but because of the lack of Counterstrike et al. This effect should not be underestimated, especially in schools.
Open Source Alternatives
Yeah I didn't see it right on first glance either. I saw "India" and "laptops". I thought for a second this was going to be about those $100 WiFi laptops where you turn the crank, actually. But I'm sure those of you from Indiana are familiar with your state getting confused with India, and vice versa.
The problem that has been with linux always has been the popularity.
.. you get the picture.
The more users, the more development, the more programs, the more users, the more
I'm very happy with this, and I don't mind what distribution they use.
I have been running SUSE on my desktop at work since v8 and just tried the latest.
Luckily I installed another harddisk in my pc before trying to install.
It looked great but I ran into some installation problems very unlike other SUSE installs I have tried. Even on my notebook it has worked perfect, even WiFi and Bluetooth.
Although the install itself ran fine. Getting the right drivers for my nVidia (6200) card failed. I got a trial key and went on to install the drivers in hope of running XGL. But it failed to make use of the card so I ended up installing my own drivers and forced XGL to enable. I did get that to run but then I had another problem, which was a show stopper.
I was happy to see the Citrix client included, but it seems to have problems with multiple desktops on this SLED 10. When I change to another desktop, all the Citrix applications vanishes. I can see in the process list that they still are there, I just can't see them. That worked great on the others.
So now I am installing it again from scratch, with KDE instead of Gnome, without XGL to see if it works then. Interesting to see what happens when I try to register the same license again. I hope that it was just XGL that broke Citrix.
This all boils down to fear. Fear of making a change in the infrastructure. In every sector of the government, it's up to the IT dept. what system is used. Not the administration or central regulations. They trust the IT dept. with this decision. As long as it "works". If all IT depts. were competent and fearless like those pioneers running Indiana Schools, all would probably move away from Microsoft products. Arguments like "but we need Microsoft products to run program x", is just plain fear. It should be "but you (developers) need to make this program run on x".
"I think within five years, we'll see a huge market shift," Huffman said. "But the Linux community really has to come together. They do have to have a common API; they've got to have a common installer. If those things don't exist, it will not be a competitive market again. If they do exist, I think it will."
Like libc? I mean, seriously, I want some of the stuff that guy's smoking. First they go to great length explaining how they diversify on Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu and (sigh) Linspire and then he asks for a common API and installer? Like one kid stated when asked which system it preferres, either Linux or Windows the reply was:"Who cares?" Same thing here: who cares for a "common installer" (technically impossible) or a "common API" (it's there: libc, GTK, Qt, etc.). As a user you either see a Gnome or a KDE desktop anyway.
"Mike Huffman, special assistant for technology at the Indiana Department of Education", gimme a break!
In a small Indiana public school, our Middle School "Computer Lab" consisted of 6 Commodore PETs, While I used an Amiga at home. In High School we didn't even have a Lab... typing classes actualy used typewriters!
Anyway I'm glad to see this so maybe my child will get to use a real computer with a real OS other than at gome.
"The bad machine doesn't know he's a bad machine."
...there are no kangaroos in Austria.
Nothing useful [...] using Linux only damages its reputation.
You know, there are people on this planet, who think knowing only the other os and nothing else is what damages your reputation. And also, FYI, people are capable to learn and use not just only one os, and there are plenty of tasks that can be done with plenty of tools, not just one and nothing else. If I'd hire someone who said that can do word processing, then I'd expect him/her to know word processing, not using a one and only word processor application to compose some documents. Oh well, whatever.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
And in a flash 22000 Indiana students can't use websites using Flash.
Of course they can see Flash animations. Personally, I find more than 95% of Flash animations on websites to be a waste of time and bandwidth, and currently disable Flash, but there are several Flash plugins for Linux, including one from Adobe.
Thirty years ago Bavaria (southern part of Germany) was a somewhat backwards, conservative, agricultural state of Germany, whereas the northers states were highly industrialized and rich. Then the Bavarians started high tech business and have passed the north by far in the mean time.
... we'll see what comes out of that.
Now the smart and educated come to Bavaria to find a decent job...
From what you tell Indiana tries exactly the same
I call bullshit on all this fud from people decrying the "need" for standard installers.
1. Try an installer from any of the major distros. They're ALL easier than Windows.
2. You only install the installer once, then you image the drive and copy the image to the other N computers in the sale.
3. The end user will NOT be the one installing any of these.
So everyone, who gives a shit about a common installer? Let the installers proliferate, and we'll continue to have competition for the BEST installer, which will change from year to year, rather than those lame ones we see with the bitch from Redmond that can barely install an OS, never mind 10 gigs of software in one shot (that 10 gigs figure is what I got from installing the latest opensuse distro, fwiw).
If we hope that Linux will ever have the hardware and software support it needs, the only way will be to sing its praises.
As long as Linux is not in 20% or 30% of desktop machine (at least) it is worth building a body of evidence showing why Linux is a valid alternative.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Props to my old friend Lance Woods who has been working towards this in Indiana for years.
Your point #1 (lack of documentation) is valid in the Real World, but not for kids at school. If anything, the most important computer-related thing schools teach is how to do research. Considering what you said, Linux is perfect for that! ; )
Besides, both points are irrelevant anyway because these computers are going to be administered by the school system's IT department, not the students. Presumably, they (a) know what they're doing, and (b) will buy compatible hardware.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I've lived in Indiana most of my life and I can tell you that, under our current governor, this is all about money. Most of our public schools are terribly underfunded. The motivation to save money anywhere possible is what is driving the Linux migration. Anyone want to lease a tollroad?
Indiana has been making steady progress in transforming itself into a center of technology innovation. Some of the largest companies in the world are based in Indiana and the military technology sector in Indianapolis and Fort Wayne is unbelieveable. Pharma, Def-Tech, Orthopedics, etc. Indiana is a leader in all these fields.
Yes, we do grow corn here and a lot of it!
BTW, we've been trying to give the Gary region near Chicago to Illinois for years but, they won't take it. So it's currently available for anyone wanting to take over the payments....
Just ask the good Jedi how they feel about "Balance" now...
Brings up an interesting point there as well. Why does there need to be a common installer? There's no common installer in Windows.
Ahh, but a single installer executable can easily run on most all Windows versions. The same cannot be said of a single installer for all Linux distros. Secondly, installation on Windows is a mess. Part of the reason for moving away from Windows is because they have not fixed problems like these. To make Linux a really good desktop, it should be a lot better than Windows so that when people have a choice of platforms, they choose Linux.
I don't think anyone does installation perfectly. What I'd like to see is all platforms standardize on a GNUStep-like package format combined with a package manager that integrates licensing, updates, and the like for all software available to a machine, including on network drives, removable media, and for different users. No one has done it completely right yet, that I have seen. I want the drag and drop installation functionality of OS X, including the ability to IM a functional program to someone or plug in a thumb drive and have my preferences from two years ago when I last had access to that program on a network drive to be saved. I want all the dependancies included in the package with versioning and dynamic linking so getting a new library with some program I download can fix bugs in other programs I'm running. I want easy access to the resources of the program like movies, images, and sounds, just by navigating into the folder-is-the-program directory. Similarly I want easy access to fat binaries for multiple processors and even OS's. I want the integrated option to build from the included source instead of using a pre-compiled binary. Disk space is not that expensive anymore. I want a management application built into the OS that knows when I run a new application for the first time, handles registration over the internet or by keys through an official service. I want to be able to manage inherited preferences for the whole machine and for individual users from this manager and handle uninstalls and automated updates.
Right now Apple has half the solution and Linux has about a third. Sadly GNUStep on Linux seems to have lost momentum since most people who care about Linux as a convenient workstation jumped ship and went to OS X.
Maybe this is too much to ask, but I really don't think so. The real problem is not even building this system, it is standardizing it and getting all the major players, including Apple and Sun to get onboard.
People keep talking about this, but I have not seen any evidence on the Dell website that I can select Linux as an OS when I'm buying a computer. I haven't checked in the past few days or anything, but I did play around a few months ago and the only options under "OS" for their consumer machines was "Windows XP Home Edition" and "Windows XP Professional."
It'll be a big step forward when Linux is available there as well, just because--even if people don't order it--the fact that it's on the list right next to Windows makes it seem more 'official.'
The only place I've seen Linux as an option for a preinstalled OS from a major vendor is HP's "Workstation" line (which are really nice computers, and certainly better than the shit they foist on consumers, but not something average people are likely to see). I keep hearing that Dell offers Linux as some sort of option: can anyone explain where it's offered, or what the secret is?
Of course there are the small companies that offer preinstalled Linux systems, but sadly they seem to be charging a price premium that's really the wrong direction to be going in. Looking only at them versus at Windows boxes, you'd assume that the "Linux tax" is a few hundred dollars more than the Redmond one.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Macs for the rich, Linux for the poor, and Windows for everybody else.